Jamestown Settlement Research Articles

The Divided Dominion: Social Conflict and Indian Hatred in Early Virginia by Ethan A. Schmidt

Reviewed by: The Divided Dominion: Social Conflict and Indian Hatred in Early Virginia by Ethan A. Schmidt Michael A. LaCombe The Divided Dominion: Social Conflict and Indian Hatred in Early Virginia. By Ethan A. Schmidt. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2015. Pp. [xviii], 208. $34.95, ISBN 978-1-60732-307-5.) Ethan A. Schmidt’s The Divided Dominion: Social Conflict and Indian Hatred in Early Virginia covers some well-trodden ground: the early years of the Jamestown settlement, the Anglo-Powhatan wars, the establishment of Virginia’s tobacco elite, and Bacon’s Rebellion. With such scope and just 185 pages of text (excluding the index and bibliography), The Divided Dominion makes no claim to have uncovered new source material or to have explored previously slighted territory. Instead, Schmidt’s book claims to recast our understanding of the period by arguing that “to unite dissatisfied Virginians across class, geographic, political, and social boundaries” required “a call for the extermination of all Indians” (p. 2). Schmidt briskly describes the ways Virginia’s planter elite consolidated power, land, and labor at the expense of those below them in the social hierarchy. The indentured servants and others on the lower rungs of Virginia’s social order were left landless, exploited, and fighting for survival. And yet this social polarization itself did not lead to concerted opposition. The missing element, Schmidt claims, was “Indian hatred,” the belief that “constituted the critical element around which all other disaffection in Virginia coalesced” (p. 8). In search of the roots of Virginians’ Indian hatred, the book’s introductory chapters cover the violent years of early Jamestown. Schmidt describes “the lingering animosity” these events “projected into the late seventeenth century” (p. 51). He also argues that English violence was motivated by ideas about “holy war” rather than reprisal (p. 55). He does not engage with the literature on race. For Schmidt, Bacon’s Rebellion was “the logical outgrowth of the social relations established in the early decades of the colony” and can best be understood by comparing it with the Lawne’s Creek plot of 1673, which lacked Nathaniel Bacon’s call for violence against Indians and fizzled out as a result (p. 2). Although we end in familiar territory—Bacon’s Rebellion as a pivotal event in Virginia’s political history—Schmidt is not interested in linking it to later events as a turning point: he sees the rebellion as the culmination of class conflict sustained by hatred of Virginia’s Native population. Schmidt’s endnotes situate his argument selectively, with detailed attention to Wilcomb E. Washburn, Edmund S. Morgan, and E. P. Thompson but no mention of Peter Rhoads Silver’s Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York, 2008), hardly an obscure text and certainly relevant. By resolutely maintaining a focus on what he views as the origins of Bacon’s hatred of Indians, Schmidt overstates the common ground between the early and late seventeenth century, while ignoring the common ground between Bacon’s and his contemporaries’ views of Indians. If Bacon’s indiscriminate hatred of Indians was always present, Schmidt faces difficulty in describing periods that did not experience widespread violence. [End Page 395] After the slaughter of 1622, for example, English leaders “removed the shackles of restraint they had placed on the populace since the marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas” in 1614 (pp. 77–78). Rather than a simple chafing at the “shackles” restraining them from violence, Virginia’s planters witnessed the origins of the head-right system, the arrival of enslaved Africans, the origin of the House of Burgesses, and the beginnings of tobacco cultivation. Schmidt’s language itself suggests some doubts about his claims. Are we examining the origins of “a free-born and inviolable right” of “Virginians to use violence against Native Americans whenever they deemed it necessary” (pp. 79, 171)? Or are Schmidt’s claims more limited, to the “[o]ne issue in particular [that] united poor, middling, and even some elite Virginians in 1676, and that was their desire to open opportunities for western settlement and trade by driving the remaining Indians from the colony” (p. 149)? This latter formulation suggests a more complex...

Ireland in the Virginian sea: colonialism in the British Atlantic

In the late sixteenth century, the English started expanding westward, establishing control over parts of neighboring Ireland as well as exploring and later colonizing distant North America. Audrey Horning deftly examines the relationship between British colonization efforts in both locales, depicting their close interconnection as fields for colonial experimentation. Focusing on the Ulster Plantation in the north of Ireland and the Jamestown settlement in the Chesapeake, she challenges the notion that Ireland merely served as a testing ground for British expansion into North America. Horning instead analyzes the people, financial networks, and information that circulated through and connected English plantations on either side of the Atlantic. In addition, Horning explores English colonialism from the perspective of the Gaelic Irish and Algonquian societies and traces the political and material impact of contact. The focus on the material culture of both locales yields a textured specificity to the complex relationships between natives and newcomers while exposing the lack of a determining vision or organization in early English colonial projects.

