"Becoming America" by Jon Butler: Review.

Butler's first chapter shows the decline of Indian populations due to disease, the dramatic decline in the proportion of English colonists and the tragedy of the slave trade, and the largest forced human migration in history, which brought more Africans than Europeans to England's mainland colonies from 1700 to 1770. The account of slavery highlights its brutality and stresses that Americans did not inherit but created the modern system of human and legal interrelationships. He contends that the main reason for the expansion and tightening of the slave system was simple: profit. Butler…