Description
This narrative history examines Bermuda, Great Britain's oldest colony, and the largely overlooked role it played in English America's earliest expansion. From its settlement as a Virginia Company colony in 1612 until the Crown's administration takeover in 1684, this tiny Atlantic island critically supported Anglo-American colonization generally. English investors drawing on global experiences, resources, and personnel make Bermuda a crucible where Old and New World peoples, plants, cultures, and ideas mingled. Bermuda's settlement became a model for later New England and Caribbean ventures and its society blended characteristics of the early Chesapeake and New England: healthy pious Puritan planter families grew tobacco, owned slaves, and helped Protestant privateers plunder Spanish America. Bermuda's history reveals the dynamic interplay of race, gender, slavery, and environment at the dawn of English America. Recognizing Bermuda's role in settling Virginia, Barbados, and many other colonies will change our understanding of early Anglo-America generally.
