Published on June 3, 2026 (Episode 457)
Introduction
My guest Peter C. Mancall’s new book is Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c. 1000–1680. It is, now, the first volume in the Oxford History of the United States, an ongoing multi-volume narrative series—a series whose story is worth an episode in and of itself.
In Contested Continent, Mancall describes the foundation of that place which would eventually become the United States. It is a long era of human history which foreshadowed that which was to come, one in which peoples from four continents came together in a collision of violence and mutuality in North America. “Much of what happened,” he writes, “came to define the American experience, including the rise of a booming transatlantic economy based on the extraction of abundant American natural resources, the central role European migrants and their descendants played in the enslavement of Africans, the displacement of Indigenous peoples, and the spread of self-governing polities where many people enjoyed religious liberty. None of those developments was inevitable. Nor did sweeping changes occur quickly.” Or we might say that like the glaciers of an advancing ice age, the events of this era often seem slow and ponderous, but ultimately they change everything that gets in their way.
About the Guest
Peter C. Mancall is Distinguished Professor, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, and Director of the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute at the University of Southern California. He is the author of numerous books, including Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson and Hakluyt’s Promise: An Elizabethan’s Obsession for an English America.
For Further Investigation
Peter Mancall, Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c. 1000–1680 (Oxford University Press, 2026)
Timothy Pauketat, Gods of Thunder: How Climate Change, Travel, and Spirituality Reshaped Precolonial America (Oxford University Press, 2023)
James Belich, The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe (Princeton University Press, 2022)
Robyn Arianrhod, Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science (OUP, 2019)
Edward Countryman, “The Pueblo Revolt,” History Now, 28 (Summer 2011)
Horseshoe Lake State Park (Illinois): Environmental context for Cahokia; an oxbow rich in plant and animal life.
Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site (Illinois): Start at the Interpretive Center, cross the Grand Plaza, climb Monks Mound.
Related Episodes
Gods of Thunder: The Civilization of the Mississippians, with Timothy Pauketat
Atlantic Ocean: John Haywood on the Pre-Columbian Atlantic and the Roots of Global Exploration
The World the Plague Made: James Belich on the Black Death and the rise of Europe
The Long Walk: Dean Snow on David Ingram’s extraordinary journey across North America
The Curiosities of Thomas Harriot: Robyn Arianrhod on a forgotten explorer, anthropologist, linguist, scientist, and mathematician
A Brave and Cunning Prince: James Horn on Opechancanough, Jamestown, and following the evidence wherever it leads
Lady Francis Berkeley/Amy Stallings: Amy Stallings as Lady Frances Berkeley explains Bacon’s Rebellion, and then as Amy Stallings explains first-person interpretation
Tags
Colonial America; Early America; Indigenous History; Cahokia; Atlantic World; Peter Mancall; Native Americans; Colonialism; Oxford History of the United States; Historical Thinking
