We return to our cycle of book reviews by Virginia history eras with a blog for Early Colonial Virginia, 1600-1712. The list of thirteen titles are made up from those found in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 2012-2014. There are three in “First Years”, three in “Growth of Empire”, four in “Established Colony” and three in “Cultural History”. Related titles pictured and linked are taken from books authored by the reviewers at VMHB, reviewers in other journals at JSTOR, and authors mentioned in reviews as contributing to the subject area.
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.
“More About Early Colonial Virginia” below provides additional resources.
Early Colonial – First Years
“Mapping Virginia”, “Lost Communities of Virginia”, “A Tale of Two Colonies”.
Mapping Virginia
William C. Wooldridge wrote Mapping Virginia: From the Age of Exploration to the Civil War in 2012. It is available from University of Virginia Press, at Kindle, and online. Buy “Mapping Virginia” on Amazon here.
This atlas of 301 maps are owned by the Virginia Cartographical Society collected over forty years. It presents not only the charts of navigation and orienteering, but historically, the “idea of Virginia”. The maps are generally organized by time period, such as John Smith’s Chesapeake, The Revolution in Virginia, and the Civil War. They are also regional presentations of the Big Bay and later, The Back Parts of Virginia.
Buy “Mapping Virginia” on Amazon here. See also Vincent Virga Virginia: Mapping the Old Dominion State Through History: Rare and Unusual Maps From the Library of Congress (2009), and Marianne M. McKee and Richard W. Stephenson, editors Virginia in Maps: Four Centuries of Settlement, Growth, and Development (2000), and William P. Cumming Southeast in Early Maps (1998-3d edition).
A Tale of Two Colonies
Virginia Bernhard wrote A Tale of Two Colonies: What Really Happened in Virginia and Bermuda? 2011. It is available from University of Missouri Press, at Kindle, and online. Buy “A Tale of Two Colonies” on Amazon here.
In this comparative study of English American colonization in the early 1600s, Bernhard alternates between Bermuda and Virginia. While both began with proprietary companies of investors, Bermuda’s history immediately found prosperity through a more orderly settlement, self-reliant subsistence, and early development of a tobacco cash crop with the help of African expertise. But Virginia’s repeatedly fell towards ruin, compounding high death rates, administrative mismanagement and Powhatan conflicts.
Both colonies were under surveillance by Spanish spies highlighting the era’s Protestant-Catholic antagonisms, and both were influenced in their colonial management by imperial meddling from competing factions within the Virginia Company. The last two chapters address “The Confluence of Three Cultures” in both places, among English, Indian and African natives. To do that, Bernhard tries to explicitly balance the self-serving conflicting narratives of various self-serving rivals.
Buy “A Tale of Two Colonies” on Amazon here. See also Michael J. Jarvis In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (2012), and Lorri Glover The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America (2009).
Early Colonial – Growth of empire
“Planting an Empire”, “Order and Civility”, “New Worlds of Violence”
Planting an Empire
Jean B. and J. Elliott Russo wrote Planting an Empire: The Early Chesapeake in British North America in 2012. It is available from John Hopkins University Press, at Kindle, and online. Buy “Planting an Empire” on Amazon here.
The two British American colonies studied in “Planting an Empire” are the Chesapeake Bay settlements in Virginia and Maryland. Throughout the 1600s and 1700s, the two neighbors shared more in common than their different origins might otherwise suggest, and these connections of social and economic development gradually drew them together after some early territorial disputes.
Common Algonquin connections among Native Americans of the Chesapeake Bay predated the English “first families”, and the common geography and tobacco culture evolved into a similar slave-holding economy in both Maryland and Virginia. The Russos end their book with an essay on sources arranged topically.
Buy “Planting an Empire” on Amazon here. See also Warren M. Billings Magistrates and Pioneers: Essays in the History of American Law (2011) and his Little Parliament: The Virginia General Assembly in the Seventeenth Century (2004).
Order and Civility
Debra Meyers and Melanie Perreault edited Order and Civility in the Early Modern Chesapeake in 2014. It is available from Lexington Books, at Kindle, and online. Buy “Order and Civility” on Amazon here.
In this volume of ten essays on early Maryland and Virginia, several aspects of social control in the colonies are examined. The first section looks at religion, gender and social deviance. The second addresses the complex labor systems made up of settlers, slaves and convict labor. The last group of essays examines the formation of provincial legal systems in the Chesapeake at variance from the mother country.
