The Virginia History Blog today looks at Early Colonial contact and culture Virginia through the reviews of five titles. “A Briefe and True Report” is a facsimile of a 1590 Latin edition with English translation and illustrated contemporary lithographs, reporting initial contact with native Algonquins, plants and animals found in the Chesapeake region. “Deadly Politics...
"Early Colonial Contact and Culture in Virginia"Continue reading
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...
"Colonial Era Virginia – Spring 2018 Journals"Continue reading
In this recap of the Civil War and Reconstruction Virginia, we begin with two titles addressing the role of slaves in the Civil War, first from a Union perspective in “The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation”, then from the rebel point of view in “Confederate Slave Impressment”. Two social histories chronicling the immediate...
"Civil War and Reconstruction Virginia"Continue reading
The topic of Thomas Jefferson, slavery and Hemingses has been the subject of several scholarly works and popular histories in recent years. Here we look at six titles representing several points of view on the subject over the course of thirty years. The considerable sustained interest in the topic has enabled all to remain in...
"Jefferson, Slavery and Hemingses"Continue reading
In this Virginia History Blog, we explore the developments leading antebellum Virginia to hold the largest free black population, with artisans free and slave, with slave hires for industrial work and construction on canals and railroads. Virginia 1820-1860 was a slave state with an emerging market economy, industrialization and substantial out-migration of whites and blacks....
"Free blacks, Artisans and Slave Hires"Continue reading
We begin our look at titles about antebellum Virginia as a slave state 1824-1860 with two studies of slave rebellion. “Whispers of Rebellion” explores the slave agency in the 1800 Gabriel Conspiracy, and “”The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood” describes the 1830 Nat Turner Rebellion and its aftermath. We continue our antebellum Virginia reviews...
Looking again at religion in New Nation Virginia, “Wellspring of Liberty” explores the role of religious dissenters in the American Revolution and their subsequent efforts to secure religious liberty in the New Nation period. “Establishing Religious Freedom” in Virginia traces the evolution from dissenter toleration to religious freedom of conscience. “Bodies of Belief” compares and...
"Religion in New Nation Virginia"Continue reading
We begin our revisit to Virginia’s Revolution and New Nation era with the political history “Dunmore’s New World” about the last royal governor in Virginia, followed by the “Accommodating Revolutions”, a case study of the Revolutionary period in the Northern Neck. We then look at two titles addressing African American slave agency during war and...
"Revolution and New Nation revisited"Continue reading
We return to Late Colonial history with Frontier and Imperial Virginia 1730-1763 that ends with the conclusion of the French and Indian War. “In the Absence of Towns” looks at the frontier of piedmont Southside Virginia. “Gentry and Commonfolk” consider the class relations on the Virginia frontier from 1730 through the Revolution. “Diversity and Accommodation”...
"Frontier and Imperial Virginia 1730-1763"Continue reading
We begin our look at the cultivation of tobacco with slaves in Late Colonial Virginia by focusing on the transition from the white indentured cash crop labor force to the hereditary African-descent cultivation of tobacco. “Tobacco and Slaves” studies the formation of the slave-plantation society in the Chesapeake, “Motives of Honor, Pleasure & Profit” explains...
"Tobacco with Slaves in Late Colonial Virginia"Continue reading
