Alan Taylor (historian)

Alan Shaw Taylor (born June 17, 1955 in Portland, Maine) is an American historian specializing in early United States history. He is the author of a number of books about the colonial history of the United States, the American Revolution and the early American Republic. Since 1995, he has won two Pulitzer Prizes and the Bancroft Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award for non-fiction.

Education

Taylor graduated from Colby College, in Waterville, Maine, in 1977, and earned his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1986.

Career

Taylor is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He taught previously at the University of California, Davis and Boston University.

Taylor is best known for his contributions to microhistory, exemplified in his William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (1996). Using court records, land records, letters and diaries, Taylor reconstructed the background of founder William Cooper from Burlington, New Jersey, and the economic, political and social history related to the land speculation, founding and settlement of Cooperstown, New York after the American Revolutionary War.

Taylor is among a generation of historians committed to the revival of narrative history, rejecting the method-driven, quantitative work of the previous generation of "new social historians" and the theory-laden work of more recent "new cultural historians."

Taylor's The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (2006) explored the history of the borders between Canada and the United States in the aftermath of the American Revolution, as well as Iroquois attempts to keep control of some lands. His book The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (2010) also addressed this borderland area and strategies pursued by various groups. The War of 1812 has also been characterized as a continuation of the Revolutionary War, one of what Kevin Phillips described as Cousins' Wars (1999) in his book by the same title.

In addition to writing books for the general public, he is a regular contributor of essays and book reviews to The New Republic magazine.

Awards

• 1996 Bancroft Prize for William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic
• 1996 Beveridge Award for William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic
• 1996 Pulitzer Prize for William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic
• 2013 National Book Award for Nonfiction finalist for The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832
• 2014 Pulitzer Prize for The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia: 1772-1832

Works

• Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: the Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier 1760-1820, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. ISBN 0807819093 OCLC 20421513
• William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0394580540 OCLC 32665643
• American Colonies, New York: Viking/Penguin, 2001. ISBN 0670872822 OCLC 45804613
• Writing Early American History, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. ISBN 0812238834 OCLC 57429326
• The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. ISBN 0679454713 OCLC 58043162
• The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. ISBN 1400042658 OCLC 503042145
• Colonial America: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press,USA: 2012. ISBN 9780199766239 OCLC 781680690
• The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013. ISBN 9780393073713 OCLC 840934500
• American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804, W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. ISBN 0393082814

External links

• "The Pulitzer Guy", Colby College Colby Magazine, Winter 2002
• History Department profile, University of California, Davis
• Taylor on The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies at the Pritzker Military Museum & Library on May 26, 2011
• Appearances on C-SPAN