Synopses & Reviews
The 18 essays in this volume provide a fresh perspective on the wider context of the encounter between the inhabitants of precolonial Virginia and the English. The collection offers an interdisciplinary consideration of developments in Native America, Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Chesapeake, highlighting the mosaic of regions and influences that formed the context and impetus for the English settlement at Jamestown in 1607. The volume reflects an understanding of Jamestown not as the birthplace of democracy in America but as the creation of a European outpost in a neighborhood that included Africans, Native Americans, and other Europeans.
Review
"Studded with sparkling essays, some of which should become required reading."
Journal of Southern History
Review
"With contributions from many of the most preeminent historians in the field, this work belongs in every college/university library."
Choice
Review
Beautifully produced, the book will maintain its place on many a bookshelf long after the four hundredth anniversary of Jamestown is a distant memory.
--Carla Gardina Pestana, Miami University
Review
Review
"[A] very fine edited collection. . . . A rewarding read and an important reminder that the first permanent English settlement in North America survived."
-- Journal of British Studies
Review
"A Herculean task of integration. . . . [Mancall] carries off this task with sophistication and grace."
-Terrae Incognitae
Review
"The essays . . . do a fine job of explicating parts of the economic, political, scientific, and ideological milieu out of which the Virginia experiment emerged."
-- Clio
Review
"An impressive volume. . . . Deserve[s] high praise."
-- Virginia Magazine
Review
"This collection succeeds in dramatically broadening our perspective on the global context of early American history. . . . A magnificent array of the best scholars working in the field today, and these essays will only contribute to their status."
-- Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History
Review
"These scholars present us with research that maps out current trends in history writing on the Atlantic world."
-Caribbean Studies
About the Author
Peter C. Mancall is professor of history and anthropology at the University of Southern California and director of the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute. He is author of Hakluyt's Promise: An Elizabethan's Obsession for an English America and editor of Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery: An Anthology.