Unsettling East Jersey: Borders of Violence in the Proprietary Era, 1666-1719

Zurcher, Amelia

Publication:
Unsettling East Jersey: Borders of Violence in the Proprietary Era, 1666-1719

dc.contributor.advisor	Marla Miller
dc.contributor.advisor	Alice Nash
dc.contributor.author	Zurcher, Amelia
dc.contributor.department	University of Massachusetts Amherst
dc.contributor.department	History
dc.date	2023-09-24T00:58:36.000
dc.date.accessioned	2024-04-26T18:28:34Z
dc.date.available	2024-04-26T18:28:34Z
dc.date.submitted	September
dc.date.submitted	2019
dc.description.abstract	Past histories have studied the disruptive antiproprietary riots that caused great disorder in colonial New Jersey. This study contextualizes this well-known history alongside other violent events of the Mid-Atlantic region that contributed to eighteenth century antagonisms in East Jersey, such as intercolonial rivalry for authority between administrators of New York and New Jersey and impending war between colonial and Lenape populations. It also looks to earlier periods of East Jersey history to trace the roots of eighteenth century conflicts. Legal confusions resulting from the early proprietary grants, Dutch reconquest, and pre-proprietary settlement created conditions that opponents later challenged. By revealing the tremendously tense and uncertain political, social, and economic circumstances of East Jersey’s early proprietary years, the sense of competition and desperation for stability can be better understood. This master’s thesis argues that early social and legal issues introduced by the early proprietary years persisted beyond the proprietary period and were influential preconditions for later tensions among Euro-American and Native peoples. This study argues that East Jersey’s unique and changing proprietary system created confusion and increasingly divided interests among the people of the Mid-Atlantic. As each of these conflicts remained unresolved within colonial and Native societies for nearly a century, they further frustrated social relations within East Jersey, often leading to violence among local Euro-American and Native groups. I examine this history with expanded temporal analysis, demonstrating that conflicts created by the early proprietary foundations of East Jersey, grew in the late proprietary period and persisted beyond the proprietary years.
dc.description.degree	Master of Arts (M.A.)
dc.identifier.doi	https://doi.org/10.7275/15284261
dc.identifier.orcid	https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5457-0215
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14394/33929
dc.relation.url	https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1909&context=masters_theses_2&unstamped=1
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
dc.source.status	published
dc.subject	Early American History
dc.subject	Native American History
dc.subject	Social History
dc.subject	United States History
dc.title	Unsettling East Jersey: Borders of Violence in the Proprietary Era, 1666-1719
dc.type	campusfive
dc.type	article
dc.type	thesis
digcom.contributor.author	isAuthorOfPublication\|email:azurcher@umass.edu\|institution:University of Massachusetts Amherst\|Zurcher, Amelia
digcom.identifier	masters_theses_2/868
digcom.identifier.contextkey	15284261
digcom.identifier.submissionpath	masters_theses_2/868
dspace.entity.type	Publication