John Nelson, Merchant Adventurer A Life between Empires [Hardcover]

John Nelson was an entrepreneur born in the mid-seventeenth century--a man, in Richard Johnson's words, operating ahead of the government and settled society from which he came, who responded to conventions and conditions derived from several different and often competing cultures. For Nelson, this meant trading out of Boston to the French and Indians of Canada, pursuing his family's dreams of the proprietorship of Nova Scotia, and promoting schemes of espionage and military conquest on both sides of the Atlantic. In the course of a long and adventurous life, Nelson served as middleman between Canada and New England; led an uprising that toppled the royal government of Massachusetts in 1689; and passed years in French prisons, including the Bastille, and then at court in London as a player in the complex European diplomacy of the time. Nelson's career reveals in bold colors the political and economic pressures exerted upon colonial America by the expansion and bitter conflict of European empires--he himself complained of being crusht between the two Crownes. Yet it also shows how one man fashioned a life as spy, speculator, multinational merchant, memorialist, politician, prisoner, parent, friend, and gentleman. Gracefully written and widely researched, the book is both a fine example of the new Atlantic history and a vivid recounting of the fortunes of an exceptional individual.

A meticulously researched and beautifully crafted book that reveals much about the evolution of new colonial empires in the 18th century....Highly recommended for academic libraries interested in British and American history. --CHOICE

This work represents the imaginative sleuthing, felicitous writing, and expansive overview we have come to expect from Richard Johnson. The author sets out 'to recover the life of a man'--John Nelson--and he succeeds with such empathy and such lucidity that it is hard to put the book down. --Alison Olson, University of Mlc