In 1609 a free man of African and European ancestry, Juan Rodriguez, left the Dutch ship Jonge Tobias anchored off Manhattan Island with “eighty hatchets and some knives” to set himself up in trading with the local Indians. Ashore in coming years he fought off Dutch rivals, married an Indian woman, and started a family, all the while prospering by trading in bear and beaver pelts.

His is one of the many stories presented by David Hackett Fischer in his new book African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals, which examines nine Afro-European regional cultures in North America. Following in the footsteps of his previous books Albion’s Seed, Liberty and Freedom, and Champlain’s Dream, in African Founders, Fischer seeks to determine in this case how individuals both free and enslaved within these cultures “acted with purpose and resolve to change the ways that free and open systems worked in what is now the United States.”

David Hackett Fischer is University Professor and Warren Professor of History Emeritus at Brandeis University. Author of numerous books in addition to those already mentioned, his Washington’s Crossing won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in History.