Founding Jamestown.(Current and coming)

The history of the founding of Jamestown in 1607 has had centuries of bad press, much of it deserved. The exhibitions celebrating the 400th anniversary this year, however, have benefited from a good deal of new research, a changing historical approach, and scientific findings as well.

Archaeology has made major strides at Jamestown. For example, in 1994 the actual site of the fort there was discovered, and archaeologists began (and are still) uncovering a wealth of artifacts that help to show how the colonists lived and belie the previous assumption that they were an unproductive and helpless lot. Beyond this, evidence has been unearthed that the Susquehannock tribe, who were known to have been interested in trading with Captain John Smith and the colonists, had some years earlier moved south out of small scattered villages to build a fortified center at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, where they could more easily carry on trade with other Indian tribes as well as with European seafarers decades before the arrival of the English colonists.

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The study of global weather and the history of climate change have also fostered a better understanding of the circumstances under which the early colonies in North America were founded. Information derived from studying such things as the core of glaciers, ocean beds, and coral tells scientists that North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was extremely cold. Moreover, there was widespread drought in the Americas, especially in the Southwest. Both the colony on Roanoke Island, which did not survive, and Jamestown, which did, were founded during a period of severe drought on the East Coast.

The unfortunate history of slavery in America also began at Jamestown, when Africans were brought over to support the new tobacco industry. Ongoing studies are uncovering more information about when and where in Africa these early enslaved people were captured and more about who they were to begin with.

The central event of the four hundredth anniversary celebration of Jamestown takes place at the Jamestown Settlement near Williamsburg, Virginia. Entitled The World of 1607, it aims to place the settlement in a global context. In the spring of 1606 James I of England granted a charter that founded the Virginia Company and allowed it to establish an English settlement in the Chesapeake region of North America. In December of that year some 108 men and a crew of about ...