The Jamestown Experiment: The Remarkable Story of the Enterprising Colony and the Unexpected Results That Shaped America

by Tony Williams

The American dream was built along the banks of the James River in Virginia.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Ebooks, Historical

320 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Tony Williams is the author of six books including the brief and engaging "Hamilton: An American Biography" (Rowman Littlefield) and "Washington & Hamilton: The Alliance that Created America," (Sourcebooks,2015), co-authored with Stephen F. Knott.

He has also written "America's Beginnings: The Dramatic Events that Shaped a Nation's Character,"(2011), "The Jamestown Experiment:The Remarkable Story of the Enterprising Colony and the Unexpected Results that Shaped America"(2011),"Pox and the Covenant: Franklin, Mather, and the Epidemic that Changed America's Destiny"(2010), and, "Hurricane of Independence: The Untold Story of the Deadly Storm at the Deciding Moment of the American Revolution"(2008)

He is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and holds history degrees from Syracuse University and Ohio State University He taught history for fifteen years and was a fellow at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He lives with his family in Williamsburg, VA. He blogs regularly at www.wjmi.org and www.constitutingamerica.org

He has lectured across the country including Colonial Williamsburg, the Virginia Festival of the Book, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Education, National Park Service Revolutionary War Battlesites, NASA, several universities and countless civics and history groups. He appeared as a commentator on Bill O'Reilly's "Legends & Lies: The Patriots" and has appeared several times on C-SPAN's Book TV.

He can be reached for speaking engagements by contacting him at Twitter @TWilliamsAuthor

Reviews

[Candice]

This book needs maps!!!! Why do so many people who write historical accounts fail to include maps in their books? My reason for reading the book is that we will be moving to the Jamestown area shortly and I wanted to learn more about the colony. I feel that I learned more about some of the men who became Jamestown's first settlers, including George Yeardley for whom our new street is named. And the colony was not set up by the English government but by a corporation who wanted to see if they could make money by finding gold and also a northwest passage to the orient. But it was slow reading. Some of the reasons are beyond the fault of the author, such as the Native American (he used the term Indian) names of Wahunsonacock, Opechancanough, et al. Trying to pronounce these names time after time grew tiring. But the author's writing style was a bit tedious, and there were so many quotes! I wish he would have rephrased many of the quotes into modern language in order for them to be more easily understood. I came away with less admiration for some of the original settlers. Many were not the noble adventuresome men I read about in elementary school textbooks. But it is amazing to think that from this small band of less than perfect men, and other colonies along the east coast, grew a major world power.

[Jim Amos]

One of the best dark comedies/seafaring adventures/zombie horror stories I've ever read, and it was all true! Remarkable. The Jamestown settlement was a wholly corporate venture, criminally mismanaged and ethically abhorrent from beginning to end--bet they don't teach this in schools!

Parts of this were so funny, the sheer incompetence of the settlers, the stupidity of their leaders, and the ways in which all their mistakes could basically be blamed on men thinking with their penis instead of their brains--Monty Python couldn't have made up anything more entertaining.

And then there are details about the starvation of 1609 & the resulting cannibalism, mutiny & chaos that seem straight out of a George Romero movie. We are descended from these people!? Amazing.

And the Indians were just as deadly to us as we were to them--but we stole their land in search of economic riches so what did we expect?

This book doesn't take sides, doesn't have any political leanings and is as dry as any history I've ever read--but it is absolutely compelling nonetheless.

[Amber]

Good book, but the last several chapters, it seemed like someone got tired of editing the book and quite a few grammatical and punctuation errors proved distracting.

[Jen]

I feel like I may have read two books. One I really liked. And one that was what the author wished he could have written.

One is the very detailed and interesting story of the Jamestown colony. Despite growing up only an hour away, I knew very little about Jamestown. I mean I knew the basics. Englishmen got there, they fought Native Americans, they died a lot. Helps that my high school was in the same county as Matoaca High School (Matoaca--another name for Pocahontas), Monacan (a Native America Tribe), Thomas Dale (once governor of the colony). So yeah, I knew a lot of the names.

However, I didn't know much beyond what was taught in elementary school (my knowledge of American history is almost shameful). I didn't know the colonist brutality. Amazingly, the story of putting Native American children in the river and then shooting them while their mother watched was somewhat glossed over in second grade. My teachers truly ignored that the first decade of Jamestown was drenched in blood on both sides. I also didn't know how Bermuda was at all related to Jamestown--a fact still reflected by the arms of Bermuda. One of the ships wrecked there and a group of colonist survived there for nearly a year--and survived better than those in Jamestown. The ship is pictured on Bermuda's coat of arms.

This book that described how the colony's survival--taught as almost a sure thing in my memory--was almost scrapped repeatedly throughout it's history, tormented by starvation, failure to prepare for winter (yep, happens every year), infighting, politics, not getting along with the native population at all, and the basic problem of being sent there to find gold and finding none.

