TY - JOUR
AU - Donegan,, Kathleen
AB - With the four hundredth anniversary of the founding of Jamestown behind us and the four hundredth anniversary of Plymouth Plantation just ahead, competing stories about American origins remain in circulation. Joseph Kelly enters the conversation with a new answer: the origins of American history can be found with the colonists who were marooned on the island of Bermuda in 1609. Kelly argues that when the Sea Venture, the flagship of the “third supply” to Jamestown, broke upon that deserted island, the wreck inaugurated a new social order. The consensus around who was to rule and who was to be ruled broke along with the ship. Marooned men began to engage in mutinous thoughts and actions, declaring their intentions toward autonomy and self-determination. These social and political claims were entirely new in the context of a world defined by seemingly immovable divisions between gentlemen and the common sort. England's entrenched class system was amplified in the colonies, with plantations becoming, in Kelly's estimation, no better than labor camps made up of captives and tyrants, prisoners and jailers. In that unforgiving environment, dissolution turned to dissent, and dissent turned into nascent forms of democracy. Abandoned, lost, and marooned, men decided the imported system of government that held them in bondage should have no authority over them. Continually, they split themselves off. In bids for self-creation, they ran away. In bids for the creation of an alternative polity, they pledged themselves to compacts of mutual consent. Kelly sees that the experience of being marooned, cast away on distant shores, and within reach of what was to them a wilderness, had the effect of making men feel “profoundly and dangerously free” (p. 332). Thus they had the temerity to resist despots and imagine collectives that Kelly sees as newly, and truly, American. Kelly is a gifted storyteller, and his book is addictively readable. He has a writer's talent for bringing immediacy to every scene and imparting a vibrant life to even the most arcane documents. The shadow world of “must have been” that every historical narrative faces is handled with grace. Men are rightly terrified; carrion birds feed on flesh; venison brought from Wahunsonacock tastes like plenty. All these ring with human and historical truth. And yet, the archive also weaves seamlessly throughout the prose, the work of a learned and nimble scholar. Characters and scenes in Jamestown and Bermuda become indelible and give credence to the argument that in colonial settlement, draconian control and radical freedom sat side by side in a whole new way, and that this juxtaposition gave rise to both the urge and the opportunity for self-determination. Marooned will satisfy professional historians, undergraduates, and a general reading audience alike. Although the first of these may quibble with the direct line drawn between 1609 and 1776, they will also be impressed by a book that, by seeking and following the lives of commoners, is able to bring into new focus a story over four hunded years old. © The Author 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America's Origin
JO - The Journal of American History
DO - 10.1093/jahist/jaz529
DA - 2019-12-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/marooned-jamestown-shipwreck-and-a-new-history-of-america-s-origin-ugz2VgaDBg
SP - 729
VL - 106
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -