In our second installment of Colonial Virginia history from Summer 2018 journals, we look at five titles. The first three relate to the British American Empire in the Atlantic community. “Advancing Empire” considers the English history from 1613 to 1688. “Homicide Justified” examines the legality of killing slaves including Virginia colonial and antebellum history. “Stamped from the Beginning” documents the development of racist ideas in America from colonial to antebellum to 20th century eras.
The second two relate to material and cultural history. “Face Value” investigates the consumer revolution in colonial America. “The Portrait and the Book” illuminates the impact of visual elements in colonial publishing. “The Power of Objects” explores the use of art and artifacts in colonial culture and community.
Current releases related to Virginia history in other eras from Spring 2018 journals can be found in previous Virginia History Blogs at Colonial Virginia – Spring 2018, Revolutionary Virginia – Spring 2018, and Civil War Virginia – Spring 2018, and New South and Modern Virginia – Spring 2018.
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.
Advancing Empire
L. H. Roper wrote Advancing Empire: English Interests and Overseas Expansion, 1613-1688 in 2017. It is available from the Cambridge University Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in The William and Mary Quarterly Summer 2018.
Throughout the 1600s, commercial networks created by private interests sought profit in a global outreach of colonization, and the integrated trade with far flung English interests was enmeshed with their use of the African slave trade for labor. Their administrative practice provided the substance of colonial governance this entire period. The state’s interest was primarily one of securing additional revenues as circumstances of foreign wars required.
The purely “reactive role” of the state allowed for delegation of extraordinary powers for both trade and governance. While the self-interested merchants and their aristocratic investors were shaped by their Puritan, anti-Spanish Catholic, anti-Dutch merchant, and pro-slavery beliefs, there was no underlying imperial ideology framing their activity and no state-sponsored colonial administration. Rather than a century of upheaval for overseas commerce, Roper stresses continuity. Even some of the “interloping” new merchants had previously participated in other legally sanctioned monopoly corporations.
Buy “Advancing Empire” on Amazon here.
Homicide Justified
Andrew T. Fede wrote Homicide Justified: The Legality of Killing Slaves in the United States and the Atlantic World in 2017. It is available from the University of Georgia Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Journal of Southern History, Summer 2018.
In this book, Fede makes a comprehensive overview of slave killing in the British North American colonies that would become the United States, and extends his study into their subsequent state history. He concludes that meaningful protection of slave lives by legal sanctions would have had too great a social cost, and so it was unfeasible.
Beginning with a brief synopsis of slave killing in ancient Rome, Medieval Europe and the British Caribbean, the examples demonstrate that slave owners in what would become the United States were seldom prosecuted, rarely convicted, and usually escaped any severe punishment. Convicted owners were mostly fined, given short term incarcerations, pardoned, or released by mob action. Whites who were not of the slave owning class were punished for slave killing.
Buy “Homicide Justified” on Amazon here.
Stamped from the Beginning
Ibram X. Kendi wrote Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America in 2016. It is available from the Hachette Book Group, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Journal of Southern History, Summer 2018.
The Aristotelian view of a human hierarchy with Greeks on top and all other cultures inferior was assimilated into British North American education at the inception of Harvard (1636), the College of William and Mary (1693) and Yale (1701). Aristotle’s contemporary Alkidamas was in contrast, egalitarian by accepting that all men were created with liberty, and none should be a slave. The ancient historian Heroditus found no cultural inferiority among Africans.
While most European slaves were Slavs in the early 1400s, in 1444 Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal adopted the Muslim practice of selling enslaved Africans, and his paid biographer wrote a justification of the practice in 1453 based on an assertion of African inferiority. Kendi explores how the same racist ideas were reasserted in the time of Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. DuBois, and Angela Davis.
Buy “Stamped from the Beginning” on Amazon here.
Face Value
Cary Carson wrote Face Value: The Consumer Revolution and the Colonizing of America in 2017. It is available from the University of Virginia Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in The William and Mary Quarterly Summer 2018.
In colonial America, before the advent of the industrial revolution, there was a revolution in consumption that created a demand for mass produced goods. Even some of the poorer sort of consumers had made ‘necessities’ that their fathers had called ‘decencies’ and their grandfathers, ‘luxuries’. Culturally, shops and homes were not only destinations in an existing supply-chain, they were also a market where items were evaluated for utility and fashion.
The emergency of a native gentry increase demand, but so did the increasing internal migration. Less stable societies developed material measures to evaluate newcomers. A cultural language related to consumer goods emerged in appearance and behavior to communicate status. In stable societies, those well acquainted with one another have different standards of living related to their familial folkways. But in community formation among newcomers, there was a self-fashioning by adopting life styles, uniting likeminded people of similar aspirations to affirm their similarities by consumer consumption including clothing, eating utensils and furnishings.
Buy “Face Value” on Amazon here.
The Portrait and the Book
Megan Walsh wrote The Portrait and the Book: Illustration and Literary Culture in Early America in 2017. It is available from the University of Virginia Press, on eTextbook and online new and used. Reviewed in The William and Mary Quarterly Summer 2018.
The influence of book illustration on American literary culture begins in colonial times with imported illustrated books, often with one portrait frontispiece. Authors and printers used visual cues to reflect the text and to shape the reader’s approach in autobiographies, poetry and novels. Walsh uses Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography with its depiction of Franklin as a rustic in a coonskin cap. Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects had a frontispiece of the author seated by a tea table.
At the founding, seduction novels were the most popular genre of fiction in the United States. American editions featured alternative illustrations to make the heroine more accessible to readers. In Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740), the British edition seated the protagonist in a parlor while the American frontispiece featured her outsized, alone and out of doors. In books and periodicals the portraits of national figures contributed to the growth of a national political culture and helped define the nation.
Buy “The Portrait and the Book” on Amazon 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.