The other book is one that wanted to show how only when the colony adopted fully representative government and enterprise did it succeed. I don't have any doubt that enterprise added to success, I do doubt that had it been instituted with the first wave of colonist that we would have seen a massively different beginning. It could be argued instead that it was operated more like you would operate a factory, as this is mostly what the investors saw the colony as--a factory that was supposed to bring back gold.

To support this premise, Williams uses repeated insurrections and rebels, as well as starvation, to demonstrate that the martial law imposed by the Virginia Company (the group of investors in London that funded Jamestown and the colonization in Virginia until it went bankrupt and was taken over by the crown)was a failure. However, I'm still not convinced that this was a causation of the events as much a correlation. And four insurrections while you're stuck on an island with little hope of rescue for over a year--I'm not sure that's a horrible record there.

This part of the book leaves me unconvinced that the martial law imposed by the leaders or the original set up in the colony added (or detracted for that matter) from the original plight of the colonists. The problems they faced in the early years were (in my opinion) less a function of the government system than that of sending groups of colonists to Virginia who were completely unprepared for living in a swampy wilderness--a farmer or two probably would have been helpful. I am willing to be convinced, but it's going to take more than this book.

All this aside, I do think I want to read more about the early colonization of America, because it's a whole lot more interesting than my second grade history text book led me to believe.

[Jamie]

I enjoyed this book. It was an easy read on the early history of Jamestown. And, of course, we all know this, but Disney's Pocahontas is so far off they should have called it something else. It was nice to hear a little more detail of the real story.

[Erin]

This was an amazing book that shed a great deal of insight on the struggles the initial settlers faced and how the events shaped the American Dream.

[Rob Hawks]

Interesting read. Could have benefited from a more exacting editor.

[Debbie]

Awesome book, really enjoyed it!

[Lukas Smith]

Not bad, but I enjoyed the content about which the book was written more than the book itself. I enjoyed the way the information was presented, it was just a bit elementary at times. But the story is super interesting. OG USA

[Denise Barney]

Mr. William's hypothesis is the virtues that ultimately allowed the Jamestown colony to succeed are those that determined the American character.

Jamestown was founded by investors hoping to find gold and silver, convert the native people to Anglican Christianity, find the Nothwest Passage to Asia and her riches, and to keep the Spanish out of North America. The experiment was an absymal failure. The settlers starved or died of disease. They were indolent. The Natives were most definitely NOT friendly.

Several supply ships were sent, along with several thousand settlers, incuding "gentlemen adventurers" who brought the idea of "class" along with them. Martial law was imposed along withmreligious obligations. The leaders underestimated the negotiating and political savvy of the Natives because the leaders saw them as simple savages. Precious metals were never found. And there was no Northwest Passage. Colonists starved, died from disease, or were killed.

Tobacco, private enterprise, and overcoming the Natives by brute force allowed the Colony to finally thrive. The class structure had to be abandoned outmof necessity and the colonists granted all the rights of free Englishmen.

The "mercantile model" of colonization was also established: the colony supplied the raw materials; the mother country supplied finished goods. But the beginnings of representational government was established, along with the "American" character.

[Laura LeAnn]

Having taught US History, I was interested to know more of the details of the founding of Jamestown and exactly what happened that allowed this colony to become the "first permanent English colony" in what is now the US. I found it a bit difficult to get into this book due to the dry writing style at the very beginning of the book, going through all of the different explorers from various countries that had gone on voyages, their causes, and results from those voyages. While establishing a basis for the story of Jamestown in the book, it was not all that necessary, in my opinion, to include all of this information in the beginning of the book. He could hit a few of the highlights, but it just took too long to tell this part of the story before really exploring the set-up of the colony at Jamestown, the Virginia Company, etc., which then made for a fast-forward version of the story towards the end of the book. The establishment of the royal colony and the implications of that were not explored in great detail simply due to the constraints of the book length, etc. Also, the epilogue makes the leap that Benjamin Franklin, the idea of the "American Dream, and other such things were effects of the establishment of the permanent colony at Jamestown. While I can see remnants of this, this argument needs to be explore more in order to effectively persuade this reader.

[Bill P.]

Williams positions his historical account of the colonization of Jamestown as an experiment in venture capitalism, which it clearly was when considering how the colony was funded completely by private investors who bought shares. But the reader need not worry that this is a dry work of spread sheets, analysis of return on investment or how finacing and banking worked in 1604. Williams presentation of the founding of Jamestown reads like a novel with all the principle characters on both the English and Native Americans side nicely developed. This was a dramatic story filled with conflict, skirmishes, murder, starvation and politics. Heroes and scoundrels abound. With the repeated failures, wars and death tolls of the colonists it is amazing anything finally took root and prospered. Great read.

