The Newest New World

Robert Appelbaum and John Wood Sweet, eds. Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the Making of the North Atlantic World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. xi + 368 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $59.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

James Horn. A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America. New York: Basic Books, 2005. xi + 289 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $26.00 (cloth); $15.95 (paper)

It is easy to imagine that many American historians will feel an urge either to shrug their shoulders or to roll their eyes when hearing of the publication of two new books with "Jamestown" in their titles. Over the past few years, the place which John Smith called "a misery, a ruine, a death, a hell" has seemed inescapable. In March 2004, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture sponsored a four-day conference on the subject of "The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550–1624," at which no fewer than sixty-five scholars presented papers, nearly all of which dealt at least in part with Jamestown. Historical and tourism organizations throughout coastal Virginia have committed to an ambitious program of events to celebrate "America's 400^th Anniversary," and state residents can apply for commemorative license plates, spend state quarters featuring an image of the three ships of the initial English expedition, and reap the benefits of transit improvements around the newly named "Jamestown corridor." Even the local multiplex has jumped upon this bandwagon, with heartthrob actor Colin Farrell donning John Smith's doublet and boots in Terrence Malick's The New World. But it would be a considerable shame should historians of colonial America and the Atlantic choose to pass by either of these volumes, as both rise far beyond quadricentennial hype and provide a host of insights, not only about the Jamestown venture itself but also about the wider political, social, and cultural world in which that venture was carried out.

James Horn seizes the reader's attention within the opening lines of A Land as God Made It. Rather than beginning his account of the colony with the all-too-familiar narrative of the arrival in 1607 of the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery in the Chesapeake Bay, or with a discussion of the "lost colony" of Roanoke, Horn announces that "the English were not the first Europeans to discover Virginia" (p. 1). In the summer of 1561, a Spanish ship was driven by storms into the Bay. Proceeding inland, the Spaniards anchored along a river in order to gather supplies and repair their vessel, and there, on the banks of what may have been the Chickahominy, they encountered a small group of Indians, two of whom apparently agreed to board the ship and sail back to Europe with its crew. One of these two, Paquiqueneo, was given the name of Don Luis de Velasco, under which title he was presented at Philip II's court in Madrid. Anxious to return to his homeland, Don Luis sailed to Mexico, where he accepted the Christian faith and spent several years living amongst Dominican friars. Expressing a desire to establish a mission among his own people, Don Luis gained the support of the governor of Florida, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, and in 1570, accompanied by dozen Jesuits, he at last returned to his home. Once resettled among his people, Don Luis soon turned his back upon the missionaries, who struggled to survive a harsh winter, and in February 1571 the apostate and his supporters attacked the mission, killing all but one of its residents. An enraged Menendez dispatched an expedition against his former comrade; unable to find Don Luis, he settled for unleashing a "chastisement" upon the Indians before returning to Florida. But although the Spanish mission met a quick and brutal end, in Horn's view it cast a long shadow over future relations between Europeans and Virginia Indians. Menendez's attack acquainted the Indians with...