The Jamestown Project
The Jamestown Project

Author: Karen Ordahl Kupperman

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 0674027027

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Listen to a short interview with Karen Ordahl Kupperman Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane Captain John Smith's 1607 voyage to Jamestown was not his first trip abroad. He had traveled throughout Europe, been sold as a war captive in Turkey, escaped, and returned to England in time to join the Virginia Company's colonizing project. In Jamestown migrants, merchants, and soldiers who had also sailed to the distant shores of the Ottoman Empire, Africa, and Ireland in search of new beginnings encountered Indians who already possessed broad understanding of Europeans. Experience of foreign environments and cultures had sharpened survival instincts on all sides and aroused challenging questions about human nature and its potential for transformation. It is against this enlarged temporal and geographic background that Jamestown dramatically emerges in Karen Kupperman's breathtaking study. Reconfiguring the national myth of Jamestown's failure, she shows how the settlement's distinctly messy first decade actually represents a period of ferment in which individuals were learning how to make a colony work. Despite the settlers' dependence on the Chesapeake Algonquians and strained relations with their London backers, they forged a tenacious colony that survived where others had failed. Indeed, the structures and practices that evolved through trial and error in Virginia would become the model for all successful English colonies, including Plymouth. Capturing England's intoxication with a wider world through ballads, plays, and paintings, and the stark reality of Jamestown--for Indians and Europeans alike--through the words of its inhabitants as well as archeological and environmental evidence, Kupperman re-creates these formative years with astonishing detail.

1619
1619

Author: James Horn

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2018-10-16

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1541698800

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The essential history of the extraordinary year in which American democracy and American slavery emerged hand in hand in colonial Virginia. Along the banks of the James River, Virginia, during an oppressively hot spell in the middle of summer 1619, two events occurred within a few weeks of each other that would profoundly shape the course of history. In the newly built church at Jamestown, the General Assembly -- the first gathering of a representative governing body in America -- came together. A few weeks later, a battered privateer entered the Chesapeake Bay carrying the first African slaves to land on mainland English America. In 1619, historian James Horn sheds new light on the year that gave birth to the great paradox of our nation: slavery in the midst of freedom. This portentous year marked both the origin of the most important political development in American history, the rise of democracy, and the emergence of what would in time become one of the nation's greatest challenges: the corrosive legacy of racial inequality that has afflicted America since its beginning.

Shadows at Jamestown
Shadows at Jamestown

Author: Steven K. Smith

Publisher: Myboys3 Press

Published: 2017-10-19

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9781947881006

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Sam, Derek, and Caitlin travel to historic Jamestown as part of Field School. When a priceless artifact is labeled a fraud, they must work to uncover the mystery.

Envisioning an English Empire
Envisioning an English Empire

Author: Robert Appelbaum

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2012-05-23

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 0812204425

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Envisioning an English Empire brings together leading historians and literary scholars to reframe our understanding of the history of Jamestown and the literature of empire that emerged from it. The founding of an English colony at Jamestown in 1607 was no isolated incident. It was one event among many in the long development of the North Atlantic world. Ireland, Spain, Morocco, West Africa, Turkey, and the Native federations of North America all played a role alongside the Virginia Company in London and English settlers on the ground. English proponents of empire responded as much to fears of Spanish ambitions, fantasies about discovering gold, and dreams of easily dominating the region's Natives as they did to the grim lessons of earlier, failed outposts in North America. Developments in trade and technology, in diplomatic relations and ideology, in agricultural practices and property relations were as crucial as the self-consciously combative adventurers who initially set sail for the Chesapeake. The collection begins by exploring the initial encounters between the Jamestown settlers and the Powhatan Indians and the relations of both these groups with London. It goes on to examine the international context that defined English colonialism in this period—relations with Spain, the Turks, North Africa, and Ireland. Finally, it turns to the ways both settlers and Natives were transformed over the course of the seventeenth century, considering conflicts and exchanges over food, property, slavery, and colonial identity. What results is a multifaceted view of the history of Jamestown up to the time of Bacon's Rebellion and its aftermath. The writings of Captain John Smith, the experience of Powhatans in London, the letters home of a disappointed indentured servant, the Moroccans, Turks, and Indians of the English stage, the ethnographic texts of early explorers, and many other phenomena all come into focus as examples of the envisioning of a nascent empire and the Atlantic world in which it found a hold.

Jamestown, the Buried Truth
Jamestown, the Buried Truth

Author: William M. Kelso

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780813925639

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Draws on archaeological research to explore the lives and deaths of the first settlers at Jamestown and their interactions with the region's native peoples.

