Synopsis
Brings together more than 200 period documents on topics including the settlement of Jamestown, the structure of government and society, labor, the economy, Indian-Anglo relations, and Bacon's Rebellion., Historians and students of America's colonial period have long felt the need for a convenient collection of seventeenth-century Virginia documentary source materials. This new addition to the "Documentary Problems in Early American History Series" admirably fills this need. Using the observations, descriptions, and legal records of the colonists themselves, this new collection makes it possible to reconstruct the process by which order was established in the wilderness during Virginia's first century. The documents will take their place as invaluable tools for the study of early Virginia and as a stimulus to research in colonial history. Warren M. Billings has carfully selected and brought together in this unique collection of more than two hundred documents, over half of which have not been published previously. These documents are organized topically into ten chapters, each of which is introduced with an interpretive essay. These essays provide a general summary of the particular aspect of seventeenth-century Virginia dealt with in the chapter and place the illustrative documents in context. Taken together the brief, cogently written essays constitute a concise history of Virginia during the years 1606-89., Historians and students of America's colonial period have long felt the need for a convenient collection of seventeenth-century Virginia documentary source materials. This new addition to the "Documentary Problems in Early American History Series" admirably fills this need. Using the observations, descriptions, and legal records of the colonists themselves, this new collection makes it possible to reconstruct the process by which order was established in the wilderness during Virginia's first century. The documents will take their place as invaluable tools for the study of early Virginia and as a stimulus to research in colonial history.Warren M. Billings has carfully selected and brought together in this unique collection of more than two hundred documents, over half of which have not been published previously. These documents are organized topically into ten chapters, each of which is introduced with an interpretive essay. These essays provide a general summary of the particular aspect of seventeenth-century Virginia dealt with in the chapter and place the illustrative documents in context. Taken together the brief, cogently written essays constitute a concise history of Virginia during the years 1606-89.