The reviewer at the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography found the volume wanting overall, despite a good essay on Maryland colonial law regarding indentured servants and slaver by Jeffrey K. Sawyer. See three alternative titles on related subject matter below.
Buy “Order and Civility” on Amazon here. See also Angela K. Couch and Debra E. Marvin The Backcountry Brides Collection: Eight 18th Century Women Seek Love on Colonial America’s Frontier (2018), Warren M. Billings Magistrates and Pioneers: Essays in the History of American Law (2011), and Debra Meyers and Melanie Perreault, editors, Colonial Chesapeake: New Perspectives (2006).
New Worlds of Violence
Matthew Jennings wrote New Worlds of Violence: Cultures and Conquests in the Early American Southeast in 2011. It is available from Oxford University Press, and online. Buy “New Worlds of Violence” on Amazon here.
In this survey of mid- to late colonial “cultures of violence”, Jennings studies the settlement of North America as a conquest by Europeans, focusing on the southeastern seaboard from Florida to Virginia. He begins with the Mississippian chiefdoms of the Eastern Woodlands, the author uses archaeological and ethnohistorical sources to describe the Native American culture of violence 500-1500. Ancient purposes ranged from low-scale warfare for prisoners or vengeance to pitched battles to subjugate tributary tribes or destroy ritual icons.
The Spanish culture of violence was forged in its Reconquista holy war against Islam on the Iberian Peninsula for territory and wealth, including the 1565 destruction of a French outpost at Fort Caroline now Jacksonville, Florida.
A “significant turning point” in the history of the American Southeast came with the arrival of the English to South Carolina in 1670. The English used a culture of violence developed in their conquest and colonization of Ireland to acquire land and to exploit the labor of Native Americans and African slaves for profit. The Yamasee and Creek Indians escalated their cultural violence to supply other Native Americans as slaves to the English. They in turn made war on the slave catching tribes in the Yamasee War of 1715, but the English established a second colony in the region in Georgia in the 1730s. African slaves imported from the Congo revolted in the 1739 Stono Uprising. By 1740 the balance of power in the region tipped permanently towards the emergent English plantation society.
Buy “New Worlds of Violence” on Amazon here. See also Wayne E. Lee Barbarians and Brothers: Anglo-American Warfare, 1500-1865 (2011), Steven C. Hahn The Invention of the Creek Nation, 1679-1763 (2004) and Charles Hudson The Transformation of the Southeastern Indians, 1540-1760 (2008).
Early Colonial – Established colony
“The Empire Reformed”, “Ireland in the Virginia Sea”, “Early Modern Virginia”,
“The Dividing Line Histories of William Byrd II”.
The Empire Reformed
Owen Stanwood wrote The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution in 2011. It is available from University of Philadelphia Press, at Kindle, and online. Buy “The Empire Reformed” on Amazon here.
The British Empire as it developed under the Stuarts following the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 was a colonization effort by for-profit corporations and proprietorships that were meant to preclude New World domination by Spain and France, and to contribute to the Crown’s personal finances. The British North American colonies independence from Parliament developed increased autonomy during Cromwell’s Interregnum. The Protestant settlers in North America feared neighboring Catholic imperial outposts, and the Stuart Restoration of a Catholic monarch led to widespread fears of Catholic-inspired conspiracies.
But after the Glorious Revolution, they became convinced that Britain’s new Protestant rulers could protect them from Catholic French and Spanish designs on their territorial land grants. They yielded local corporate and proprietary autonomy to a re-invigorated imperial authority under William and Mary.
The harbinger of the new system in the New World was cemented with the administration of Richard Coote as governor of New York, Massachusetts Bay, and New Hampshire 1698-1701. Stanwood uses an epilog on the forty-year career of Francis Nicholson to explain how much the British colonial system changes, as he was appointed Governor of the Dominion of New England 1688-1689, Maryland 1694-1698, Virginia 1698-1705, Nova Scotia 1712-1715, and South Carolina 1721-1725.
Buy “The Empire Reformed” on Amazon here. See also Carla Gardina Pestana Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World (2009), and John M. Murrin Rethinking America: From Empire to Republic (2018), and John D. Krugler English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century (2008).
Ireland in the Virginia Sea
Audrey Horn wrote Ireland in the Virginian Sea: Colonialism in the British Atlantic in 2013. It is available from University of North Carolina Press, at Kindle, and online. Buy “Ireland in the Virginia Sea” on Amazon here.
