Historians of religion in colonial North America generally assume that Evangelical revivalism came relatively late to the South when compared to New England and the middle Atlantic. Often these historians treat Virginia as representative, where the Great Awakening was not in full swing until the 1760s and 1770s. However, Thomas Little persuasively argues that southern Evangelicalism began much earlier. Using the South Carolina lowcountry as a test case, he concludes that it began among the region's Protestant ‘libertines, sectarians, and enthusiasts' as early as the 1670s. Moreover, he argues that southern Evangelicalism emerged out of both local and transcontinental sources, similar to developments further north. In chapters i and ii Little argues that, from the beginning, the proprietors of the Carolina province promised religious toleration and encouraged the settlement of all kind of Protestants. Even at the time when the Church of England was established (1704), dissenters far outnumbered Anglicans and vigorously resisted the imposition of an established Church. Out of this conflict was born a desire among dissenters for revival and renewal. Little describes in chapter iii how a new wave of European immigration in the 1720s and 1730s greatly increased religious pluralism in the region. The resulting religious controversies and denominational rivalries inspired a ‘party of seekers' to work toward reform. Sporadic awakenings broke out, often led by recent immigrants already disposed to Evangelical Christianity, such as the Moravians. By the time that George Whitefield made his first tour of the South Carolina lowcountry in 1740–1, Little explains in chapter iv, the region was already primed for an Evangelical revival. But Whitefield's lasting impact cannot be underestimated, as Little argues in chapter v. Believing that they were living at the dawn of the millennium, many dissenters – and a handful of Anglicans, too – continued to preach Evangelical Christianity until it became predominant in South Carolina congregations. Certainly by the 1760s, Little concludes, Evangelical Protestantism had become the dominant religious mood of the South Carolina lowcountry, thus setting the stage for post-Revolutionary Evangelical revivalism. Little's work is meticulously well-researched, drawing from a rich deposit of previously neglected historical evidence. He rightly finds reason to question the previous historiography of southern Evangelicalism, and offers a very compelling revisionist history. His work will take a rightful place alongside that of W. R. Ward, Mark Noll and others who recently have stressed the multi-cultural and international dimensions of the development of North American Evangelicalism. Anyone interested in the religion of colonial North America should read this ground-breaking study.