Book question: There's one I read about a year ago about how the Salem witch trials had a lot to do with ~economic anxiety~ when their land speculation deals went horribly wrong...bc they stole the land & Abenaki neighbors took it back.

It's a lot of the same material as Salem Possessed but I'm looking through that book rn and I think it was a different one?

nah you know what nvmd it was Salem Possessed

good hustle everyone

argh no it wasn't

the book I'm thinking of had a decent discussion of how the Pilgrims had been real estate hustlers back in England, not farmers, so when they got to New England they were really bad at farming and really good at land speculation

thank you for joining this livetweeting of whatever this is

after an exhaustive search it's IN THE DEVIL'S SNARE

ffs there's probably a book about the puritans for every single one that every lived, the sheer volume of publications is ridiculous

You know what's wild is how we INSIST the Pilgrims were pious, humble family farmers living off the land

IRL they were enthusiastic slavers, basically an outpost of Barbados, made their money on resource extraction & land speculation, & backstabbed each other constantly

england: a shithole country that did not send its best people