Our second look at the royal colony in 1600s Virginia begins with a look at how the English immigrants in the Chesapeake built their society. “Adapting to a New World” describes the English overseas, “Ann Orthwood’s Bastard” shows how English customary and common law was modified for producer-planter interests, and “The Formation of a Society” shows the landowner kinship connections in politics and business.
Before there were African-descendant slaves in Virginia, there were Indian slaves in substantial numbers throughout the colony. “Indian slavery in Colonial America” describes how the labor system of captives evolved into a slave trade with the English. In “The Indian Slave Trade” the practice is described as a tool of imperialism directed agains the Indian tribe allies of the French and Spanish. “The Westo” features the most notable tribe of slave traders to the English, and “Tales from a Revolution” describes the mixed-motive uprising that was intimated over who was to control the Indian slave trade.
For more book reviews at TheVirginiaHistorian.com in this historical era addressing other topics, see the webpage for Early and Late Colonial Era (1600-1763). 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.
Adapting to a New World
James P. P. Horn wrote Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake in 1994. It is now available on Kindle and online new in paperback. This book focuses on the 1600s Chesapeake society of Lower Norfolk and Lancaster, Virginia and St. Mary’s City, Maryland. They were English societies and cultures overseas, rooted in two divergent English cultures found near the immigrant port of Bristol in the west of England wood and pastureland and from a mixed economy found southeast of London in the east.
A gentry formed among the immigrant generation that dominated county governance though they were less wealthy than their homeland counterparts. As tobacco prices rose, farmers large and small expanded land holdings, imported more indentured servants and planted more cash crop. Brevity of marriage and frequency of death more closely resembled native England than the New England experience. While religion was comparatively marginalized, the society was not significantly more disorderly than contemporary England.
Learn more to buy “Adapting to a New World” at Amazon.com.
*Bond, Edward L. Damned Souls in a Tobacco Colony: Religion in Seventeenth-Century Virginia (2000). It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Damned Souls” at Amazon.com.
*Kukla, Jon. Political Institutions in Virginia, 1619–1660 (1989). It is out of print but may be found in your central library or by interlibrary loan as a published dissertation.
Anne Orthwood’s Bastard
John Ruston Pagan wrote Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia in 2003. It is available on Kindle and online new in paperback. This book explores the transfer and adaptation of English law to the 1600s settler society of the Chesapeake. It spans four court cases related to indentured Anne Orthwood and her illegitimate child. A new master sued for lost labor damages and won. In a separate case, the father was cleared of responsibility, then sued for fornication after Anne’s death and had to pay child support to the new master. Finally the son Jasper had to sue another master for his freedom after his twenty-first birthday.
Bacon’s Rebellion was a defining moment in Virginia’s development, bending the English law to male privilege and racial solidarity. Although challenged both by English authorities and local freemen, the Northumberland County justices of the peace served the interests of the tobacco growing, labor hungry and increasingly slave-owning gentry. The English doctrine of caveat emptor buyer beware came to be administered as caveat venditor seller beware.
Learn more to buy “Anne Orthwood’s Bastard” at Amazon.com.
Formation of a Society on Virginia’s Eastern Shore
James R. Perry wrote The Formation of a Society on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1615–1655 in 1990. It is now available at the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Perry explicates the ways that early migrants to the Eastern Shore who became its landowners forged a social cohesion at the local level that incorporated newcomers into the customs and culture of the region. The land was first settled in parcels adjacent to previous immigrants, newcomers settled near kinsmen, the local folkways were absorbed by several years indenture before acquiring land, and the early landowners formed a ruling gentry.
The high mortality of the times brought remarriages and a rapid proliferation of kinship ties that were useful in economic exchanges as well as politically. Neighbors became godparents and executors of local estates. Institutions that might have unified the entire peninsula such as the militia, church or courts, all failed to overcome the localized influence of the northern communities that led to the creation of Accomack County out of Northampton County following the Northampton Protest of 1652.
Learn more to buy “Formation of a Society” at Amazon.com.
Indian Slavery in Colonial America
Alan Gallay editied Indian Slavery in Colonial America in 2009. It is now available from the University of Nebraska Press and online new and used. Indian slavery was an important element of North American Indian culture, whether those without kin, or those in a coerced labor force. Indian slavery in important in the 1600s English colonies first as a labor force, then their sale became an important source of capitalization for enlarged plantations that were subsequently worked by slaves of African descent.
Indian slavery in 1600s Virginia was everywhere, and control of that Indian trade in slaves was a primary cause of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. By the 1680s, large planters substantially shifted to Africa for their slave labor.
Learn more to buy “Indian Slavery” at Amazon.com.
The Indian Slave Trade
Alan Gallay wrote The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717 in 2002. It is now available on Kindle and online new in paperback. This is a comprehensive description of the Carolina’s Indian slave system. The tribes attacked for captives to be used in resale for the slave trade severely impacted those subject to the raids. The English made it illegal to enslave an Indian ally, but sought to weaken the allied tribes of the Spanish and French.
As many as 51,000 Indian slaves were exported from 1670-1715 from Charles Town, meaning South Carolina exported more slaves during this period than it imported. The sale of Indian slaves capitalized ever-larger plantation holdings. The collapse of the Mississippi chiefdoms led to new alliances of self-defense oriented to the English so that they would not become targets of English slave raids.
Learn more to buy “Indian Slave Trade” at Amazon.com.
The Westo Indians
Eric E. Browne wrote The Westo: Slave Traders of the Early Colonial South in 2005. It is now available on Kindle and online new in paperback. The Westos Indians began among the Iroquois in Erie country. They left subsequent to the Beaver Wars among the Iroquois, Hurons and French. They migrated through Virginia and eventually settled near the Savannah River around 1660.
Their the use of aggressive Iroquois tactics, firearms and connections with the English in a slave trade enabled them to dominate the southeast Indian world outside those tribes under English protection. They prospered until the Westo War of 1680 when they were dispersed by the English-Shawnee alliance.
Learn more to buy “The Westo” at Amazon.com.
Tales from a Revolution
James D. Rice wrote Tales from a Revolution: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America in 2012. It narrates the outbreak of frontier hostilities with the Susquehannock Indians, Bacon’s mobilization of militias for further Indian war, and the full scale civil war that developed in colonial Virginia.
Rice places emphasis on the early colonial conflict between wealthy planters trading with friendly Indians and poor settlers at risk under unfriendly Indian attack. Colonial leaders trying to strike a balance between the two failed. Though royal Governor Berkeley put down Bacon’s Rebellion, domestic tensions remained, manifesting themselves in Josias Fendall’s 1681 uprising, tobacco-cutting riots in 1682, and Coode’s Rebellion in 1689.
The tale weaves elements of Indian war and rebellion with wider narratives of provincial and imperial transformation in the by the mid-colonial era. Wealthy and poor English bridged their social division in a new social order of Indian exclusion, white supremacy and African slaves.
Learn more to buy “Tales from a Revolution” at Amazon.com.
*Washburn, Wilcomb Edward. The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia (1957). It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “The Governor and the Rebel” at Amazon.com.
*Webb, Stephen Saunders. 1676: The End of American Independence (1986). It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “1676: The End of American Independence” at Amazon.com.
Note: Insights for these reviews are include those taken from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.