1619: The Making of America

1619: The Making of America Ashley Barnett (bio) 1619: The Making of America. Joseph Roberts Jenkins Center at Norfolk State. University and Hampton History Museum Norfolk and Hampton, Virginia, September 26–27, 2013. In Time and Narrative(University of Chicago Press, 1990), Paul Ricoeur asserts that “time becomes human time to the extent that it is organized after the manner of a narrative; a narrative, in turn, is meaningful to the extent that it portrays the features of temporal experience” (ix). “1619: The Making of America” took up the demanding task of making time human by exploring narrative portrayals of the “temporal experience” of West African people in and around the year 1619 in Point Comfort (now Fort Monroe), Virginia, the date and site of the first African slave sale in North America. Featuring scholars representing a broad range of expertise, the conference included presentations, panels, and performances, as well as extensive informal discussion. Experts from the fields of history, literature, law, anthropology, creative writing, and the performing arts offered engaging approaches that together attested to the essential role these narratives played in the formation of Atlantic world culture. Selective rather than comprehensive in scope, this review attempts to convey the spirit of commemoration and respect generated by this two-day meeting. The daunting task of sifting through the incomplete archive of the West African diaspora directly correlates with the inconsistent accounts of the phenomenon that the “1619” conference hoped to address. Calvin Pearson, the conference’s opening presenter, said that the captors of the Angolan slaves held the pen of African American history in their hands, representing a people who were rich in culture and history, yet were not allowed to represent themselves. Ironically, it was John Rolfe, husband of Pocahontas, [End Page 607]who recorded the very first sale of West African people at Point Comfort, suggesting the interesting ways in which diverse cultural narratives converge on this point. The location of this significant transaction has been historically subsumed, however, within the more familiar framework of the Jamestown settlement, a misunderstanding that typifies the kinds of scholarly misrepresentations that cluster around 1619. The conference found itself challenging such elisions while being conscious that it, too, contributed to an ongoing narrative construction. The overall tone for the conference was set with a performance by Brenda Tucker, a direct descendant of William Tucker, who is believed to be the first African born in North America. Tucker performed a West African water ritual and chant to invoke the spirits of the ancestors and represent the continuance of African narrative; a solemn performance of “How Come We Here Lord” evoked the emotional and spiritual transformations of African narrative as it entered into the domain of American slavery. Tucker’s performances underscored the syncretic practices, including African oral traditions, typically absent from the archive. Her work served as a call to remember that the story of the West African diaspora began not in Point Comfort but in Angola. Through this shifting of geographical emphasis, she metaphorically reclaimed the authorial pen of history. Ben Vinson’s presentation, “The African Diaspora: Questions and Considerations Drawn from an Afro-Latin American View,” focused on the 120 years leading up to 1619. Vinson retraced the origins of the African slave diaspora not to Africa but to Portugal and Spain. In South America, he asserted, Spanish and Portuguese merchants and servants worked alongside each other to restructure native regimes. Vinson suggests that twenty thousand black slaves were already in Mexico by the year 1619 and argues that they contributed to the economic force of the South American colonies by becoming expert at European trades: as cobblers, textile designers, carpenters, and so on. By 1650, thirty years after the first sale of African slaves at Point Comfort, Mexico was the world leader in numbers of people imported into slavery from West Africa. Vinson suggests that the Spanish-American system of slavery be included in North American historical narratives so as to take into account that African slavery was not homogenous, that the diaspora of African people was not limited to British and North American experiences, and that the sale of the Angolan slaves at Point Comfort was not an...

Openers - The Space Between

<span class="i">I </span> recently found myself wondering what <em><span class="i"> Virginia Libraries </span></em> is really all about (once you make it past the marbled covers). Clearly the journal focuses on libraries, and its geographical center is the Commonwealth of Virginia. So it makes sense that the articles explore various aspects of libraries and librarianship as they relate to the public, special, school, research, and academic libraries within the boundaries of the Old Dominion. Sometimes referred to as “The Mother of Presidents,” our state lays claim to some of the country’s most important history — from the Jamestown settlement, to the Battle of Bull Run, to the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom — and this heritage is handsomely represented in our libraries.

