The Good Forest

"The Good Forest tells a story of the possibilities and plans for colonization in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world and argues that the German Salzburger community at Ebenezer, Georgia, was a 'successful' effort at colonization during the Trustee era. The relative success of the Ebenezer settlement, furthermore, challenges the inherent environmental, cultural and economic determinism that has dominated Georgia history. That well-worn narrative often implies (or even explicitly states) that only a slave-based plantation economy - as implemented after the Trustee era - could 'succeed.' More than just telling a Georgia story, though, Karen Auman's study also illuminates the ways that some continental Germans were financially and socially committed to the success of the British colony"--