To begin this Virginia History Blog on the Early Colonial Era, we look at first landing settlements. “A Kingdom Strange” explores the settlement of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. “Pocahontas, Little Wanton” documents early English accounts, verifiable history and subsequent narratives, plays and pictures.
“The Web of Empire” places the Virginia colony initially as a “failure” among English ventures, then a successful state-driven model for later British colonization. “A Very Mutinous People” gives an account of the Virginian migrants extending settlement to the remote Albemarle region of northeast North Carolina, and their eventual subordination to newcomer planters of large acreage and imported slaves.
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. We begin Summer 2018 reviews with Colonial Virginia — Summer 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.
A Kingdom Strange
James Horn wrote A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke in 2010. It is available from the Basic Books Press, on eTextbook and online new and used, a companion volume to his 2005 book, “A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America.
In this reassessment of Elizabethan objectives in the Americas, Horn places the quest for a western water route to Asia at the center of English colonial ambitions. This, and the hoped-for precious metals akin to the Spanish bonanza in South America.
Horn recounts the maneuverings of Sir Walter Raleigh at Queen Elizabeth’s court, belligerent competition between Protestant and Catholic nations, perilous Atlantic Ocean crossings and the disappearance of just over one hundred colonists at Roanoke Island. The tantalizing vision of a navigable passage to Asia via the Chesapeake Bay was amplified by Powhatan Wahunsonacock’s reports of Roanoke Colony survivors in the interior.
To buy “A Kingdom Strange” on Amazon, click here.
Pocahontas, Little Wanton
Neil Rennie wrote Pocahontas, Little Wanton: Myth, Life, and Afterlife in 2007. Available from the Quaritch Press and online new and used.
Here Rennie both recounts what is reliably known about Pocahontas’s life, and he explains the iterative changes in written accounts over the last three centuries. John Smith’s accounts in 1608, 1612, and 1624 are progressively embroidered with elements of a medieval romance. Other contemporary Englishmen wrote accounts of Pocahontas. A short section describes reliable historical information of her biography.
Not much was written about Pocahontas until a century after Smith’s death. Then nineteenth century southern writers began to imagine details of English colonial origins predating New England’s. Authors, playwrights and painters then continued to create impressions of the Algonquin “princess” to serve the audiences of their time.
To buy “Pocahontas, Little Wanton” on Amazon, click here.
The Web of Empire
Alison Games wrote The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-1660 in 2008. Available from the Oxford University Press, Kindle and online new and used. It is a companion volume to her earlier volume, “Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World”.
The British impulse to overseas empire in the Americas was not only a process of military conquest and political domination. It was also a cultural expression with dynamic interplay between imperial center and colonial periphery. The English cosmopolitan elites of aristocratic travelers, merchants, professional soldiers, second sons, and clergy set off for far-flung business or adventure.
During the Stuarts and Cromwell’s Commonwealth, they sortied out into Ireland, the Muslim Mediterranean, from South Asia and India to “failed” colonies such as Madagascar. Virginia was transformed from a failure to “successful”. Initially modeled after the Mediterranean outposts, Virginia had forty percent of its investors as shareholders in other English overseas enterprises.
The notable shortage of food growing expertise among the venturers led to the early starving times and the English attempts to accommodate with local populations with friendships and intermarriage failed at the Anglo-Powhatan War of 1622-32. Then a paradigm shift occurred from a shareholder colony of trade and commerce to a state-sponsored colony of settlement and expansion. It led to success with an agricultural model of colonial self-sufficiency, cash crop exports and belligerent expansion against indigenous populations.
To buy “The Web of Empire” on Amazon, click here.
A Very Mutinous People
Noeleen McIlvenna wrote A Very Mutinous People: The Struggle for North Carolina, 1660-1713 in 2009. It is available from the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
This study centers on the northeastern settlement of early North Carolina settlement in the Albemarle region adjacent the Virginia. The early migrants of dissenting Levellers, runaway servants, Quakers and debtors from Virginia held principles of equality without customary deference to traditional social divisions.
The spreading English settlements combined rebellious activity against their lord proprietors and Quaker “honest and peaceful dealings” with Native Americans. In the Tuscarora War, natives attacked newcomer planters encroaching on their lands without agreed to payment. In McIlvenna’s narrative, a sort of “Quaker-Leveller republic” of small farmers and artisans emerged including “Indians, Negros and women” who waged a kind of perpetual English Revolution with limits on land holdings, debtor protections and civil marriage.
Sometimes resistance led to violence as in Culpeper’s rebellion in 1677 immediately following Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia. Afterwards planters emulating Virginian and South Carolinians introduced large-scale African slavery, established the Anglican Church, defeated Thomas Cary’s rebellion in 1711, and removed the Tuscarora Indians after 1715.
To buy “A Very Mutinous People” 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.