In this study of the Atlantic community in the early 1600s, Horn uses archaeological and archival evidence to establish material, social and commercial interactions between both early English Virginia settlers with Algonquin-Powhatans, and their connections with Ireland’s Gaelic population and English settlers there.
And while many of the first expeditions in Virginia were soldiered by veterans of the Elizabethan wars in Ireland, Virginia and Ireland were “competitive, contemporary ventures”. King James I required London investment companies that had underwritten Virginia after its 1609 Charter, to also invest in the joint-stock Irish Society colonizing Ireland, thus drawing funds away from Virginia during a period of dire supply shortages.
Buy “Ireland in the Virginia Sea” on Amazon here. See also April Lee Hatfield Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (2004), Mark G. Hanna Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740 (2015), and Jonathan Eacott Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and America 1600-1830 (2016).
Early Modern Virginia
Douglas Bradburn and John C. Coombs edited Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old Dominion in 2011. It is available from Oxford University Press, at Kindle, and online. Buy “Early Modern Virginia” on Amazon here.
“Early Modern” relates to the larger Atlantic world of the 1600s, versus a “colonial” reference to English settlements alone. Research into the early Virginia has lagged behind Maryland due to document losses from fires and military campaigns. In these nine essays on 1600s Virginia, along with introduction and conclusion by the editors, the focus is on Virginia’s differences: material culture and household relationships, societal deference, defiance and religion, the transforming rise of slavery replacing indenture. Religion was central to the origins of Virginia as it was for New Englanders; it was central to English expansion anywhere in the 1500s and 1600s.
Commercial relationships evolved with various merchants including English, Algonquin, Dutch and Spanish. Native American identity changed in the Rappahannock Valley as they were surrounded by new English settlement. Court cases illuminate the ways indentured women could form “household alliances” to challenge head-of-household control. Virginians could be deferential or defiant depending on the social or legal context. Early slaveholding procurement and practice varied from its origins over time. In the Tidewater, there could be steady development despite the vagarities of Virginia Company supply and early Native American assaults. The essays suggest further exploration of 1600s Virginia and the Chesapeake to broaden the historiography of the era.
Buy “Early Modern Virginia” on Amazon here. See also Edmund S. Morgan American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (2013), L. Scott Philyaw Virginia’s Western Visions: Political and Cultural Expansion (2004), Daniel K. Richter Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (2003) and Michelle LeMaster and Bradford J. Wood Creating and Contesting Carolina: Proprietary Era Histories (2013).
The Dividing Line Histories
Kevin Joel Berland edited The Dividing Line Histories of William Byrd II of Westover in 2013. It is available from University of North Carolina Press, at Kindle, and online. Buy “The Dividing Line Histories” on Amazon here.
This book discusses and explains an important primary source describing an 1728 surveying expedition. Berland supplies biographies on Byrds companions, weather reports and political issues of the day. The author thoroughly analyses the differences of the manuscripts held by the American Philosophical Society and the Westover Manuscript held by the Virginia Historical Society. They are not only adventure tales, but serious works of literature.
The canon of early Virginia writing also includes The Voyages of John Smith — see Helen C. Rountree John Smith’s Chesapeake Voyages, 1607-1609 (2007), John Lederer’s Discoveries — see William Talbot The Discoveries of John Lederer, in three several marches from Virginia… (2015), Robert Beverley’s History and Present State of Virginia (1971,2018) — see also Robert Beverley and Susan Scott Parrish The History and Present State of Virginia: with an introduction (2013), and Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia — see also Doug Good editor Notes on the State of Virginia in Contemporary Language (2015).
Buy “The Dividing Line Histories” on Amazon here. See also Kenneth A. Lockridge On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage: The Commonplace Books of William Byrd and Thomas Jefferson and the Gendering Power in the Eighteenth Century (1994), Kevin Joel Berland The Commonplace Book of William Byrd II of Westover (2001), Philip Levy Where the Cherry Tree Grew: The Story of Ferry Farm, George Washington’s Boyhood Home (2013).
Early Colonial – Cultural history
“Political Gastronomy”, “Baptism of Early Virginia”, and “The Chesapeake House”.
Political Gastronomy
Michael A. LaCombe wrote Political Gastronomy: Food and Authority in the English Atlantic World in 2012. It is available from University of Pennsylvania Press, at Kindle, and online. Buy “Political Gastronomy” on Amazon here.
