The History and Present State of Virginia by Robert Beverley (review)

Although he is not nearly as well known as John Smith, Robert Beverley is among the most interesting, informative, and engaging of early Virginia writers. Born in 1667 or 1668 in Middlesex County, Beverley’s extensive firsthand experience of the cultural and natural environments of colonial Virginia helps to distinguish him from most writers of the period, whose accounts reflect their status and sensibility as native Englishmen. Instead, Beverley positioned himself rhetorically as a well-informed, native-born Virginian who was well qualified to describe his native country for the benefit of an English readership whose misconceptions about Virginia he found both common and troubling. Because he was an excellent observer and also a politically important figure with unusual access to documents associated with the settlement and growth of the colony, Beverley is an extremely valuable source for early Americanists with a variety of scholarly interests.

Robert Beverley’s major work is The History and Present State of Virginia. Published in London in 1705, the book has the distinction of being the first published history of a British colony produced by a writer born in North America. At the time of its appearance, Beverley’s History was the most detailed account of Virginia available, and it was one that utilized an impressive range of sources, from published and unpublished documents to accounts by other writers to information gathered through personal experience. After its first publication, The History appeared in several French translations before its ultimate release in Beverley’s own, substantially revised second edition of 1722, the year of his death. Unfortunately, modern editions of Beverley’s important book have been few. The University of North Carolina Press brought out Louis B. Wright’s Institute of Early American History and Culture edition in 1947, after which there are, to my knowledge, no scholarly editions of note. (Dominion Books in Charlottesville, Virginia, reprinted the text in 1968, as did Bobbs-Merrill of Indianapolis in 1971, but scholars have depended largely on the Wright edition of 1947.) Now, thanks to the work of editor Susan Scott Parrish and the support of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, we have this superb new edition of Beverley’s fascinating book.

Beverley’s History is organized into four parts: a political history of the colony’s settlement (“The History of the First Settlement of Virginia, and the Government Thereof, to the Present Time”), a natural historical survey of Virginia’s environment (“The Natural Productions and Conveniencies of the Country, Suited to Trade and Improvement”), an anthropological account of the region’s Native American peoples (“The Native Indians, Their Religion, Laws, and Customs, in War and Peace”), and an assessment of the current state of the colony (“The Present State of the Country, as to the Polity of the Government, and the Improvements of the Land”).

The first part of The History will be of special interest to scholars of the political and cultural history of early Virginia. In it we’re treated to Beverley’s account of the many interesting, important historical events associated with the establishment and growth of the colony, including the fate of Sir Walter Raleigh’s settlers at Roanoke, the work of John Smith and others in establishing Jamestown, the “starving time” at Jamestown during the winter of 1609–10, the death of Powhatan in April 1618, the importation by the Dutch of the first African slaves the following year, early conflicts with both the French and with local and regional Indian peoples, the grant of Maryland to Lord Baltimore, the colonists’ exploration of the eastern foothills of the Appalachian chain, the founding of the College of William and Mary, and an especially detailed account of Bacon’s Rebellion. Although some of these descriptions are derivative (his account of the infamous Pocahontas episode depends heavily on Smith’s unreliable version...