Book excerpt: "This social and cultural history of seventeenth-century Bermuda recounts the colony's development under the Virginia and Bermuda companies, with particular emphasis on how multiracial, multicultural interaction, a distinct maritime island environment, a pervasive Puritan religious culture, and thickening ties with other Anglo-American colonies created a distinctive new American-Bermudian identity. Puritanism, slavery, family tobacco farming, overcrowding, and out-migration shaped Bermuda's development and a growing network of Atlantic linkages that islanders formed that primed it to become a major maritime hub in the age of sail"--