The Plymouth Company and Massachusetts Bay Company (1622–1639): Establishing Theocratic Corporate Governance

This chapter examines the development of a different form of corporate religious governance in the Atlantic in the years after the Jamestown massacre. It focuses on the denominational identity of its members and how this influenced the direction and formation of a theocratic model of governance that the company would adopt. This chapter illustrates how the leaders of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay companies, such as William Bradford, John Endicott and John Winthrop, established authoritarian governments by manipulating charter privileges, forming a theocratic model of governance in New England. It examines how the leaders and members of the Plymouth Company and Massachusetts Bay Company, as corporate bodies, established and nurtured a distinct form of governmental identity. By tracing the development of the Massachusetts Bay Company’s congregational theocratic governance through works such as Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation, the Winthrop Papers, as well as the Records of the Town of Plymouth and the Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay New England, it shows how the joint stock corporation offered its members the legal and structural framework that would dogmatically police the religious behaviour of its members to secure and establish a godly republic.

Hippies Living History

In the late 1960s and 1970s, living history flowered, with new developments in research and interpretation at sites like Plimoth Plantation and Old Sturbridge Village, and the establishment of many new living history farms and museums, alongside a new professional organization: the Association for Living History Farms and Museums. This article examines this shift and puts it into conversation with the concurrent countercultural and commune movement, which often resembled—both aesthetically and ideologically—new living history. Using this case study as a model, I argue that in order to fully understand and account for developments in public practice, we must not only look at public history in a wider lens, but also account for form alongside context.

Distancing

This chapter brings personal experience with history into focus by recounting interviews with passersby as they talk about Massasoit and what the statue means to them, and juxtaposing these accounts with the living history museum Plimoth Plantation and the Public Broadcasting Station "experiential history" series Colonial House. This chapter seeks to understand three related phenomenon: how people experience historical distance between the past and present; how people endeavour to close the distance through consuming history as experience; and the ways in which Native peoples force a reckoning with Indigenous perspectives in Plymouth-centered narratives. Massasoit statues outside of Plymouth offer the greatest cognitive and geographic distance, and therefore a "safe" way to wrestle with the discomfort involved in coming to terms with colonialism. But the place of Plymouth and presence of Native educators makes a difference for closing the distance. Since the first 1970 United American Indians of New England protests, viewers of Massasoit must engage more fully in the nation's history. Plimoth Plantation and Colonial House likewise work to close the distance between the past and present through personal experience. This chapter argues that Native educators and activists play a crucial role for closing the distance and pushing a reckoning with history.

The Spaces of History

Museums of all kinds became more interactive and immersive. In two now exhibits, “Nation of Nations” and “1876,” the National Museum of American History placed viewers inside of historical milieus. Meanwhile, exhibits in Philadelphia and Boston made use of technologies like computers and phone banks to personalize historical understanding and identification. Finally, living history sites like Plimoth Plantation and Colonial Williamsburg placed more emphasis on realism and authenticity in their presentations of the past.