Historical Realism and Imperialist Nostalgia in Terrence Malick’s The New World

MONIKA SIEBERT University of Richmond Historical Realism and Imperialist Nostalgia in Terrence Malick’s The New World THE PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS FOR TERRENCE MALICK’S THENEWWORLD (2005) devote considerable time to detailing the extraordinary effort of the production crew to recreate Werowocomoco, the capital of the Powhatan’s paramount chiefdom, and Fort James, the first surviving English settlement in Virginia, in the period from 1607 to 1617. The hour-long documentary on “The Making of The New World.” accompanying the DVD release of the film, for example, chronicles the shared work of a research team of historians, archeologists, linguists, anthropologists, and members of Virginia tribes to represent as faithfully as possible Powhatan and English agriculture, architecture, language, and material culture. The viewers of the featurette learn that the filming takes place only ten miles from the original location of the settlement and that Werowocomoco and Fort James are reconstructed with exclusively local materials, such as heirloom Indian corn and tobacco plants for the gardens, thousands of shell beads for Powhatan’s mantle, and wild turkey feathers and deer racks provided by Robert Green, the chief of the Patawomeck tribe, to adorn Powhatan’s house. As Dr. William Kelso, director of archeology for the Association for the PreservationofVirginiaAntiquitiesandchiefarcheologistattheoriginal Jamestown settlement site, attests on camera, “the set is a time capsule; it fully captures the feeling of what it was like to live in Fort James.” Choreographers and martial arts experts teach actors the fundamentals of seventeenth-century body language and dialect trainers help Q’orianka Kilcher, the actress portraying Pocahontas, pronounce both Algonquian language and Algonquian-accented seventeenth-century English. The producers repeat frequently that the film’s director “likes the things real,” that they too are committed to “solid reality,” all the way down to filming without artificial lighting or computer generated special effects. And above all, that in a marked departure from the historical representations of American Indians on film, the crew is dedicated to depicting the Algonquian people of early Virginia, rather 140 Monika Siebert than generic Indians. Stephen R. Adkins and Robert Green, the chiefs of the Chickahominy and Patawomeck tribes, appear in the documentary, describing their initial wariness of yet another project reinventing their old world anew and cautiously expressing “high hopes” for the film’s potential to evoke among its viewers the long overdue recognition of the people who greeted the settlers of Jamestown. And yet, the filmmakers’ dedication to the faithful recreation of early seventeenth-century Tsenacomoco/Virginia1 and all its inhabitants, showcased in “The Making of The New World,” does not translate into an equally accurate account of the British colonial project in North America, let alone its long lasting effects, in the feature film itself. Instead, The New World offers yet another reprise of the largely fictionalized story of Jamestown settlement with its attendant romance of John Smith and Pocahontas.2 While the film includes episodes needed to offer a historically accurate account of the early colonization of Tsenacomoco—not least in depictions of the beginnings of the Virginia tobacco industry and consequent displacement of the Powhatan or in frequent juxtapositions between Captain Smith and Captain Newport’s lofty political ideals and the far baser actions of the colonists— ultimately, its emphasis falls elsewhere. Though it starts off as a historical drama, The New World transforms quickly into a romance. The film’s commitment to historical realism implied in the authenticity of the reconstructed material environment is, in the end, overshadowed by its unrelenting interest in a love story of a special kind: not a story of John Smith’s infatuation with Pocahontas, but of his falling for America as a new beginning, for America as an opportunity for idealist Englishmen, disgruntled by the enclosure movement, to construct a social utopia.3 The New World parts company with historical facts 1 Tsenacomoco is the name the Powhatan used to refer to their country. 2 The accounts, whether scholarly or fictional, of the alleged Smith-Pocahontas romance are legion. Along with the numerous debunkings of this romance, they could constitute a sizable literary tradition. We now even have books on the books about Smith and Pocahontas, studies attempting to account for the development of...

America's first coastal community: A cis- and circumatlantic reading of John Smith's The Generall Historie of Virginia

Beginning with the recognition that early British settlements were, by necessity, coastal and therefore inextricably linked to the maritime world, this article reconciles the often problematic ethnocentric and hyperbolic aspects of John Smith's accounts of the Jamestown settlement by reading them as being influenced by maritime culture and the storytelling tradition developed by sailors in the forecastle. Applying cisatlantic and circumatlantic methodologies to Smith's representation of the coastal world of Jamestown elucidates the liminality of a settlement caught physically between land and sea and metaphorically between terrestrial and maritime culture. This transitory space is inherently contradictory, providing Jamestown with its greatest asset and greatest drawback; a complication that permeates the way John Smith understands and later writes about the settlement. Ultimately, Smith describes Jamestown as a maritime world onshore, combining aspects of British terrestrial and maritime social and literary culture to explain everything from Jamestown's physical location, to the settlers' mindset, to the horrific conditions they encountered in order to present the information to the British public in a way that would deal with the realities while minimizing public outcry. Such an understanding places The Generall Historie of Virginia as an early Atlanticist text, granting modern readers a useful avenue for approaching this often problematic work.