Both English colonists and their neighboring tribes exchanged food as expressions of political power. Internally, food production and distribution by English leaders reflected on their fitness for governance. On the Native American’s part, willingness to exchange food was an important factor in establishing their superiority, especially in times of settler hunger. And foods marked the material culture of the English at dinners and celebrations and of the Native Americans status in their use of venison requiring reciprocation.
LaCombe touches on the early English Atlantic settings from 1570 to 1650 in Plymouth and Jamestown, Roanoke, Massachusetts Bay, and Bermuda. Food exchanges and communal meals were a part of diplomacy, status, and hospitality. Wedding invitations were issued by both sides, as well as celebratory dinners, and meals shared by leaders. Food was the common purchase used in seating arrangement and refusals to attend. One-way dispensing of food hospitality from Natives to English was interpreted as “tribute” from subordinates, while that from English to Natives was reported to mother country officials and investors as “liberal giving” by generous rulers.
Buy “Political Gastronomy” on Amazon here. See also Jennifer J. Davis Defining Culinary Authority: The Transformation of Cooking in France, 1650-1830 (2013).
The Baptism of Early Virginia
Rebecca Anne Goetz wrote The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race in 2012. It is available from Johns Hopkins University Press, at Kindle, and online. Buy “The Baptism of Early Virginia” on Amazon here.
Although once downplayed in Virginia’s history, religion helped to create racial categories in the English Atlantic when the early ideal of an Anglo-Indian Christian commonwealth pairing evangelism and exploitation failed. At the beginning of the 1600s, English promoters of North American colonization held a Protestant anti-Catholicism that meant to not only find New World riches and empire comparable to Spain’s, but also to create converts among the Native Americans to the Anglican Gospel. Africans who at first numbered Catholics as well as animists, were also potential converts. After all, the Britons had been savages who converted to Christianity and civility. But by century’s end, the vast majority of resident white Virginians believed that Indians, Africans, and their descendants, whether slave or free, were seen as “hereditary heathens”.
Following the Powhatan assault on Jamestown in 1622, Virginia began found non-whites as increasingly unworthy of becoming Christians. Limiting sexual contact between races and denying the seven-year end-of-service associated with baptism and Common Law was suspended by degrees. At the same time, white dissenters in related Presbyterian, Quaker, and Methodist sects were more readily accepted within the commonwealth’s domain. Some continued with a vision of conversion for “all nations”, including imperial officials, Anglican missionaries, Methodists, and Baptists, freedmen and enslaved who linked Christianity with freedom. Virginia’s version of hereditary heathen doctrine was subsequently adopted in Bermuda and Barbados.
Buy “The Baptism of Early Virginia” on Amazon here. See also Edward L. Bond Of Damned Souls in a Tobacco Colony: Religion in Seventeenth-Century Virginia (2000), Katharine Gerbner Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World (2018), Travis Glasson Mastering Christianity: Missionary Anglicanism and Slavery in the Atlantic World (2017), Nicholas Beasley Christian Ritual and the Creation of British Slave Societies, 1650-1780 (2010), and S. Scott Rohrer Wandering Souls: Protestant Migrations in America, 1630-1865 (2010).
The Chesapeake House
Cary Carson and Carl R. Lounsbury edited The Chesapeake House: Architectural Investigations by Colonial Williamsburg in 2013. It is available from University of North Carolina Press, at Kindle, and online. Buy “The Chesapeake House” on Amazon here.
This book is a compendium of knowledge gained by historians, archaeologists, and curators at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation from their fieldwork study of 1600s Jamestown, Virginia, and St. Mary’s City, Maryland. In a socioeconomic, multidisciplinary narrative, it explores the relationship between people and their domestic buildings, including rich and poor, native and immigrant, free and slave.
Chapters address migration and economic history, townhouses and country houses, slave quarters and agricultural buildings, along with building design, craftsmanship, materials, hardware and finishes, ornamentation and interior furnishing.
Buy “The Chesapeake House” on Amazon here. See also Camille Wells Material Witnesses: Domestic Architecture and Plantation Landscapes in Early Virginia (2018), and Carl R. Lounsbury An Illustrated Glossary of Early Southern Architecture and Landscape (1999).
More about Early Colonial Virginia
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 geographically related Virginia Magazine of History and Biography,the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.
For titles by historical period related to Virginia history, these reviews rely on the William and Mary Quarterly (1600-1776), the Journal of the Early Republic (1776 – 1861), the Journal of the Civil War Era (1820-1880), and the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (1865 – 1920).