In this Virginia History Blog, we begin our first digest of reviews from current journals about Colonial Era Virginia. Two are environmental histories, “A Cold Welcome” about the Little Ice Age, and “Wild by Nature” about marketed indigenous Southeast wildlife. “Esteemed Bookes of Lawe” concerns legal libraries of colonial Virginia and the training of the law profession.
“The Lives in Objects” explores economic and political relationships between colonists and natives, and “The New Map of Empire” concerns King George III’s view of his newly expanded North American realm following the Seven Year’s War. “The Townshend Moment” is a biography of two brothers effecting British imperial policy in North America and Ireland respectively.
The TVH webpage for Early and Late Colonial Eras, 1600-1763, features our top title picks taken from the bibliographies of three surveys of Virginia History’s 400 years: two that are widely used in Virginia college courses, and one to be published by the University of Virginia Press in 2019. The page has a Table of Contents for Powhatan Virginia, Early Colonial Policy, Late Colonial Policy, Social History of Virginia, Gender in Virginia, Religious Virginia, African American Virginia, and Wars in Virginia 1600-1763.
Area specialty blog related to early contact include the Virginia History Blogs on The Powhatan in Virginia, Early Colonial Contact and Culture in Virginia, Jamestown in Virginia, and Jamestown in Virginia 1607-1620s.
A Cold Welcome
Sam White wrote A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter with North America in 2017. It is available at the Harvard University Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the William and Mary Quarterly.
This environmental history synthesizes historical research, archeology and climate science. Following 1607 whether in Santa Fe, Quebec or Jamestown, the Europeans walked into a Little Ice Age in North America that hampered their acclimation and fostered violent encounters among the Native peoples as well as with the new comers.
Under stress of colder temperatures, drought and increased hurricane activity, Natives faced an onset of scarcity with the Hurons driving Iroquoian-speaking tribes south out of the Saint Lawrence Valley, for instance. The maize dependent Algonquin-Powhatans adopted new political arrangements that were at once more hierarchical and centralized. The inherently violent process of European colonization was magnified when Native traders would not exchange sufficient foodstuffs in trade to supply colonist needs. The extreme weather and its scarcities worsened Native conditions related to conflict, disease and famine of the period.
To buy “A Cold Welcome” on Amazon, click here.
Wild by Nature
Andrea L. Smalley wrote Wild by Nature: North American Animals Confront Colonization in 2017. It is available at the Johns Hopkins University Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the William and Mary Quarterly and the Southwestern Historical Quarterly.
This environmental history of America’s wildlife integrates ecology, legal and economic history, focusing on indigenous American wildlife in the South. Initial frontier colonialism was extractive, drawing on wildlife as an exploitable resource for immediate profit. Settler colonialism required the removal of wildlife to create space for expansive staple crop agriculture and domesticated animal husbandry.
The relationships between settlers, Native Americans and the marketed wildlife spans the history of beaver, wolves, fish, white-tailed deer and bison. Colonial authorities varied policy over time. Following Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, Indian claims to territorial property were rejected. By 1800 treaties recognized Indian territory and their right to its deer hunting. With the loss of a sustaining deer population, legal theory led to Indian Removal and Indian Wars in the 1800s.
To buy “Wild by Nature” on Amazon, click here.
Esteemed Bookes of Lawe
Warren M. Billings and Brent Tartar edited “Esteemed Bookes of Lawe” and the Legal Culture of Early Virginia in 2017. It is available at the University of Virginia Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.
This volume on the legal culture of early colonial Virginia is a collection of seven essays mining the book collecting found in the lawyers of the period. For instance, Tarter writes of how the Virginia Council in Williamsburg assembled its own reference library, providing the means for those making the annual pilgrimage to the capital to track how English law was modified by incorporating legislation and judicial precedent among the various courts of law.
The commonly held books held among Virginia’s lawyers in turn influenced the ways practitioners of the legal profession were trained up in the law. The intellectual history of early America is made up of both an English culture transmitted into the Virginia colony, and a supplemental native-grown legal literature that defined a distinctive local culture.
To buy “Esteemed Bookes of Law” on Amazon, click here.
The Lives in Objects
Jessica Yirush Stern wrote The Lives in Objects: Native Americans, British Colonists, and Cultures of Labor and Exchange in the Southeast in 2017. It is available at the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the William and Mary Quarterly and the Journal of Southern History.
This book examines the economic and political relationships between British colonists and American Indians in the Southeast in the late colonial period between the 1660s and the 1760s. Natives and colonists cooperated, collaborated and adapted their political economy to one another. Individual choices were made in both markets and individual choices.
Backwoods commerce of the Indian trade was conducted by individual chiefs, company factors, native and colonial hunters, deerskin and leather dressers, traders and merchants. For instance, John Evans kept a careful account of day to day commercial travel from southern Virginia to South Carolina. Trade reached from colonial port cities to Devonshire and London.
To buy “The Lives in Objects” on Amazon, click here.
New Map of Empire
Max Edelson wrote The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America Before Independence in 2017. It is available at the Harvard University Press and online new and used. Reviewed in Journal of Southern History.
Following the successful conclusion of the Seven Year’s War in 1763, British America ran from Hudson Bay to the Florida Keys, from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi River, and its empire acquired new West Indies islands. King George III sought to map his newly acquired territory and its boundaries with indigenous nations within its European claims.
The maps were scaled to military purposes, capturing the essentials of colonial spaces, including navigation, agricultural potential, and commercial prospects. They were tools of imperial control that threatened the colonists as the primary agents of empire, and the North American colonists would rebel. Over two hundred maps are available for study and classroom use at www.Mapscholar.org/empire .
To buy “New Map of Empire” on Amazon, click here.
The Townshend Moment
Patrick Griffin wrote The Townshend Moment: The Making of Empire and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century in 2017. It is available at the Yale University Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the William and Mary Quarterly.
This book studies the lives of two brothers, George Townshend (1724-1807) and Charles Townshend (1725-1767). Both were prominently involved in British imperial politics in the run up to the American Revolution. Their education they were conventional eighteenth century gentlemen, and they conventionally used their family connections to secure appointments in imperial government.
Charles gained a place in the Board of Trade and Plantations at a time of increasing mercantilism in Britain’s commercial empire. He became a champion of metropolitan sovereignty and the necessity of imperial reform among the colonies. George’s military career was marked by contentious wrangling that brought it to an end until he was awarded the post of lord lieutenancy of Ireland. There he pursued a campaign to break regional authority independence of London’s imperial direction.
Charles career was capped as chancellor of the exchequer where he became acting prime minister during the absences of William Pitt. He authored the controversial Townshend Duties and died soon thereafter. The legacy of both brothers lasting influence was in their stimulating resentment and opposition in Ireland and North America.
To buy “The Townshend Moment” on Amazon, click here.
Additional history related to Virginia during this time period can be found at the Table of Contents of TheVirginiaHistorian website on the page for Early and Late Colonial Eras, 1600-1763. Titles are organized by topics related to Powhatan Virginia, Political and Economic Virginia, Social, Gender, Religious, African American and Wars in Virginia.
General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Note: Insights for these reviews include those available from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.