GOD, WAR, AND PROVIDENCE

For readers of Mayflower and Empire of the Summer Moon, a fresh, deeply-researched, and dramatic account of the first epic struggle between native Americans and the aggressively expansionist Puritan oligarchy in New England in the early seventeenth century, and a reexamination of Roger Williams and his enlightened attitude toward Native Americans.

God, War, and Providence tells the remarkable and little-known story of the alliance between Roger Williams's Rhode Island and the Narragansett Indians, and their joint struggle to retain their autonomy and their distinctive ways of life against Puritan encroachment.

A devout Puritan minister, Roger Willians was everywhere at once in 17th century New England -- as social critic, diplomat, theologian, and politician. Tolerance was to Roger Williams a liberating force, both in the eyes of God, and in the world. To his orthodox Puritan brethren, it fostered anarchy, and courted God's wrath. Banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, Williams purchased a tract of land from the Narragansett Indians and laid the foundations for the colony of Rhode Island as a haven for dissidents of all religious stripes and a place where Indian and English cultures could flourish side by side, in peace.

As the seventeenth century wore on, a steadily deepening antagonism developed between an expansionist, aggressive Puritan culture and an increasingly vulnerable, politically divided Indian population. Indian tribes that had been at the center of the New England world found themselves shunted off to the margins of the region by the 1660s. By that time, all the major Indian peoples in southern New England had come to accept English authority over their people and their territory, either tacitly or explicitly. All, except one: the Narragansetts.

With the help of Williams and a handful of other allies in Rhode Island and London, the Narragansetts waged a protracted and ingenious campaign of Indian resistance against Puritan domination in New England. Despite constant provocation and periodic attempts at military intimidation, the tribe steadfastly refused to buckle under to the authority of a powerful Puritan political confederation for almost forty years.


James A. Warren is a writer and a former visiting scholar in the American Studies Department at Brown University. Currently a regular contributor to The Daily Beast, Warren is the author of Giap: The General Who Defeated America in Vietnam (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and American Spartans: The United States Marines: A Combat History from Iwo Jima to Iraq (Free Press, 2005), among other books. His articles have appeared in MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Vietnam Magazine, Society, and The Providence Journal. For many years Warren was an acquisitions editor in the fields of history, religion, and ethnic studies at Columbia University Press. Educated at Brown, he lives in Saunderstown, Rhode Island.