View source for Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century

{{Infobox book
| name		 = Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century
| author         = April Lee Hatfield
| publisher      = University of Pennsylvania Press
| pub_date       = 2004
| pages          = 312
| isbn           = 978-0-8122-1997-5
| image          = [[File:Atlantic Virginia.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]
}}
In this well-researched monograph on seventeenth-century Virginia, April Lee Hatfield investigates intercolonial trade and transatlantic connections within the Atlantic world.  Refuting seventeenth-century historiography that “embodies the unspoken assumption that each colony operated as a largely self-contained entity that interacted with other colonies only indirectly, through England,” she instead explores intercolonial networks that serve as evidence that Atlantic colonies often looked to each other as examples more directly than indirectly (1-2).  Focused on Virginia, the book examines how the colony’s interactions with New England, New Netherland, and the Caribbean (Barbados) shaped migration, the movement of information, religion, and the development of slavery.  Virginia’s position within intercolonial networks also defined the colony in an Atlantic context as Virginian leaders took an active role in defining colonial boundaries in a social, cultural, economic, and political sense.  Filled with seventeenth-century literature and publications, Atlantic Virginia is a valid addition to the historiography of seventeenth-century Virginia and a prime example of the changing methodological principles within the still relatively new field of Atlantic history.

The early portion of the book examines two different kinds of intercolonial networks that began to define Virginia simultaneously and alerted the colony to its early presence in a multi-faceted Atlantic world.  Indians in the Chesapeake region became highly involved in the landed colonial trade while they also maintained control and knowledge of North American path systems that existed beyond colonial areas.  Simultaneously, maritime trade routes played a vital role in the success of European colonies in the Chesapeake.  “The two processes were intertwined: English weapons and cloth and Caribbean rum traveled inland to Indians, as Indian deerskins, furs, and slaves followed maritime routes out of the Chesapeake to Europe and the Caribbean" (38).  Hatfield’s ability to draw direct connections between Europe and colonies in America and the Caribbean is exemplary of her Atlanticist approach to Virginia’s seventeenth-century history.  While previous histories of Virginia have placed it within the Atlantic world and given credence to the importance of Virginia’s contact with other colonies, Hatfield takes her analysis a step further by asserting that intercolonial relations were constantly reciprocal and intertwined more than previous historiography of the colony has implied.  Chapter three builds upon the argument by pointing to Virginia’s geography as a source of its unique aptitude to interact with different areas throughout the Atlantic.  The relationship and correspondence between colonists and sailors meant that even non-traveling colonists had a place within the larger Atlantic world.  Economic motive and attempts to move products to different areas established “economic links that both allowed and shaped social, cultural, and political interactions" (5).  In short, trade networks, both inland and at sea, bound Virginia, indigenous tribes, and colonies in North America and the Caribbean together in an interdependent Atlantic relationship that had far-reaching cultural and social consequences.

Those cultural and social ramifications are the focus of the rest of the book.  Hatfield establishes familial connections between Barbados and Virginia through an examination of letters sent back and forth between the colonies and a significant amount of migration from Barbados to Virginia.  She also points to the fact that at least a few people made trips back and forth from Barbados to Virginia several times in the mid-to-late seventeenth century.  While she efficiently supports her assertion that migration occurred as a result of economic ties between the colonies, her argument that those trading ties had serious social ramifications might not be as strongly presented.  She admits that motives for migration from the New England colonies and Virginia were more complicated and normally based upon religious ideals (106).  Her assertion about social repercussions seems to apply more heavily to New England-Virginia migration than Caribbean-Virginia migration.  While the presence of traveling Quaker ministers and a large number of Quakers in Barbados does lend credence to the idea that the Caribbean was linked to North America, the book’s discussion of religious ties between Barbados and Virginia is not as complete as its discussion of New England.  However, the migration of different religious groups did lead officials in Virginia to consider the boundaries of the colony and to define it in accordance to other colonies on the eastern seaboard.  The process was likely reciprocal.  Intercolonial ties allowed both Puritans and Quakers to linger within Virginia until the Anglican Church became more tolerant.  Hatfield calls for us to reconceive Virginia and realize that intercolonial trade and migration fostered the religious ideals of colonists and affected Virginia’s status as a strictly Anglican colony.  

Perhaps most interesting is Hatfield’s assertions about the intercolonial formation of slavery in the Chesapeake.  She argues that the flow of information from the Caribbean to Virginia gave the colony access to “legal and cultural precedent” that led to the formation of a slave society built in the mold of other colonies like Barbados (5).  The importation of slaves into Virginia from other areas, which until later in the seventeenth century consisted of other colonies and not Africa, meant that slavery was born out of an Atlantic context.  Many slaves spent time in Dutch or English-Caribbean colonies before being forcibly brought to Virginia years later.  Hatfield also argues that Virginian colonists’ experience in other Spanish and Portuguese colonies set the tone for how ideas of slaves and the institution of slavery was shaped in Virginia.   Perhaps the most striking evidence that Hatfield offers is her discussion of Barbadian immigrants that traversed the Atlantic and established links between Virginia and Barbados that had a considerable impact on the development of slavery in the colony.  However, Hatfield alludes to the fact that her interpretation of the impact that Barbadian slaves had in Virginia is based upon overt “maybes” and “perhapses” (162).  She still creates a new understanding of how interactions between imported slaves and those already in Virginia was likely more influential than other historians have argued.  Barbadian slaves likely had a particular memory of their experience in the Caribbean and were aware of the fact that there was slavery and there was slavery in Barbados.  Barbados was notorious for the harsh form of slavery that existed there and it is likely that immigrants who entered Virginia defined themselves and the formation of slavery in Virginia in light of that fact.  The book provides an interpretation of slavery in Virginia that gives heavier consideration to colonial relations and interconnectedness rather than portraying several individual colonies that were only connected by way of England.  Instead, slavery in Virginia was born out of a constant flow of information and immigration between Virginia, the Caribbean, and the Dutch colonies.

Atlantic Virginia undertakes a bold endeavor.  It attempts to combine an overwhelming number of aspects of the history of Virginia.  It refutes the notion that American colonies existed and developed separately, combines the geography and trade routes that were imperative of imperial competition, and places emphasis on the cultural and economic links that were born out of migration throughout the Atlantic world.  While it is mostly successful in its exploration of the American colonies and the Caribbean, the book lacks one important part of the Atlantic world… Europe.  The book sets out to provide an Atlantic history of Virginia but the end result is more in line with a colonial history that considers an Atlantic context.  There is little mention of the metropole and Ireland is completely absent.  Debates within the field of Atlantic history have more often than not been centered on what to include and what to leave out when trying to create a truly Atlantic world.  Atlantic Virginia likely does not satisfy the needs of others like Allison Games or Carla Pestana who provide more inclusion of England within the “English Atlantic.”  However, Hatfield’s assertion that histories that present the colonies as separate entities developing in relation to England more than each other purposefully moves away from those types of histories so it likely was not her intent to include the British Isles in her study.  Whether she presents a total Atlantic history or not, what Hatfield has done is created a new way of thinking about Virginia in an Atlantic context that will remain influential in future studies.
	
	
	
	
	 


[[Category:Early America/Colonial History]]
[[Category:April Lee Hatfield]]
[[Category:Wikify]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]