The 1619 Project
The 1619 Project

Author: Nikole Hannah-Jones

Publisher: One World

Published: 2024-06-04

Total Pages: 625

ISBN-13: 0593230590

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER • A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present. “[A] groundbreaking compendium . . . bracing and urgent . . . This collection is an extraordinary update to an ongoing project of vital truth-telling.”—Esquire NOW AN EMMY-NOMINATED HULU ORIGINAL DOCUSERIES • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Esquire, Marie Claire, Electric Lit, Ms. magazine, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States. The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning 1619 Project issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself. This book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation’s founding and construction—and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life. Featuring contributions from: Leslie Alexander • Michelle Alexander • Carol Anderson • Joshua Bennett • Reginald Dwayne Betts • Jamelle Bouie • Anthea Butler • Matthew Desmond • Rita Dove • Camille T. Dungy • Cornelius Eady • Eve L. Ewing • Nikky Finney • Vievee Francis • Yaa Gyasi • Forrest Hamer • Terrance Hayes • Kimberly Annece Henderson • Jeneen Interlandi • Honorée Fanonne Jeffers • Barry Jenkins • Tyehimba Jess • Martha S. Jones • Robert Jones, Jr. • A. Van Jordan • Ibram X. Kendi • Eddie Kendricks • Yusef Komunyakaa • Kevin M. Kruse • Kiese Laymon • Trymaine Lee • Jasmine Mans • Terry McMillan • Tiya Miles • Wesley Morris • Khalil Gibran Muhammad • Lynn Nottage • ZZ Packer • Gregory Pardlo • Darryl Pinckney • Claudia Rankine • Jason Reynolds • Dorothy Roberts • Sonia Sanchez • Tim Seibles • Evie Shockley • Clint Smith • Danez Smith • Patricia Smith • Tracy K. Smith • Bryan Stevenson • Nafissa Thompson-Spires • Natasha Trethewey • Linda Villarosa • Jesmyn Ward

The Jamestown Experiment
The Jamestown Experiment

Author: Tony Williams

Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.

Published: 2011-02-01

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1402245661

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The American dream was built along the banks of the James River in Virginia. The settlers who established America's first permanent English colony at Jamestown were not seeking religious or personal freedom. They were comprised of gentlemen adventurers and common tradesmen who risked their lives and fortunes on the venture and stood to reap the rewards—the rewards of personal profit and the glory of mother England. If they could live long enough to see their dream come to life. The Jamestown Experiment is the dramatic, engaging, and tumultuous story of one of the most audacious business efforts in Western history. It is the story of well-known figures like John Smith setting out to create a source of wealth not bestowed by heritage. As they struggled to make this dream come true, they would face relentless calamities, including mutinies, shipwrecks, native attacks, and even cannibalism. And at every step of the way, the decisions they made to keep this business alive would not only affect their effort, but would shape the future of the land on which they had settled in ways they never could have expected. The Jamestown Experiment is the untold story of the unlikely and dramatic events that defined the "self-made man" and gave birth to the American dream. Tony Williams taught history and literature for ten years, and has a master's in American history from Ohio State University. He wrote Hurricane of Independence and The Pox and the Covenant, and is currently a full-time author who lives in Williamsburg, Virginia, with his wife and children.

Pocahontas and the English Boys
Pocahontas and the English Boys

Author: Karen Ordahl Kupperman

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2021-01-19

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 147980598X

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The captivating story of four young people—English and Powhatan—who lived their lives between cultures In Pocahontas and the English Boys, the esteemed historian Karen Ordahl Kupperman shifts the lens on the well-known narrative of Virginia’s founding to reveal the previously untold and utterly compelling story of the youths who, often unwillingly, entered into cross-cultural relationships—and became essential for the colony’s survival. Their story gives us unprecedented access to both sides of early Virginia. Here for the first time outside scholarly texts is an accurate portrayal of Pocahontas, who, from the age of ten, acted as emissary for her father, who ruled over the local tribes, alongside the never-before-told intertwined stories of Thomas Savage, Henry Spelman, and Robert Poole, young English boys who were forced to live with powerful Indian leaders to act as intermediaries. Pocahontas and the English Boys is a riveting seventeenth-century story of intrigue and danger, knowledge and power, and four youths who lived out their lives between cultures. As Pocahontas, Thomas, Henry, and Robert collaborated and conspired in carrying messages and trying to smooth out difficulties, they never knew when they might be caught in the firing line of developing hostilities. While their knowledge and role in controlling communication gave them status and a degree of power, their relationships with both sides meant that no one trusted them completely. Written by an expert in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Atlantic history, Pocahontas and the English Boys unearths gems from the archives—Henry Spelman’s memoir, travel accounts, letters, and official reports and records of meetings of the governor and council in Virginia—and draws on recent archaeology to share the stories of the young people who were key influencers of their day and who are now set to transform our understanding of early Virginia.

Inventing Disaster
Inventing Disaster

Author: Cynthia A. Kierner

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2019-09-06

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1469652528

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When hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and other disasters strike, we count our losses, search for causes, commiserate with victims, and initiate relief efforts. Amply illustrated and expansively researched, Inventing Disaster explains the origins and development of this predictable, even ritualized, culture of calamity over three centuries, exploring its roots in the revolutions in science, information, and emotion that were part of the Age of Enlightenment in Europe and America. Beginning with the collapse of the early seventeenth-century Jamestown colony, ending with the deadly Johnstown flood of 1889, and highlighting fires, epidemics, earthquakes, and exploding steamboats along the way, Cynthia A. Kierner tells horrific stories of culturally significant calamities and their victims and charts efforts to explain, prevent, and relieve disaster-related losses. Although how we interpret and respond to disasters has changed in some ways since the nineteenth century, Kierner demonstrates that, for better or worse, the intellectual, economic, and political environments of earlier eras forged our own twenty-first-century approach to disaster, shaping the stories we tell, the precautions we ponder, and the remedies we prescribe for disaster-ravaged communities.