James P. P. Horn

3.5 stars.

I finally read something again! This is an angle on 16th-17th C imperialism that I haven't ever read before, focusing more on Shakespearean history and Spanish/Vatican colonialism. Turns out the basics from World Civ II barely scratched the surface.

I'm left with some thoughts.
1. Dear god the horrific whitewashing of US history. I am so appalled.
2. Sir Walter Raleigh, what the hell was WRONG with you, and how did you have so many successes amid your crazy abject failures?
3. Thank show more goodness Horn didn't spend pages on groundless speculation. I appreciate the evidence based approach and the extensive research into contemporary non-English and English primary sources.
4. Heartache, because wow.
5. Disgust.
6. Bitter hilarity that the very same resentment by rural English at London's dominance over the national economy existed in the late 1500s still exists today. It's spurring Brexit idiocy now as it did the feuding with Europe then.

Oh, also, the end notes/annotations were worth the read. show less

Embarrassingly, the only knowledge I had about the colony of Jamestown was from the bits and pieces I remember watching from Disney's Pocahontas.

Yup.

And so I leaped headfirst into James Horn's A Land as God Made it and kicked ignorance's ass. I now know so much about the infamous colony. The story of James Smith and Pocahontas was not what I thought it was. At all. And the horrendous "Starving Time" that occurred in the colony pushed the colonists into cannibalism! Aside from fleeting show more moments of peace between the English and the Powhatan Indians, there was constant war. The "Indian Massacre of 1622" left hundreds slaughtered and settlements reduced to ash. And there is so much more.

I found Horns' writing to be simple and eloquent. The history is presented as a narrative and so it was easy to follow the different characters and the flux of events that took place from 1607 onward. I found it all fascinating and was astonished at the fact that the colony eventually flourished despite constantly befalling to sickness, disease and death.

Jamestown's success eventually helped spur the growth of the other colonies and gave birth to the United States that we know today. show less

One of the better books by James Horn. A good account of Don Luis, Opechancanough and the Powhatan wars. However, I am not as certain as Horn seems to be that Don Luis and Opechancanough were the same person. The evidence appears circumstantial and not at all definitive. I think it's a bit strange that Horn is going all in on this somewhat fringe position.

Not a bad book, but a bit unfocused. I'm not sure there was enough material here to really be a book about Chief Opechanchanough so it winds up being about him and Powhatan and John Smith and the Jamestown colony and and and..... I did learn more about the specific interactions between the colonists and the Indigenous people of the area but this felt like a shorter portion of a bigger story than a finished product to me.