Book ReviewsKim Sloan with, Joyce E. Chaplin, Christian F. Feest, and Ute Kuhlemann. Exhibition catalog, A New World: England’s First View of America. British Museum, March 15–June 17, 2007; North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, October 20, 2007–January 13, 2008; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, March 6–June 1, 2008; Jamestown Settlement, Williamsburg, Virginia, July 15–October 15, 2008. London:

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook Reviews Kim Sloan with, Joyce E. Chaplin, Christian F. Feest, and Ute Kuhlemann. Exhibition catalog, A New World: England’s First View of America. British Museum, March 15–June 17, 2007; North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, October 20, 2007–January 13, 2008; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, March 6–June 1, 2008; Jamestown Settlement, Williamsburg, Virginia, July 15–October 15, 2008. London: British Museum Press (distributed by University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill), 2007. 256 pp.; 186 black‐and‐white and color illustrations, 76 catalog entries. $60.00.Stephanie PrattStephanie PrattUniversity of Plymouth Search for more articles by this author University of PlymouthPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Winterthur Portfolio Volume 43, Number 1Spring 2009 Published for the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Inc. Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/597337 Views: 3Total views on this site © 2009 by The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Inc. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Taxation in Colonial America

Taxation in Colonial America examines life in the thirteen original American colonies through the revealing lens of the taxes levied on and by the colonists. Spanning the turbulent years from the founding of the Jamestown settlement to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Alvin Rabushka provides the definitive history of taxation in the colonial era, and sets it against the backdrop of enormous economic, political, and social upheaval in the colonies and Europe. Rabushka shows how the colonists strove to minimize, avoid, and evade British and local taxation, and how they used tax incentives to foster settlement. He describes the systems of public finance they created to reduce taxation, and reveals how they gained control over taxes through elected representatives in colonial legislatures. Rabushka takes a comprehensive look at the external taxes imposed on the colonists by Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden, as well as internal direct taxes like poll and income taxes. He examines indirect taxes like duties and tonnage fees, as well as county and town taxes, church and education taxes, bounties, and other charges. He links the types and amounts of taxes with the means of payment--be it gold coins, agricultural commodities, wampum, or furs--and he compares tax systems and burdens among the colonies and with Britain. This book brings the colonial period to life in all its rich complexity, and shows how colonial attitudes toward taxation offer a unique window into the causes of the revolution.

Review: Building the New World: The Women of Jamestown Settlement, by Doris Weatherford

Review: <i>Building the New World: The Women of Jamestown Settlement</i>, by Doris Weatherford

Savagery in Jamestown:"George Percy's 'Trewe Relacyon'": A Primary Source for the Jamestown Settlement";A New World: England's First View of America;Writings, with Other Narratives of Roanoke, Jamestown, and the First English Settlement of America;The Journals of Captain John Smith: A Jamestown Biography

Savagery in Jamestown:"George Percy's 'Trewe Relacyon'": A Primary Source for the Jamestown Settlement";<i>A New World: England's First View of America</i>;<i>Writings, with Other Narratives of Roanoke, Jamestown, and the First English Settlement of America</i>;<i>The Journals of Captain John Smith: A Jamestown Biography</i>

Jefferson's Legacy to the Supreme Court: Freedom of Religion

Religion in Colonial Virginia Except for Rhode Island, each of the thirteen American colonies created some form of established religion. The English venturists who undertook settlements in New England and Virginia simply assumed that religion would be inextricably tied to their colonial enterprises.1 The 1606 charter creating the Virginia colony required that all ministers preach Christianity that followed the “doctrine, rights, and religion now professed and established within the realme of England”—in other words, the Church of England.2 To bolster the struggling Jamestown settlement, in 1610–11, Sir Thomas Dale promulgated “Articles, Lawes, and Orders, Divine, Politic, and Martiall for the Colony in Virginia.” Clergymen were to read “Dale's Laws,” as they were labeled, to assemblies every Sabbath. The thirty-seven rules included eight that specifically referred to God and prohibited impiety, blasphemy, sacrilege, and irreverence toward preachers or ministers. The sixth law was particularly notable for its strict religious requirements and harsh penalties for violations: “Every man and woman duly twice a day … shall … repair unto the Church to divine service upon pain of losing his or her days allowance for the first omission, for the second to be whipped, and for the third to be condemned to the Gallies for six months. Likewise no man or woman shall dare to violate or break the Sabbath by any gaming … but duly sanctify and observe the same, both himself and his family, by preparing themselves at home with private prayer, that they may be better fitted for the public according to the commandments of God and the orders of our Church. …”3 Colonists faced the death penalty after the third offense of missing morning and afternoon Sunday devotional services.