[Joe]

I enjoyed the book until the last two chapters as I found the conclusion a bit silly. The colony survived because after 8-9 years they finally received military support from England. They defeated the Indians and allowed the colony to expand and have enough space to plant tobacco, raise animals and plant crops. Not starving significantly improves any society. They also had more consistent visits from ships who provided supplies in exchange for tobacco. The success of Jamestown had less to do with "free enterprise" than it did with waiting out the growing pains of disease, lack of support and Indian aggression until .

[Donnie Edgemon]

Although Williams could use a good editor, his research and story-telling are strong in this book. It provides good detail on English exploration in the New World and the first decade and a half or so of the Jamestown colony. Williams makes and supports the hypothesis that Jamestown struggled as a settlement of militaristic rules, and only began to thrive as the powers of self-interest overtook rigid authoritarianism. Regardless of the hypothesis or Williams' compelling case, the book is worthwhile for its detailed account of the struggles of the colonists.

[Maryclaire]

This book on Jamestown gives many different reasons for the first failure of the colony. It also examines the reasons all of the people involved were there. The author takes the time to explain the problems of all the settlers who were dependent on the supple ships that never came. The problems within the colony, it's location, climate,illness and the reasons it did finally work in Va. This book also covers more detail about the people of the colony, the Native Americans, and the European involvement in the colony than I have read in the past. A very educational and interesting book.

[Tom]

To my mind the title is much more hopeful and positive than the actual story. It is likely the title looks good in the gift shops around Jamestown and appeals to casual shoppers. The book rightly tells a more sober story of poor planning, bad decisions on location, manpower, supplies and logistics. The story is remarkable in that Jamestown survived. The book presents the facts and the readers are left to draw their own conclusions. It is interesting to me that the English didn't learn from their mistakes. I recommend this engaging, well written book.

[Timothy Finucane]

A well written account of the founding of the Jamestown colony. The author specifically focuses on the economic side of the business venture and eventually shows how the Virginia company found that liberty, self-governing, and entrepreneurship are what made the colony a success. This read is well worth the time and shows how the very first English colony in America set the tone for what would become the America we know today.

[Justin Andrusk]

The horrors that the Jamestown settlers went through is beyond belief in the pursuit of a better life. Tony Williams does an excellent job in communicating the sacrifices that were made along with adjustments needed to deal with the violent Indians.

The settlers were not above horrendous acts of barbarism, which the authors expounds in detail to demonstrate how desperate the times and people were.

[Matthew Cirilli]

This is an excellent history that is about a fascinating topic. The book stops a little short and ends when the Virginia Company loses it's charter and Jamestown becomes a Royal Colony. I would have liked to have seen more into the history of the colony beyond that point. Regardless, the material that the author does tackle is quite interesting.

[Chasity Johnson]

Provides a detailed history of Jamestown. The author has done a great deal of research so that the reader is provided with a very real vision of what the first inhabitants of Jamestown experienced. The detail is unreal and nothing I remember learning in school. Those that enjoy early American history will find this to be a great addition to their reading list.

[Christine]

While the barebones of the facts are included it feels thin. Much better for the facts, with more complete academic research, are "American Colonies: the Settling of North America" by Alan Taylor and "Savage Kingdom: the True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America" by Benjamin Woolley.

[Crystal Toller]

Jamestown

A review of the settling of the Jamestown colony and its growth until1624. The book discusses the various governors of the colony, including John Smith, the love affair of Pocahontas and John Rolfe, and the wars of 1621 to 1624 between the English and the Indians. A very good overview of the Jamestown experience.

[James Stevens]

This is a surprising narrative for those who were never taught the full details of the settling of Jamestown. The story is well told, but often disappointing because of how the English behaved. It is an amazing record of survival, often at the cost of both English and Native American lives.

[Andrew Bell]

Great historical depth on Jamestown and the characters that founded America. Gave me a new perspective on Capt. John Smith. I grew up in Virginia Beach and learned about state history that was also our nation's history. Good job Tony.

[Delia]

This book is packed with information that I never knew. It illustrates that the pettiness of human nature and abuse of power is not a modern construct. Also, Captain John Smith was extremely Intelligent & resourceful. I’d always pictured him as this dry character but he was really a “bad ass”.

[Sharon]

Very good concise account of what happened at Jamestown. It is good introductory material for anyone interested in early American history.

[Caroline]

I agree that the writing isn't the best, but it is a good read as an intelligent and grahpic introduction to new world exploration and the hardships faced by founding Americans.

[Angie]

Interesting historical account. Wish History had been this interesting when I was in school. Parts of it drag along, but I imagine it drug along for those who lived it, as well.

[Janice]

Very interesting.Detailed account of the Jamestown Settlement that usually is reduced to a few paragraphs. I wish the author would have put a few maps in the book but on the whole I enjoyed it.

[Mitchell Hyre]

A glimpse into the story behind the story. What your history teacher didn't tell you.