A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of AmericaWhat if Jamestown--the first permanent English settlement in North America--had collapsed? Would efforts to establish an English colony have been abandoned? Would other European powers such as the Spanish, Dutch, or French have moved into the mid-Atlantic region instead? Without Virginia, would the Pilgrims have ever gone to Plymouth? Would the English have ever established themselves as the major colonial power on the mainland of North America? Would modern American society have been entirely different? But Jamestown survived and, as historian James Horn points out in A Land As God Made It, many of the key tensions of its early years were central to America's later history, for good and for ill: Jamestown introduced slavery into English-speaking North America; it became the first of England's colonies to adopt representative government and English laws; and it was the site of the first Anglo-Indian clashes over territorial expansion. At Jamestown began the long process, often contentious and violent, by which different peoples came together to create America. A Land As God Made It describes the unimaginable hardships endured by early colonists in their efforts to establish a settlement, their search for gold mines and a passage to the Pacific, and their hopes of finding fabulously wealthy Indian civilizations. It details the dramatic exploits of Captain John Smith and his relationship with the two great Powhatan chiefs of the era, Wahunsonacock and Opechancanough. It reveals the tragic consequences of English attempts to convert the Powhatans to Christianity--a crusade that colonists anticipated would unite English and Indian in a Protestant North America that would challenge the might of the archenemy, Catholic Spain. Armed with unparalleled knowledge of Jamestown's role in early American history, James Horn has written a gripping account of the first years of the colony that gave rise to America. --Publisher's description. |