Jefferson’s Legacy to the Supreme Court: Freedom of Religion

Jefferson’s Legacy to the Supreme Court: Freedom of Religion BARBARA A. PERRY Religion in Colonial Virginia Except for Rhode Island, each ofthethirteenAmerican colonies created some form ofestablished religion. The English venturists who undertook settlements in New England and Virginia simply assumed that religion would be inextricably tied to their colonial enterprises.1 The 1606 charter creating the Virginia colony required that all ministers preach Christianity that followed the “doctrine, rights, and religion now professed and established within the realme ofEngland”—in other words, the Church of England.2 To bolster the struggling Jamestown settlement, in 1610— 11, Sir Thomas Dale promulgated “Articles, Lawes, and Orders, Divine, Politic, and Martiall for the Colony in Virginia.” Clergymen were to read “Dale’s Laws,” as they were labeled, to assemblies every Sabbath. The thirty-seven rules included eight that specifically referred to God and prohibited impiety, blasphemy, sacrilege, and irreverence towardpreachers or ministers. The sixth law was particularly notable for its strict religious requirements and harsh penalties for violations: “Every man and woman duly twice a day... shall... repair unto the Church to divine service upon pain of losing his or her days allowance for the first omission, for the second to be whipped, and for the third to be condemned to the Gallies for six months. Likewise no man or woman shall dare to violate or break the Sabbath by any gaming... but duly sanctify and observe the same, both himself and his family, by preparing themselves at home with private prayer, that they may be better fitted for the public according to the commandments of God and the orders of our Church... .”3 Colonists faced the death penalty after the third offense of missing morning and afternoon Sunday devotional services. Over the next century, English mission­ aries, assisted by the Church of England’s Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and Society for the Promoting of Christian Knowledge, spread Anglicanism throughout the Chesapeake region and founded more than 75 parishes in Virginia and Maryland, which constituted over half of the 150 parishes in America, by Jefferson’s birth in 1743. Yet Vir­ ginia parishes hardly resembled those found 182 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY English missionaries had founded more than seventy-five parishes in Virginia and Maryland by the time of Jefferson's birth in 1743, including this church in King William County, Virginia. Clerics complained about the small salaries and the long distances they had to travel to visit their small congregations. in the mother country. The population was so dispersed that Anglican clerics complained about the long distances they had to cover in visiting their small congregations, in addi­ tion to legislative indifference to their salaries. Moreover, the England-based church hierar­ chy failed to assign a bishop to Virginia, which resulted in a lack of discipline, ordi­ nation, and clerical authority. Into this ec­ clesiastical power vacuum stepped Anglican parish vestries, which the clergy thought were too powerful. In turn, parishioners saw too many priests as escapees from England, leav­ ing financial and family burdens behind for “retirement” in Virginia. Life in early colonial Virginia was hardly one of leisure, however. English criminals who were offered the op­ tions ofhanging for their crimes or deportation to Virginia reportedly chose the gallows!4 The Anglicans’ monopoly had profound ramifications for those colonists who were not members of the Church of England. In the chapteron religion from his Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson addressed the sad his­ tory of intolerance by the Anglican church in his native colony, especially against “the poor Quakers.” Jefferson noted that Quakers had fled from English persecution in hopes of finding “asylums of civil and religious free­ dom; but they found them only for the reigning sect.”5 In 1659, 1662, and 1693 the Virginia legislature criminalized Quakers’ refusal to baptize their children, “prohibited the unlaw­ ful assembly ofQuakers,” forbid ship captains from bringing Quakers to Virginia, required those already in the Old Dominion or those who arrived later “to be imprisoned till they should abjure the country,” established the JEFFERSON AND FREEDOM OF RELIGION 183 death penalty for Quakers who had accumu­ lated three offenses ofcoming to the state, and...

