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Title: Love and Hate in Jamestown : John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Heart of a New Nation by David Price ISBN: 0-375-41541-6 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 07 October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.78 (9 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: New understanding of a familar story
Comment: One might shy away -- with a Disney-phobic mind-set -- from a book about the Jamestown colony, John Smith, and, of course, Pocahontas. Most of us feel we know the story anyway. "Love and Hate in Jamestown" by David Price however fills in the familiar outline with some new muscles and sinews.
The book principally follows the history of Smith and of the Jamestown colony from the departure of the three ship flotilla from London in 1606 until Smith's death in 1631. This history is of course in large measure one of relations with the Indians. Price, not a historian, has written for both the Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily, so the economic motivations and structure of the colony also are given significant attention.
The story is told in a straight-forward style that is largely a strength, but at times makes it seem to be no more than a summary of others' work. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Certainly, it's a well-documented book, with an extensive Bibliography.
The book highlights many facets of the Jamestown/Smith story that add to a reader's understanding. I found certain aspects especially effective in this regard. 1) John Smith's background as a commoner, fighter for Dutch independence, self-taught student of military tactics (especially munitions), enlistee in Austrian forces battling the Ottoman Empire, and a captive slave to the Turks. 2) The ease with which the Spanish could have destroyed the colony, changing the whole course of North American history, and the big power politics that led King Philip of Spain to inaction. 3) The evolving expectations of the Virginia Company's managers back in England of what they could expect as return on their investment.
At the well-known and crucial point in the story, the author does an effective job of recreating the circumstances of Smith's capture by the Powhatans and Pocahontas' role in his deliverance from certain death.
Although strong in presenting these various facets, the book suffers I believe from the lack of a centralizing focus. At many points it seems a biography of Smith, then veers into the dramatic details of the colony's travails after Smith is shipped back to England, then returns to a focus on Smith as he struggles to find an avenue for returning to the New World. Each shift of attention seems abrupt and the level of detail varies uncomfortably.
John Smith apparently kept good notes while in Virginia and then wrote extensively about his colonizing experiences. Price of course draws heavily on these narratives and appears to always accept Smith's version of events. This is both natural (Smith had many supporters who verified his accounts) and somewhat unbalanced. The book paints the other colonial leaders - with whom Smith was in unremitting conflict - as incredibly selfish, naïve, and catastrophically unwilling to learn from their mistakes. A more nuanced depiction of those with whom Smith clashed would have added depth to the book.
Oddly, while the book does deal with disease among the settlers, there is no such discussion of the role European germs might have played in the decimation of the natives. This is a disconcerting omission. Price also has an amateurish habit of unnecessarily foreshadowing events: "shortly he would disclose it", "before long, he would owe her his life several times over", and "Smith would not learn of this for a long time to come".
There are two well-rendered maps, one of the voyage from England through the West Indies and onto the North American coast, and one of the layout of Indian tribes in the large area surrounding Jamestown. A map of the colony and its immediate area would have been helpful, particularly since recent archaeological efforts have added greatly to knowledge of the site. The web site of "Jamestown Rediscovery" (http://www.apva.org/jr.html) provides a useful adjunct while reading Price's book.
Some notes on "Editorial Method" (covering the rendering of dialogue, spelling, place names, dates, etc.) follow the main text. These would have been better placed as an introduction. Readers would be advised to read these notes first.
I have no hesitation in an overall recommendation for "Love and Hate in Jamestown". It should add extensively to the general reader's understanding of a nation's beginnings and the crucial role played by one of history's most singular characters.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Readable Book of Interest to All
Comment: Love and Hate in Jamestown is an appropriate title for this fascinating book. Details of the love between John Rolfe and Pocahontas that developed into marriage, a trip to England, and her untimely death are provided. We are also provided with details of the uneasy relationship between the native Americans and the English settlers as they each tried to put up a front of friendship with the other. If the book has a hero, it would be John Smith who dealt with the environment in Jamestown, Virginia, as it was, not as the settlers wanted it to be. Many of the settlers were "gentlemen" who knew nothing about getting their hands dirty in work. Looking for gold was first and foremost in their minds. Among the settlers were workers and shirkers. Initially, food was provided for all from a common storehouse, but this method didn't encourage everyone to do their share of work. Jealously and envy were enemies of the settlers as to who they wanted as a leader. Not only was there hate towards the common enemy, the native Americans, but towards each other as well. Author David Price believes the story of Smith being saved by Pocahontas to be authentic. History is about people who lived in a different period under different circumstances. This is the story of America's beginnings told in a most effective manner.
Rating: 5
Summary: Price Simplifies the Complex
Comment: The literature of Jamestown exemplifies a history of frustrating complexity. This is partly because the history of Jamestown has become the playing field of propagandists (e.g. post Revolutionary Americans justifying the Revolution, as Tisdale says, by putting down the "gentlemen" of the colony) to Henry Adams, one of the otherwise great minds of America-perhaps its greatest-who admittedly set out to demolish the history of the South in the Civil War era, as Price himself points out. Romanticists have enjoyed a field day inventing a relationship that never existed between a mature John Smith and the child Pocahontas, and Smith himself is so unlikable a hero as to make an unpleasant historical subject. Add the fact that most of the productive research on Jamestown in our century has been archaeological or documentary, and add the fact that during the period concerned Jamestown officials come and go and return again, one is presented with a kaleidascope of confusion. Only with the recent publication of JAMESTOWN NARRATIVES, which arranges the sources in an order comprehensible to the gentle reader and Ivor Noel Hume's outstanding THE VIRGINIA ADVENTURE, has the picture begun to come together for any but the specialists. Bearing in mind that Hume, one of the world's top archaeologists, covers both the Roanoke settlement and Jamestown, this is the first modern book I have seen that embodies the latest research, deals only with Jamestown and does so in a way that is both accurate and readable. This is an excellent starting place for anyone who wants to understand the early colony.
I do have one very small problem with the volume. The gentlmen still come off badly. Contentious, prickly, arrogant and self interested, they undoubtedly were, but their contribution to the colony was considerable, as the adventurers who explored and fought. But this (which I must admit is my own take) is more than overcome by Price's masterful account of how John Smith, one man of rather minor status, brought order out of chaos. It is hard to like Smith, but without him, I think there would have been no Virginia. And it is very easy to like Price, who has done us the inestimable favor of,at last, bringing the threads of the tapestry together.
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Title: The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty by Caroline Alexander ISBN: 067003133X Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 15 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America by Henry Wiencek ISBN: 0374175268 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 15 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen ISBN: 0066211735 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Washington's Crossing (Pivotal Moments in American History) by David Hackett Fischer ISBN: 0195170342 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: February, 2004 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Pocahontas : Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat by Paula Gunn Allen ISBN: 006053687X Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 07 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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