Early Modern Virginia

Title Page, Copyright Page

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pp. i-iv

Contents

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pp. v-vi

Preface

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pp. vii-xii

Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old Dominion seeks to spur fresh work, to ask new questions (and old questions again), and to help further understanding of the development, settlement, and nature of life in Virginia’s first century. The idea for the volume emerged during our collaboration...

Introduction

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pp. 1-14

Early Modern Virginia continues in a long tradition of edited volumes showcasing new research on the Chesapeake. The first such volume (Law, Society, and Politics in Early Maryland) appeared in 1977, incorporating essays stemming from a conference held at the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis in 1974. Another edited collection...

The Eschatological Origins of the English Empire

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pp. 15-56

In 1612 an important front in the long struggle between Satan and the saints, in the mind of many Englishmen, was a little military camp in a country the English called Virginia. Twice a day, officers of the guard would lead the motley collection of settlers in a prayer of exhortation, begging God to help...

Mutual Appraisals

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pp. 57-89

In the early years of the Virginia colony, as the settlement teetered on the edge of extinction, two sets of people watched every move the English made and drew their own conclusions. Messengers flew back and forth to Powhatan, paramount chief of the tribes of Tsenacomoco, reporting every detail. Across the sea in Madrid, Philip III received a deluge of reports from...

The Rise and Fall of the Virginia- Dutch Connection in the Seventeenth Century

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pp. 90-127

In March 1651, Virginia governor William Berkeley denounced the 1650 Act of Navigation in the strongest possible language: “Th e Indians, god be blessed round about us are subdued; we can onely feare the Londoners, who would faine bring us to the same poverty, wherein the Dutch found and relieved us; would take away the liberty of our consciences and tongues, and...

"To Seeke for Justice”

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pp. 128-157

In the autumn of 1666, a young woman named Joan Powell boarded a ship at Bristol bound for England’s North American colonies. Powell was about twenty when she made this journey, and her reasons for doing so probably were unexceptional. Like the three hundred other men and women who left Bristol that year, she likely faced few prospects in England and ventured to...

Deference, Defiance, and the Language of Office in Seventeenth-Century Virginia

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pp. 158-184

In 1794, the Reverend Devereux Jarratt looked back nostalgically on his childhood in New Kent County, Virginia, recalling the “regard and reverence” that people then “paid to magistrates and persons in public office.” Unlike the “high republican times” of the 1790s, when Jarratt believed there was “more leveling than [was] . . . consistent with good government,”...

Middle Plantation’s Changing Landscape

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pp. 185-206

Over the winter of 1609– 10 the English colonists of James Fort fell on the hardest times possible. All manner of social collapse, chaos, and even man eating became the norm in the small settlement. In the end, they buried their possessions (as well as their less delectable fellows) and took to the sea. They were stopped by a newly arrived English resupply fleet, whose leadership...

"Scatter’d upon the English Seats”

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pp. 207-238

Attachment to place was and remains the core of Rappahannock Indian identity. The Rappahannock’s sense of place along the Virginia river that bears their name shaped their sense of themselves, their community, and their place in the world. When external forces threatened the Rappahannock, they typically responded with varying degrees of accommodation and...

Beyond the “Origins Debate”

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pp. 239-278

In a series of lectures delivered during the fall of 1970, Wesley Frank Craven offered an insightful critique of the already extensive historiography then available on the development of slavery in seventeenth- century Virginia. “In my own review of the literature, old and new,” the great scholar of the colonial South observed, “I am struck by the thought that American historians...

Transatlantic Politics and the Africanization of Virginia’s Labor Force, 1688– 1712

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pp. 279-299

In the early eighteenth century, a visit to London offered many opportunities for a Virginia gentleman. He could seek employment within the colonial administration, or promotion if he had already secured a position, or he could undermine rival office seekers. He could also make arrangements for receiving slave shipments to stock his tobacco plantations at home in the...

Conclusion

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pp. 300-332

Th is impressive collection of essays, coupled with recent conferences commemorating Virginia’s quadricentennial in 2007 and the 375th anniversary year of Maryland’s founding in 2009, suggest that there is a resurgence of interest in the history of the early Chesapeake.¹ Now is an especially appropriate...

Contributors

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pp. 333-336

Index

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pp. 337-352