author
Charles McLean Andrews
1863–1943
A leading interpreter of early American history, this Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar helped readers see the colonies as part of a wider British Empire. His work remains important for anyone curious about how colonial government and institutions took shape.
2 Audiobooks
The Fathers of New England: A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths
by Charles McLean Andrews
British Committees, Commissions, and Councils of Trade and Plantations, 1622-1675
by Charles McLean Andrews
About the author
Born in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1863, Charles McLean Andrews became one of the best-known American historians of his generation. He studied at Trinity College and Johns Hopkins University, then taught at several universities before joining Yale, where he served as professor of history from 1910 to 1931.
Andrews was especially known for reshaping the study of colonial America. Rather than treating the colonies as isolated beginnings of the United States, he examined them within the larger framework of the British Empire. That wider view helped change how scholars understood colonial politics, trade, and administration.
His best-known achievement was The Colonial Period of American History, a major multi-volume work. The first volume won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1935. He died in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1943, leaving behind a body of scholarship that continued to influence the writing of early American history.