Peter C. Mancall: What Really Began at Jamestown
[Peter C. Mancall is a professor of history and anthropology at the University of Southern California and author of Hakluyt's Promise: An Elizabethan's Obsession for an English America, published this year by Yale University Press.]
President Bush, Queen Elizabeth, Bill Clinton, and Sandra Day O'Connor are among the notables helping to mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, the once-struggling little outpost on the edge of a swamp that gave the English a permanent footing in North America. According to the official Web site, the organizers intend to "showcase Virginia's unique role as the birthplace of modern America and the cradle of American democratic traditions, cultures, ideologies, and principles." But that focus undermines what we can learn from Jamestown's history. The party this month tells us as much about ourselves as it does about 1607.
The myriad events scheduled for this gala are not the first celebrations of early Virginia. There is no evidence of any commemoration in 1707, but in 1807 the nation marked the bicentennial of the founding in a classic American fashion: The locals got together in a tavern and toasted Jamestown. They also lifted their glasses to the great sons of Virginia who had performed so heroically in the recent Revolution, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who was president at the time.
One hundred years later, President Theodore Roosevelt welcomed the world to the tercentennial of the founding. He believed that the country was the envy of the planet and wanted others to share in the celebration of its beginnings. So he invited other nations to send naval vessels to a grand party on the banks of the James River.
Roosevelt can be forgiven for his excess. After all, he lived in an age when scholars had not yet extracted much of Jamestown's history from its mythic shroud. Then a blind patriotism could also fuel historical yearnings — such as the passionate views of the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution eager to erect a statue to Captain John Smith for triumphing over "the Spaniards and the savage."
A century has now passed, and it is time for our generation's leaders to put their particular stamp on Virginia's early history. This year's theme of Jamestown's marking the birth of democracy in America illustrates a stark difference between the ways that historians have explained early Virginia and what politicians emphasize.
Fifty years ago, historians began to examine early Virginia more analytically than ever before. Others followed, and from their work we can identify five lessons to be learned from the Jamestown experience.
First, when the English arrived in Jamestown, they hoped to establish positive relations with local American Indians. A generation of Elizabethan promoters of colonization, most especially the energetic Richard Hakluyt (one of the organizers of the Virginia Company), had convinced the English that natives would welcome the colonists once the newcomers demonstrated the benefits of the market economy and Christianity....
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Education
President Bush, Queen Elizabeth, Bill Clinton, and Sandra Day O'Connor are among the notables helping to mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, the once-struggling little outpost on the edge of a swamp that gave the English a permanent footing in North America. According to the official Web site, the organizers intend to "showcase Virginia's unique role as the birthplace of modern America and the cradle of American democratic traditions, cultures, ideologies, and principles." But that focus undermines what we can learn from Jamestown's history. The party this month tells us as much about ourselves as it does about 1607.
The myriad events scheduled for this gala are not the first celebrations of early Virginia. There is no evidence of any commemoration in 1707, but in 1807 the nation marked the bicentennial of the founding in a classic American fashion: The locals got together in a tavern and toasted Jamestown. They also lifted their glasses to the great sons of Virginia who had performed so heroically in the recent Revolution, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who was president at the time.
One hundred years later, President Theodore Roosevelt welcomed the world to the tercentennial of the founding. He believed that the country was the envy of the planet and wanted others to share in the celebration of its beginnings. So he invited other nations to send naval vessels to a grand party on the banks of the James River.
Roosevelt can be forgiven for his excess. After all, he lived in an age when scholars had not yet extracted much of Jamestown's history from its mythic shroud. Then a blind patriotism could also fuel historical yearnings — such as the passionate views of the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution eager to erect a statue to Captain John Smith for triumphing over "the Spaniards and the savage."
A century has now passed, and it is time for our generation's leaders to put their particular stamp on Virginia's early history. This year's theme of Jamestown's marking the birth of democracy in America illustrates a stark difference between the ways that historians have explained early Virginia and what politicians emphasize.
Fifty years ago, historians began to examine early Virginia more analytically than ever before. Others followed, and from their work we can identify five lessons to be learned from the Jamestown experience.
First, when the English arrived in Jamestown, they hoped to establish positive relations with local American Indians. A generation of Elizabethan promoters of colonization, most especially the energetic Richard Hakluyt (one of the organizers of the Virginia Company), had convinced the English that natives would welcome the colonists once the newcomers demonstrated the benefits of the market economy and Christianity....