The Jamestown Experiment Read Online Free PDF

staked their personal reputations and the glory of mother England in agreeing to lead the venture.
    Armed with the new charter, and sharing an unambiguous vision and a method of organization to achieve it, the company organized a massive public relations campaign to promote investment and settlement in the new venture. London was soon abuzz with excitement about the Jamestown colony, which quickly drowned out any rumors or hard news of difficulties in Virginia. During the spring of 1609, Londoners were bombarded with glowing words that extolled the bounty of Virginia as well as stirring calls to support the patriotic national mission in the drive to colonize. Ministers preached the message from pulpits around the capital, writers composed numerous pamphlets, and recruiters spread the word in countless conversations in taverns and homes around the city. The promotional campaign reached virtually everyone in London several times.
    The message was clear and concise and repeated in all of the venues. It was a broad picture of English national greatness. Jamestown was a focal point of the global struggle with Spain. The colony would reap a growing economic empire that would surpass the wealth of the Spanish treasure fleets. The religious impulse would drive the Christian soldiers onward to convert and civilize the native peoples, especially before they could be converted by Spain to Roman Catholicism. All of this, the promoters argued was God’s will, England’s national destiny, and a mission for imperial greatness.
    The message being promoted was scarcely a new one. The search for great wealth, the mission to convert the natives to Protestantism, and the challenge to the rival Spanish Empire were all elements of the 1606 patent and included in the instructions to the originalsettlers. Indeed, this national vision had been shaped in the 1570s and 1580s, when gentlemen adventurers plunged into overseas ventures to explore, set up trading companies, fight abroad, and establish colonies. It was the same vision of Sir Walter Ralegh, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Francis Drake, and Richard Hakluyt. It remained a martial vision of winning personal and national glory through strict rule instead of individual liberty. But the message to support the Jamestown colony was repackaged and sold to a much broader spectrum of Londoners than any previous publicity campaign.
    Robert Johnson, a merchant and Thomas Smythe’s deputy treasurer for the company, penned the pamphlet Nova Britannia that grandly described the potential wealth of Virginia in glowing terms. The climate was “most sweet and wholesome.” The deepwater harbors supported oceangoing vessels, and Jamestown would be an important part of the highway of goods and trade stretching across the Atlantic. Virginia contained vast lands with “hidden treasure, never yet searched.” The soils held valuable minerals and supported an array of crops “in great abundance” to sustain a large population. 221
    Moreover, Johnson asked his readers to imagine the limitless possibilities of wealth that could be produced when “art and nature shall join, and strive together, to give best content to man and beast.” The English believed that the native peoples had not exploited the great bounty of the land. The company planned to “set many thousands to work, in these such services,” producing timber, hemp and flax, silk, pitch, turpentine, and any number of industries. All the colony needed was “people to make the plantation, and money to furnish our present provisions and shipping now in hand.” The sooner interested individuals signed up, their “charge will be the shorter, and their gain the greater.” 222
    Another broadside, Concerning the Plantation of Virginia New Britain, spotlighted the fact that the company offered economic opportunity to all classes in the New World. While it had the support of nobles, gentlemen, and merchants, it was advertising to “all workmen of whatever craft