Between Theater and Philosophy: Skepticism in the Major City Comedies of Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton by Mathew R. Martin (review)

174 Reviews that there is no English language text, no British art work or other cultural artefact, and no event in recorded British history that is not being scrutinized somewhere across the Atlantic with the prior determination offinding evidence of latent imperialism and racial prejudiceand/or anxiety' (LRB, 19 July2001, p. 23). Rebecca Ann Bach's book, with its readings of such unlikely 'colonial' texts as Spenser's Amoretti and Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, is an impressively successful example of the approach Colley describes. For Bach, colonialism is like pitch, leaving itsmark on everything ittouches. The title, Colonial Transformations, refersat once to England's effortsto transform alien lands into comprehensible colonial landscapes and to the reciprocal transforma? tion worked on the colonizers themselves?including those who never set foot out of England. The introduction, focusing on the early years of the Jamestown colony, reveals how national and class identities alike could be undermined and transformed by the colonial experience. Succeeding chapters examine the literary traces of that expe? rience in Spenser's Ireland, Bermuda, and the London ofJonson's plays and masques. In some instances?notably that of Jonson's late plays?the readings may come across as slightly forced, but the overall effectis to convince the reader that few texts, and fewer authors, were entirely immune to colonialism'stransformative impact. The great strength of this book lies in Bach's willingness to enter generic and lin? guistic territories from which like-minded critics have tended to shy away. Anyone who still contends that New Historicism has nothing to say in the face of the lyric should be directed to her chapter on 'Colonial Poetics in Spenser's Amoretti'. Equally welcome is the author's determination to listen to the (Gaelic and Algonquian) voices of colonialism's victims. Encountering the bard Eochaidh 6 hEoghusa's verses alongside Edmund Spenser's is a refreshing, eye-opening experience. While the book's focus is geographically very broad (the northern Atlantic world), historically itis fairlynarrow (sixty years). Such an approach inevitably leads to certain omissionsand distortions. Equating Wales and Ireland with Bermuda and Virginia as sites of early modern English 'colonialism' has the effectof glossing over many centuries of prior contact and conflict in the British Isles. The English had long been bent on transforming their nearest neighbours, and had in many ways been transformed by them in turn. But the book gives no indication ofthe extent to which English imperial iconography relied on Welsh sources, nor even of the fact that James VI and I was Scottish. (James's Daemonologie, published in Scotland six years before he became England's king, is described as a repository of 'English fantasies' (p. 207).) The final and most innovative chapter treats of Captain John Smith's account of A Maske' performed by Pocahontas and thirtyIndian women. While the true meaning of the women's dance is forever lost, Bach forcefully criticizes Smith's reinterpretation of it as an English courtly ritual, with himself in the role of a colonial King James. An interesting epilogue then shifts the focus from the seventeenth century to the present, in which the ideological assumptions ofthe earliest English colonists are discovered alive and well at the Jamestown Settlement Museum. University of Exeter Philip Schwyzer Between Theater and Philosophy: Skepticism in theMajor City Comedies ofBenjonson and Thomas Middleton. By Mathew R. Martin. Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2001. 191pp. ?28. ISBN 0-87413-739-x. As his introduction states, Martin's rather densely written monograph is not a study of the influence ofthe Pyrrhonist revival, but a deconstructive reading, supported by ref? erence to Foucault, Bakhtin, Derrida, Edward Said, and J.L. Austin as well as to Plato, MLRy 98.1, 2003 175 Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes, and Wittgenstein, ofJonson's four major comedies and of Middleton's Michaelmas Term, A Trick to Catch the Old One, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Martin views these plays as sceptical because they dramatize 'the epistemological difficultiescreated by the reconfiguration ofsocial reality by the forces ofex? change' (p. 21). His exploration of the 'problematics' of City Comedy synthesizes and extends recent work that challenges earlier interpretations ofthe 'moral vision...

