This essay suggests that historians of early American women can avoid both declension narratives and essentialism by applying the approaches of the new cultural history within reinvigorated comparative framework. There are several reasons why this methodological partnership is appropriate. Comparative history allows all early Americanists, not just those interested in gender, to reconsider connections between colonial America and the rest of the early modern world and to avoid parochialism and antiquarianism. It is also well suited to analyzing cultural encounters, a major theme of colonial histories. This comparative framework is particularly useful to women’s historians seeking to avoid essentialism as they rethink the relationship between gender and other system of power (for example, colonialism) that defined early modern world. By embracing a more expansive conception of early American history we can become more sophisticated in our analysis of the role of gender in New World contest for power.
