Alan Shaw Taylor (born June 17, 1955) is an American historian and scholar who, most recently, was the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. A specialist in the early history of the United States, Taylor has written extensively about the colonial history of the United States, the American Revolution, and the early American Republic. Taylor has received two Pulitzer Prizes and the Bancroft Prize, and was also a finalist for the National Book Award for non-fiction.
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Early life and education
Taylor was born on June 17, 1955 in Portland, Maine, the son of Ruel Taylor, Jr. and author Virginia C. Taylor. He graduated from Colby College, in Waterville, Maine, in 1977, and earned his PhD from Brandeis University in 1986.
Career
Before going to the University of Virginia, Taylor taught at the University of California, Davis and Boston University.
Taylor is best known for his contributions to microhistory, exemplified in his William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (1996). Using court records, land records, letters and diaries, Taylor reconstructed the background of founder William Cooper from Burlington, New Jersey, and the economic, political and social history related to the land speculation, founding and settlement of Cooperstown, New York, after the American Revolutionary War.
Taylor's The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (2006) explored the history of the borders between Canada and the United States in the aftermath of the American Revolution, as well as Iroquois attempts to keep control of some lands. His book The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (2010) also addressed this borderland area and strategies pursued by various groups.
Taylor is one of five authors to have twice been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History. He won it for William Cooper's Town and The Internal Enemy.
Contributing to the anthology Our American Story (2019), Taylor addressed the possibility of a shared American narrative, and offered a skeptical approach, arguing, "There is no single unifying narrative linking past and present in America. Instead, we have enduring divisions in a nation even larger and more diverse than that of 1787. The best we can do today is to cope with our differences by seeking compromises, just as the Founders had to do, painfully and incompletely in the early Republic."
Taylor has written a series of four books with "plural titles," he writes, so as to "convey a core attempt to see our history as continental, rather than simply the isolate story of one nation". They are American Colonies, American Revolutions, American Republics, and American Civil Wars.
Awards
1996 Bancroft Prize for William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic
1996 Beveridge Award for William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic
1996 Pulitzer Prize for William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic
2007 Cox Book Prize for The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution
2013 National Book Award for Nonfiction finalist for The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832
2014 Pulitzer Prize for The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia: 1772-1832
2014 Merle Curti Award for The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia: 1772-1832
2014 George Washington Book Prize finalist for The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia: 1772-1832
2017 George Washington Book Prize finalist for American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804
2021 New-York Historical Society book prizes, Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History, for American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850
Works
Books as author
Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier 1760-1820, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. ISBN 0807819093 OCLC 20421513
William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0394580540 OCLC 32665643
American Colonies: The Settling of North America, New York: Viking/Penguin, 2001. ISBN 0670872822 OCLC 45804613
Writing Early American History, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. ISBN 0812238834 OCLC 57429326
The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. ISBN 0679454713 OCLC 58043162
The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. ISBN 1400042658 OCLC 503042145
Colonial America: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, USA: 2012. ISBN 9780199766239 OCLC 781680690
The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013. ISBN 9780393073713 OCLC 840934500
American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804, W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. ISBN 0393082814
Thomas Jefferson's Education, W. W. Norton & Company, 2019. ISBN 0393652424
American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783–1850, W. W. Norton & Company, 2021. ISBN 9781324005797
Books as contributor
"One Nation Divisible," Joshua Claybourn, ed. (2019). Our American Story: The Search for a Shared National Narrative. Potomac Books. ISBN 978-1640121706.