The Life and Times of the Jamestowne Colony 1607–1699

The Life and Times of the Jamestowne Colony, 1607-1699 offers readers a deep dive into the political, social, and economic realities of life in the first permanent English settlement in North America. Founded in 1607, the Jamestowne Colony experienced multiple calamities over the course of its formative years, from the disaster of the “Massacre of 1622” to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 -- America’s first Revolution. Yet, the Colony slowly took root, and over the next century, the settlement that almost collapsed after the “Starving Time” of the winter of 1609-10 developed into an economic and political powerhouse. Relying on contemporaneous records of the Virginia Company, the Virginia House of Burgesses, the English Colonial State Papers, and other primary source materials, author Jay Dickey has woven together a treasure trove of stories that capture the history of the Colony, its people, and the political wranglings that took place in Virginia and London that ultimately led to the imposition of imperial rule in the last years of Jamestowne’s time as the center of government in Virginia. Dickey’s book also offers glimpses into the seamier side of the Colony, from its problems with rampant public drunkenness, to the many petty squabbles between neighbors, and the horrific periods of starvation and disease that beset the Colony, and that led to the deaths of countless settlers. Dickey calls his book a “micro-history,” a series of short historical stories revealing the day-to-day stresses and strains—and the outright terror-- of life in Virginia in the seventeenth century. Read more