A Journey through Public History on the Web

American Family Immigration History Center: . This site allows students to ex plore the individual lives of the 22 million immigrants who came to Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924. The site provides background on the immigration experience, a search engine to help discover immigrant relatives, and a link to the American Immigrant Wall of Honor. The BirmingjwmCivilRigJits Institute : .This web site features a comprehensive study of the men and women who led the fight for social and political equality in the 1950s and 1960s. Its educational resources include a free curriculum guide complete with lesson plans and discussion topics for students in grades K-12, as well as information on traveling exhibits. Chicago Historical Society: . The Chicago Historical Society's web site con tains plans for both tour-guided and independent field trips, information on upcoming exhibitions, and student workshops (com plete with curricula). The society specifically caters to grades 6-12 during the school year and also features the Voices from History Outreach Program, where teachers can invite actors who portray famous figures from Chicago and Illinois history to share their stories. Colonial Williamsburg: . Colonial Williamsburg is committed to the study of colonial society in North America. Its web site features resources for teachers that include planning for on-site study visits, as well as electronic field trips, which bring the experiences of Colonial Williamsburg to the classroom through film, satellite broadcast, and the Internet. Electronic field trips come complete with lesson plans, historical background, and facsimiles of original documents. Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum and Library: . This site chronicles the presi dency of Harry Truman through photographs, correspondence, and other personal items. Resources for teachers include student research files (for grades 8-12 and college), a video loan program, exercises involving the use of primary sources, and a downloadable newsletter for educators. Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum: . In addition to providing a bio graphical sketch of Herbert Hoover from his college years at Stanford through his presidency, this site also features an online digital archive of many important Hoover documents. Educators interested in teaching about the life and times of the nation's thirty-first president will find a curriculum guide and lesson plans that emphasize the use of oral history and primary documents. Indiana Historical Society: . Along with its many collections, workshops, and publications, the Indiana Historical Society also features a teacher's section de voted to bringing Indiana's heritage into the classroom. It con tains resources, lesson plans, a listing of past and ongoing projects undertaken by teachers, and a schedule of activities for field trips to the Indiana Historical Society. Jamestown Settlement and Yorktown Victory Center: . This web site features educational re sources for planning field trips to Jamestown or the Yorktown Victory Center, as well as classroom programs. The field trips include guided curriculum-based tours, while the in-class pro grams feature topics, lesson plans, worksheets, and documents that can all be downloaded. Minnesota Historical Society: . The Minnesota Historical Society offers a variety of ways for educators to teach students about the state's past. Information is available for planning visits to the society's museum as well as over 1,500 sites included in the National Register of Historic Places. The web site also features a series of programs that include visits by cos tumed historical figures, classroom instruction by society histori ans, and information on teacher workshops. National Council for History Education (NCHE): . NCHE is committed to promoting the importance of history in schools, colleges, museums, and society in general. Its web site features information on upcoming conferences and also offers suggestions for students to improve their writing skills. Resources for educators include booklets on building either world or United States history curricula. For more information on this organi zation, see Elaine Reed's article in this issue (pages 8-9). National Council for Public History: . NCPH is devoted to the advancement of public history in a variety of settings. Its two publications, the Public Historian and Public History News, are available online in addition to a variety of links, photographs, and membership information. For more information on this organization, see David Vanderstel's article in this issue (pages 5-7). National Museum of the American Indian: . The Smithsonian Institution's Na

Powhatan Indian Women: The People Captain John Smith Barely Saw

Most of the eyewitness accounts about Powhatan Indians concern the men's world. This essay attempts to compensate for the imbalance by adding the evidence available from ethnographic analogy from other Woodland Indian cultures, reconstructive ethnobotany in the Chesapeake region, and living history as practiced at the Jamestown Settlement Museum's Indian Village. The women emerge as tough, energetic, sociable people who scheduled their work carefully and did much of it independently from the men. The essay describes women's activities on a typical day in early May 1607 in a real village that has been excavated archaeologically at the mouth of the Chickahominy River.

The Making of Virginia Architecture.

This book covers the history of architecture in Virginia, from the early colonial period to the present. It aims to bring the architectural process to life, pairing the architects' own drawings with photographs of the finished buildings, and concludes a nationwide search that uncovers some 200 early architectural drawings from 1719 to 1870. The long tradition of architecture in Virginia began with the earliest structures at the Jamestown settlement in 1607 and continues today with some of the most advanced buildings yet completed anywhere. The state boasts representative works by nearly every major American architect - William Buckland, Ralph Adams Cram, Alexander J. Davis, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, Richard Morris Hunt, Minard Lefever, Robert Mills, Richard Neutra, John Russell Pope, James Renwick, William Strickland, Thomas U. Walter, Stanford White, Eero Saarinen and Frank Lloyd Wright among them. In its legendary landmarks - Mount Vernon, Monticello, the Virginia Capitol in Richmond, the James River plantation mansions, Washington National Airport and Dulles International Airport - as well as in the homes, churches, stores and office buildings across the state, Virginia's architecture is a mirror of the many expressions of America's built environment. "The Making of Virginia Architecture" invites the reader on a journey through the eye and mind of the architect, from the very drawings that give shape and form to the idea, through the tracks and traces found in long-lost letters, office records, architects' drawings and other primary sources. Many of the architectural drawings are works of art in themselves, such as those of B. Henry Latrobe and Alexander J. Davis. Others - such as the almost crude drawings of Thomas Jefferson, with their notes and erasures - fall into the category of rare documents, showing the thought processes of a highly original designer, albeit an unskilled draughtsman. As the book compares the architectural idea to the finished buildings, it brings history to life through the people and patrons behind Virginia's architecture and through the changing tools and technology of the architect, from the first rough sketch on the back of a handwritten contract to the complex wonders of the computer printout.

