Bitter Feast: Amerindians and Europeans in Northeastern North America, 1600-64 by Denys Delage

This interdisciplinary study offers a comprehensive analysis of the French, Dutch and English colonization of northeastern North America during the early and middle decades of the 17th century. It is the first to pay serious attention to the European economic and political factors which promoted colonization, arguing that its prime determinant was the uneven development of agricultural systems in western Europe. "Bitter Feast" examines the impact of colonization upon the native peoples and the nature of the colonial societies which were established in northeastern North America. Denys Delage contends that the outcome of colonial rivalries in North America depended on the characteristics of the European national economies which were competing with each other for a share of the world market, maintaining that the Netherlands constituted the core of the European world system prior to the 1660s, with England and France both part of the semi-periphery. Originally published in French, this award-winning book presents a provocative world-system analysis of European colonization of northeastern North America during the early and middle decades of the 17th century.