by Dick Hall-Sizemore
Horn, James. 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy. New York: Basic Books, 2018.
Notwithstanding the title, this book is not part of the controversial 1619 Project. The author is currently the most prominent and knowledgeable scholar of early colonial Virginia. He is the president and chief officer of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, which is responsible for the management of Historic Jamestowne, the original site of the first permanent English colony in America. As a reviewer in The Wall Street Journal put it, “If anyone today knows colonial Virginia, it is James Horn.”
Relying heavily on primary sources, Horn provides a brief summary of the early years of the colony of Virginia, culminating in 1619, when the “Great Reforms” were instituted. Although coincidental, Horn declares the meeting of the first representative government and the arrival of the first African slaves in 1619 was “portentous.” His thesis is that “1619 marks the inception of the most important political development in American history, the rise of democracy and the emergence of what would in time become one of the nation’s greatest challenges: the corrosive legacy of racial stereotypes that continues to affect our society today.”
As Horn describes it, the early history of the Virginia colony can be divided into four phases: 1606-1609, the early unruly years; 1609-1619, the military rule years; 1619-1622, the Great Reform; after 1622 and the dissolution of the Virginia Company. Continue reading