The Making of Virginia architecture

This book covers the history of architecture in Virginia, from the early colonial period to the present. It aims to bring the architectural process to life, pairing the architects' own drawings with photographs of the finished buildings, and concludes a nationwide search that uncovers some 200 early architectural drawings from 1719 to 1870. long tradition of architecture in Virginia began with the earliest structures at the Jamestown settlement in 1607 and continues today with some of the most advanced buildings yet completed anywhere. state boasts representative works by nearly every major American architect - William Buckland, Ralph Adams Cram, Alexander J. Davis, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, Richard Morris Hunt, Minard Lefever, Robert Mills, Richard Neutra, John Russell Pope, James Renwick, William Strickland, Thomas U. Walter, Stanford White, Eero Saarinen and Frank Lloyd Wright among them. In its legendary landmarks - Mount Vernon, Monticello, the Virginia Capitol in Richmond, the James River plantation mansions, Washington National Airport and Dulles International Airport - as well as in the homes, churches, stores and office buildings across the state, Virginia's architecture is a mirror of the many expressions of America's built environment. The Making of Virginia Architecture invites the reader on a journey through the eye and mind of the architect, from the very drawings that give shape and form to the idea, through the tracks and traces found in long-lost letters, office records, architects' drawings and other primary sources. Many of the architectural drawings are works of art in themselves, such as those of B. Henry Latrobe and Alexander J. Davis. Others - such as the almost crude drawings of Thomas Jefferson, with their notes and erasures - fall into the category of rare documents, showing the thought processes of a highly original designer, albeit an unskilled draughtsman. As the book compares the architectural idea to the finished buildings, it brings history to life through the people and patrons behind Virginia's architecture and through the changing tools and technology of the architect, from the first rough sketch on the back of a handwritten contract to the complex wonders of the computer printout.

Between Powhatan and Quirank: Reconstructing Monacan Culture and History in the Context of Jamestown

One of the more enigmatic events in the history of European colonization in the New World is the generally tolerant reception the Jamestown colonists received in 1607 from Powhatan, the paramount chief of the Powhatan people of Tidewater Virginia. Understanding that event requires an anthropological study of the complex sociopolitical relations between the coastal Powhatan and the less-well-known interior cultures of the native world. This article is primarily concerned with describing one such interior culture, the Monacan, a people who ethnohistoric texts suggest were less complex than, and a principal enemy of, the Powhatan. Analysis of those texts, and insights derived from archeology, provide a picture of the Monacan that leads to a different perspective on the context of the Jamestown settlement, and on relations of power between indigenous cultures in the precontact world.

The Role of Food in the International Affairs of the United States

From the early 1600s, when tobacco exports literally saved the struggling Jamestown settlement, to the January 4, 1980, embargo of grain to the Soviet Union, food and agriculture have played varied roles in international affairs of the U.S., that is, in the political, military, economic, and cultural exchanges that affect the power of the U.S. relative to other sovereign nations. Food donations have been used as a humanitarian gesture to avert starvation. Food export embargoes have been used as weapons against foreign adversaries and domestic scarcities. Food pledges have been used to promote international food aid conventions. Food import quotas have been reallocated to reward friendly nations and penalize unfriendly ones. U.S. food shipments have been used to feed Allied soldiers and to barter for strategic materials. Food exports have been used to bolster the domestic economy and strengthen the dollar.

When Massachusetts Played the Lottery

ed in the Bible when casting of the lot determined important issues. In Roman times raffles were a frequent form of amusement. The feudal princes and merchants of Europe first saw in them a source of profit as well as pleasure, and the French early adopted these games as an integral part of their fiscal structure. England followed suit, and in 1566 Queen Elizabeth used this means to secure funds for repairing her country's harbors. Of special interest are the drawings held' by the Virginia Company of London in 1612 to finance the Jamestown settlement.2