In our first Virginia History Blog installment of Colonial Virginia Era history from Summer 2018 journals, we look at four titles. “For God, King, and People” distinguishes between the Renaissance mindset of the early Virginia investors and venturers and the anachronistic interpretation of commercialism. “Jamestown, the Truth Revealed” is an update of archeological and historical findings from the Jamestown Recovery project. “Anglo-Native Virginia” elaborates the last half of the Early Colonial Era trade, conversion and slavery with surrounding Algonquins. “New Map of Empire”
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.
For God, King and People
Alexander B. Haskell wrote For God, King, and People: Forging Commonwealth Bonds in Renaissance Virginia in 2017. It is available from the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Journal American History.
The Virginia colonizers of 1607 operated within the English Renaissance, a deeply providential age very unlike the later modern development of entrepreneurialism. Initially the intent of both investors and venturers was to create a divinely inspired commonwealth based on moral philosophy and secular participation. But their vision of independence was compromised by Crown and Parliament who saw Virginia as a mere province of empire.
The realities of mere existence in the Virginia environs compromised the humanist ideal, then led to disillusionment. The resulting debate both among Virginia settlers and among English colonial sponsors led to debates over whether God wanted English rule to reach across the Atlantic, and if so, how it was to happen. Haskell shows the increasing religious skepticism was a development that led to the rise of secular conceptions of state power to control ongoing colonial affairs, instead of supposing that they were the initiating impulse in an anachronistic commercialism.
Buy the “For God, King and People” on Amazon here.
Jamestown, the Truth Revealed
William M. Kelso wrote Jamestown, the Truth Revealed in 2017. It is available from the University of Virginia Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.
This book serves as an update to initial findings reported in Kelso’s “Jamestown: The Buried Truth”, previously reviewed at TVH. Kelso and collaborators in the Jamestown Rediscovery archaeological investigation re-estimated the location of Fort Jamestown that was believed to have been washed away by the James River, then found it in excavation. They also uncovered the first church where four Jamestown leaders were buried, the Factory, the Metalworking shop, and Governor’s Row during the term of Samuel Argall (1580-1626) who saved the colony from the “starving times”.
The James Fort excavations have uncovered palisade walls, bulwarks, interior buildings, a well, a warehouse, and several pits. Other substantial dumpsites give archeologists insights into the settlers’ lives and deaths, and evidence of relationships with the neighboring Powhatan Indians. The venturers both sought to reinvent the life back home and to find new ways to make the settlement profitable. Captain Bartholomew Gosnold seems to have been properly buried with ceremony outside the fort walls. But Jane may have succumbed during the “starving times”, whose remains were dumped in a cellar pit. The specter of grim settlement failure seems to inform the layers of excavation amid the buried bones of its butchered dogs.
Buy the “Jamestown, the Truth Revealed” on Amazon here.
Anglo-Native Virginia
Kristalyn Marie Shefveland wrote Anglo-Native Virginia: Trade, Conversion, and Indian Slavery in the Old Dominion in 2016. It is available from the University of Georgia Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.
The Algonquin tributary system of trade was codified by the Virginia Colony by the 1646 Treaty of Peace with Necotowance. The subsequent flourishing trade in the period from 1646 to 1722 led to the transformation of Jamestown and its surrounds from an outpost of empire to a frontier model for English society and imperialism, reaching throughout the Piedmont and into the southwestern coastal plain.
The Byrd and Steggs families and Powhatan Opechancanough and Pamunkey “Queen” Cockacoekse in particular emerged as key figures in diplomacy and trade, conversion and the development of Indian slavery that expanded Virginia colonial plantations and established political, economic, racial and class distinctions that would extend for three centuries.
Unlicensed settler violence against Native communities and resentment against the emerging colonial elites let to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. After its collapse, the Treaty of Middle Plantation in 1677 was meant to protect the land rights of nine trading tributary Native signatories of southeast Virginia. But the outlawed Indian slave trade continued and land encroachment continued, as did efforts at religious conversion. When the Tuscaroras of North Carolina went to war under similar provocation, the Virginia tributary system was tested; a renewed 1722 peace treaty with the Virginia tribes failed to guarantee peace in the future.
Buy the “Anglo-Native Virginia” on Amazon here.
New Map of Empire
Max Edelson wrote The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America Before Independence in 2017. It is available from the Harvard University Press, and online new and used. Reviewed in the Journal American History (Summer) and Journal of Southern History (Spring).
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 the empire stretched to the West Indies islands. King George III called upon his Board of Trade and Plantations to map long held possessions and newly acquired territory along with the indigenous nations within its European claims.
The “new vision of empire” allowed Britain to control land distribution and settlement. The maps were detailed, scaled to military purposes that captured the essentials of colonial spaces, including navigation, agricultural potential, and commercial prospects. They were tools of imperial control, but they also 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 .
Buy “The New Map of Empire” 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.