Knowledge and Experience in the Founding of Jamestown

The year of Virginia's quadricentenary, long anticipated and planned for, has come and gone. Its celebration was witnessed by the development of specialized websites and marketing campaigns, the opening of an impressive reconstruction of Jamestown Fort, the organization of academic conferences and collected volumes derived from them, and the production of numerous histories for audiences ranging from young children to academic specialists.¹ Within this embarrassment of riches, a familiar story emerges. Tales of John Smith, John Rolfe and Pocahontas, the Tsenacomoco Indians, an unsympathetic and avaricious Virginia Company in London, a disastrous first few years, a swampy landscape, an aggressive strain of tobacco, and elating and tragic stories of love, loss, cannibalism, and massacre all get healthy retellings.

In The Jamestown Project, Karen Ordahl Kupperman covers the same ground, but does much more besides. Kupperman observes that although its "colonists planted the tiny seeds from which would grow a powerful nation . . . Jamestown makes us uncomfortable" (p. 1). Viewed in opposition to the Plymouth colony in New England, a Godly society that experienced friendly relations with neighboring Indians while creating self-sufficient family farms in emulation of English village life, Jamestown has been seen as a story of "greedy, grasping colonists in America and their arrogant backers in England" (p. 1). Kupperman challenges this false dichotomy by examining, first, a century's worth of plans and experiences leading up to the founding of Jamestown, and, second, a decade and a half's worth of "trial and error" that taught "Jamestown's ordinary settlers and their backers in England" how to make an English colony work (p. 2). The successful recipe included private ownership of land, the development of a sustainable economy through agricultural production, the establishment of a representative assembly, and the re-creation of normal English family life. By the time Plymouth was planted in 1620, all of these ingredients had been combined and tested in Virginia, which meant that the Pilgrims—who had knowledge of the Jamestown experiences—did not have to go through the growing pains of their predecessors. Thus, while Jamestown's early history was as muddled and torpid as we have always been led to believe, "its true priority lies in its inventing the archetype of English colonization. All other successful colonies followed the Jamestown model" (p. 3).

Kupperman presents her argument in nine chapters. The first five examine the knowledge and experience that ultimately led to the beginnings and survival of Jamestown. In chapters one and two, Kupperman argues that two major European events led to insular England's interest in new lands and trading opportunities. One event was the historical westward movement of Christianity, the Protestant Reformation, and, in the English perception, the belief that God revealed the New World in the sixteenth century so that reformed Christianity could be preached to its peoples. The other event was the exceptional spread and strength of the Ottoman Empire, which was seen both as a threat to Christian Europe and as an opportunity for adventurous young English men to gain advancement. These included future Roanoke and Virginia leaders such as Ralph Lane, William Strachey, George Sandys, and John Smith, whose harrowing tale of land and sea battles throughout Europe and Turkish captivity is, when recounted by such a fine writer as Kupperman, both exciting and instructive. These various events encouraged England to attain the financial resources necessary to resist Ottoman and Catholic threats, the latter of which were fought out during the Anglo-Spanish War between 1585 and 1604. In this context, England's early forays into West Africa (including Guinea, where a teenaged Martin Frobisher became a captive of the Portuguese), Muscovy, and the East Indies were attempts at achieving wealth and international prestige. By century's end, however, the English had found the south and east trades too difficult to break into and looked more favorably toward America, despite the fact that the disastrous Roanoke experiment had already taken place.

In the next two chapters, Kupperman...