In the introduction to Strangers within the Realm' Cultural Margins of the First British Empire, the editors of the book Bernard Bailyn and Philip Morgan suggest that the project of the book is to reconfigure British imperial history by situating it in a global context, and present a relatively thorough overview of the changes in the historiographies of British and American scholarship. They trace the evolution of British historiography from Seeley's "imperial destiny" to a shift towards "the noninstitutional dimensions of colonial American life". This shift, they argue, brought attention to "the multiethnic and multiracial character of colonial American societies" which lead to some "fruitful" discussion but which nevertheless remained "parochial". Historians like Pocock, picking up on the inadequacy of this approach, tried to radically transform this kind of historical approach by advocating a "pluralist, multicultural" history, which was simultaneously genuinely "concerned with 'an expanding zone of cultural conflict and creation'
