Savage Kingdom: The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America

I was given this book by respected historians, so I felt confident that this book would be good quality, not full of false information or unchecked/invalid sources. It has been a while since I've done any study of American history, so what better new start than to begin at the very beginning. This book read as easy as a novel, which is rare in a history book because they can get rather technical, dry and textbook-like. There were times when it didn't even feel like I was reading a nonfiction book because it was just so interesting and full of adventure and intrigue. You'll get it all in this book: political manipulations, death, disease, mutiny, war, sabotage, desperation and adventure. This book is neither oversimplified nor overly complicated. There are times, I admit, where you may feel that the book drags. I suffered during the parts about British government and technical arrangements, but they were mere pieces in a book that is largely very entertaining while remaining informative. It's a far cry from Disney, though. By the end of it, you'll be well aware of the brutality of America's early founding... from both the settlers and the Natives. Additionally, this book includes an international scope. While discussing the founding of the Jamestown colony, the author writes about how other leaders in countries like France and Spain felt. If you love history, nonfiction or a good adventure book, this one is definitely for you.

For anyone interested in the tenuous, fragile, and embryonic beginnings of the United States of America, Savage Kingdom is a must-read. And to add further clarity and dimension to one's understanding, Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick should be read as a companion. Although, over the centuries, the Mayflower happenings got greater press in the American story, the settlement of Jamestown occurred three years earlier and was at least as and probably more important. The Jamestown pioneers had the first major encounters with the native peoples and one of the Englishmen, the tough and abrasive Captain John Smith, gained knowledge and experience there which enabled him to exert leadership in the later exploration.

I came across this book after hearing the author interviewed on NPR on the anniversary of the Jamestown colony. From just the few minutes I managed to catch from that conversation the author had me rethinking my vague and mostly uninvestigated thoughts on that early settlement. Wooley has a great ability to take well researched and documented accounts and weave a compelling narrative without overly indulging in fantasy or sketches compiled of heresay or assumptions. What took me in about this book was just how much Byzantine politics and motives the early administrators of the colony had coming over from England. (i.e aliases, spies, traitors, defectors, etc.) If you are interested in what the first steps were in The New World before Declarations and Revolutions and why they were made, I would check this out. It's an essential foundation if you are, like me, consuming our countries earliest intentions and ambitions that led us to where we are now.

With the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first colonists and founding of the first permanent British settlement in present day America, there have been a slew of books and reexaminations of the settlement. Wooley, a popular writer and broadcaster in Great Britain has contributed to this review of the Jamestown by presenting a popular history from the British viewpoint, that examines the founding of Jamestown from the perspective that tries to place Jamestown in the perspective of the new House of Stuart monarchy, a Britain with a shaken economy, and the race to make a claim in North America to compete with the Spanish Empire. Along the way, the Powhatan native tribe Chesapeake Bay have their motivations and civilization examined as this strongest of the east coast tribes. The strongest parts of this book involve the examination of the relationship between the first settlers and the Powhatan Indians, the exploration of the Chesapeake for the first time by Europeans by Captain John Smith and why Jamestown was so important to the British government. The relationship between the founding of Virginia and the discovery of Bermuda, and why, for a time the Bermuda part of the Virginia colony was much more important economically to Britain is a nice find within a book, and Wooley does his best work of showing human drama with Bermuda. The book is weak by dragging details of the British government out many pages past necessary for the popular reader, especially the American reader who, from the standpoint of 400 years of time will take some effort to dig into the bureaucracy of the that government for a popular history read. If the general reader is willing to go through the 400 pages of details, at the end, he should find a great explanation for the place of Jamestown in the American, Indian and British story. The book hits its high point with its description of the first Jamestown Assembly, the first such representative government in modern times that was founded as much out of corporate business interests and a leveling out of previous British hierarchies in the American jungle. For a popular history, Savage Kingdom shows why the British way of colonization - joint stock companies, authorized but not led by the government with a grass roots organization of the Christian church succeeded in the long run over the government/ military colonization of Latin America. This is a fine book, but again, the general reader should be warned that it has heavy details of the details of British government among personalities that are often hard to follow.