The Virginia Venture: American Colonization and English Society, 1580–1660 by Misha Ewen (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Virginia Venture: American Colonization and English Society, 1580–1660 by Misha Ewen Abigail L. Swingen The Virginia Venture: American Colonization and English Society, 1580–1660. By Misha Ewen. Early Modern Americas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022. 219 pages. Cloth, ebook. If historians have long taken it as a given that Virginia was important to early American history, they have not generally made similar claims about Virginia's significance to the history of the early English Empire aside from the role of tobacco. There was no comprehensive imperial policy that emerged from the crown or Parliament, for example, as imperial ventures were left to individual merchants, privateers, and trading companies. Aside from the popularity of tobacco, it seemed that the colonization of Virginia had little immediate impact in England itself.1 Misha Ewen's excellent book, The Virginia Venture: American Colonization and English Society, 1580–1660, offers an important corrective by turning from Parliament and members of the Virginia Company to trace, instead, how "English colonialism permeated many layers of domestic society" (2) in the early 1600s. Ewen demonstrates how people from across the social spectrum encountered ideas about colonization in print and sermons and by investing in the Virginia Company, participating in discussions about poverty and indentured migration, and engaging in debates about the right to grow tobacco in England. The result is an illuminating account of how the transatlantic colonial project involved "broad swathes of English citizens" (7) in early seventeenth-century England. Ewen uncovers the involvement of those citizens in England's colonial project by analyzing commonly used sources (such as printed material and Virginia Company records), as well as those not usually utilized (such as Exchequer and Chancery court records, a churchwarden's accounts, and other local records). The book takes several cues from scholarly work analyzing fragmentary evidence about early modern people, mentioning in particular the influence of Marisa J. Fuentes and her careful uncovering of the experiences of the marginalized, silenced, and forgotten.2 It shows that much may be gleaned from the primary sources about how settler colonialism in Virginia was understood and confronted by a wider range of English people than have usually been considered in historical scholarship, including women, poor people, orphans, indentured servants, local authorities, and other potential migrants. The Virginia Venture will likely draw comparisons to another recent book on the impact of colonization of Virginia in [End Page 776] England, Lauren Working's The Making of an Imperial Polity, which focuses primarily on how overseas colonization influenced the ways English gentlemen adopted cultural practices to present themselves as allegedly civilized in relation to imperial pursuits.3 In contrast, Ewen analyzes a wider section of English society and how it interacted with and potentially benefited economically from colonialism. But both books add much-needed nuance to our understanding of the early English Empire and how colonialism in Virginia affected not only the situation in the colony itself but English society more broadly. Ewen begins with a consideration of how people in the early seventeenth century learned about Virginia via news and information (and uncertainty surrounding news and information) that circulated about the colony and gradually reached a wide range of English women and men. In addition to focusing on printed matter sponsored by the Virginia Company, including sermons and ballads, Ewen also examines the role of gossip and rumor in constructing narratives about an imagined idea of Virginia. Such gossip emerged from correspondence as well as word of mouth, especially in port cities and towns, and often referred to tense relations with Indigenous people in the colony. The book also examines the circulation of material evidence, such as animal and plant specimens, that colonists sometimes sent back to England. Together, such evidence worked to create "a picture of Virginia . . . in the minds of potential colonists and investors, as well as a broader public audience" (34). This image—which is one of contrasts and of both uncertainty and potential opportunity in the colonial venture—sets the stage for the remaining encounters that Ewen considers. The next two chapters explore the ways English people invested monetarily in the Virginia Company—not only those who purchased company...