1619 Jamestown and the forging of American democracy

In the hot summer of 1619, the Virginia colony, at the behest of its guiding corporation in Britain, convened in Jamestown the first representative legislature, with burgesses duly elected from the colony's towns and plantations. Just a few weeks later, a British vessel sailed into Chesapeake Bay with a cargo of Africans who had been seized as booty from a Portuguese ship in the Caribbean. Sold to the Virginians, these Kongolese became the first of tens of thousands to be enslaved. Thus was inaugurated what were fated to become permanent features of the U.S. representative government and slavery, whose legacy endures for good and ill in today's politics and culture. Virginia was still a long way from true democracy, for the new laws favored rich over poor, and white supremacy affected Native American populations almost as negatively as the institution of slavery did Africans. Horn's detailed analysis of events reveals how these twin events foreshadowed what would culminate in America's birth as a nation.--Mark Knoblauch Copyright 2018 Booklist

In this compact primer on the founding of the first permanent English colony in the U.S., Horn, president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, aims to spotlight a pivotal point in American history. In one year, two contradictory events occurred: the seating of the colony's general assembly, the first representative body in the Americas, and the arrival of enslaved Africans from Angola seized by English pirates from Portuguese slavers. While there are reams of archival material about how the English settlers established self-government by a planter class, resources on the fate of the human beings who survived the Middle Passage are largely nonexistent, forcing Horn into broad conjecture based on sparse colonial records. He offers predictable accounts of the hardships, Indian wars, and English justifications for brutal attempts to conquer the Powhatan tribes of Virginia. Despite the work to include the histories of enslaved Africans and the natives of the area, this well-told account is strongest in its exploration of the conflicts among various English factions: in the 17th century, the utopian ideals of the earliest colonists clashed with and succumbed to mercantilist designs of private property, government by an elite planter class, conquest, and slavery. Horn recognizes that the seeds of representative democracy were spread, in a chilling paradox, by the subjugation and enslavement of peoples considered inferior but who were essential to the colonists' continent-taming task. (Oct.) c Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

In 1619, two singular events took place in Jamestown colony, both firsts for the nascent United States. Between July 30 and August 4, a general assembly of America's first representative governing body met at the Virginia settlement to recommend new and permanent laws for the colony. At the end of August, a battered privateer arrived in the bay and sold or traded enslaved Africans to the colonists, the first documented slave trade on the new land. Historian Horn (president, Jamestown Rediscovery Fdn.; A Kingdom Strange) relates the history of democracy, freedom, and enslavement in the same year. The heyday of the assembly was short. James I, King of England and Ireland, rescinded the colony's charter in 1624, bringing it under his direct jurisdiction. When the assembly formed again later on, it was as a tool of the planter aristocracy. Slavery remained a stain from start to finish, with the laws governing the colony increasingly restrictive. VERDICT Horn's observations allow for a better understanding of the colonists' conflicting views toward Native peoples in this well-documented work for readers of history, especially the precolonial era.-David Keymer, Cleveland © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation weighs in on a significant year in American history.Two events in Virginia in 1619 laid the foundations of our democracy, writes Horn (A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, 2010, etc.) in a well-researched, insightful history that will persuade some readers that he is on to something. Jamestown was a business venture of London's Virginia Company, which sent men in 1607 to find riches as the Spanish had in Mexico and Peru. None turned up, and, unprepared to work, most of the explorers died of starvation and disease. Giving up the search, the company sent those willing to settle in the region. Farms and towns spread, but local officials handled this with much favoritism and corruption, and company shareholders saw no profits. After years of frustration, the company issued reforms aimed at "nothing less than the founding of a new type of societybuilt on good government, just laws, Protestant morality, and rewards for everyone who invested or settled in the colony.In Virginia, commonwealth theory guided the leadership's approach to every facet of the emerging colony." This included a General Assembly consisting of two members elected from each borough. The assembly met in 1619, transacted business for a few weeks, and then dissolved. Almost simultaneously, two privateers docked with a load of Africans who were set to work as slaves, the first to arrive. These events were soon obscured by the chaos of an Indian war; the Virginia Company was abolished in 1624, and Virginia itself was governed by a small (but elected) oligarchy until the 20th century.Readers may question whether the 1619 election deeply influenced our institutions, but it was the first, and Horn has expertly illuminated a little-known era following Jamestown's settlement. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.