The Mayflower was the famousship that transported the English Separatists, better known as thePilgrims, fromSouthampton,England, toPlymouth,Massachusetts in 1620. For centuries its story has been told as though it was a simple story of simple people, pursuing religious freedom, yet has been distorted by the myth that it was an entirely American event, a myth that detaches it from the global conflicts in which its passengers were caught up. Before it became part of the prehistory of the American Republic, the Mayflower was in reality an episode and a crucial one in the creation of the British Empire, and of the new world order that was coming into being in the seventeenth century. Providence Their Guide shows how America was invented by an unexpected alliance of unusual men and women. They were privateering English aristocrats, xenophobic politicians at Westminster and sectarian religious radicals. The Pilgrims believed that God s Providenc

Author Biography

Nick Bunker worked as an investigative reporter for the Liverpool Echo, and for six years he wrote for the Financial Times. He was an Open Scholar at King's College, Cambridge, where he won two university prizes. He has two graduate degrees from Columbia University in New York, where he studied under the late Professor Edward Said. While at Columbia he began his travels around the United States. For many years, he served as a board member, treasurer and Chairman of the Trustees of the Freud Museum in London. He now lives in Lincoln, near the villages from which the leaders of the Plymouth Colony came.