Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and The Start of a New Nation

“English America was a corporation before it was a country.”

The driving impetus of the Virginia Company was not civilization but profit, particularly in mineral wealth. Only after they realized that profit came from carefully produced commodities did investors begin developing the sort of hierarchies that lead to civilizational order.

“Indeed, the notion that English-speaking people would someday occupy and govern most of the North American continent would have seemed literally insane.”

An English empire that would span the globe was only an inkling of a notion in the early 17th century. At the time, the Spanish and Portuguese ruled the sea and commanded colonial power.

“Had not this violence and this injury been offer’d unto us by the Romans, we might yet have lived overgrown Satyrs, rude and untutor’d, wand’ring in the woods, dwelling in caves, and hunting for our dinners as the wild beasts in the forests for their prey.”

The Virginia Company’s instructions not to “offend” the local peoples contradict the very idea of colonization. This condescending attitude quickly gave way as Algonquins were far more attuned to their environment than the English.