New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century, The

"In the past, the social history of seventeenth-century New England has been written in terms of the Puritan Zion, not of the market place.  The interaction of these two forces - meetinghouse and countinghouse - is the basic problem to which Mr. Bailyn has devoted this excellent book.  

His theme is the crystallization of interests that emerged with the growth of a merchant group, interests that differed from those of the Puritan oligarchs.  In developing this theme, Mr. Bailyn traces in detail the rise and fall of the New England fur trade, the beginning and end of the experiments in the production of iron, and the first flowering of the enterprise that brought the merchants final success - a seaborne trade." ~excerpt from the back cover of The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century