Mr. Kelly, a literature professor at the College of Charleston, takes as his subject Jamestown’s common men, arguing that they were metaphorically (and sometimes literally) shipwrecked in other men’s dreams, forced to forge their own path toward America’s future. The author meanders through topics only loosely connected to Jamestown ... But I wonder who, outside of New England, still sees Plymouth as the foundation of the United States. History textbooks today mention Jamestown as well as St. Augustine and Santa Fe alongside New England. My own kids, learning history in North Carolina public schools would point to Roanoke or the American Revolution if asked about America’s founding. And I suspect few students in San Diego and St. Louis would choose Plymouth. Joseph Kelly is beating a horse that died in the previous century ... But of course our founding myths do describe the people we want to be—so maybe the Virginia Co.’s plan for a civil public life with responsible leaders and economic opportunities for everyone is a good history to revive after all.
...In this retelling of the Jamestown saga, Kelly argues that history’s Hopkinses, who aspired to marronage (escaping slavery) and self-determination instead of empire or a city on a hill, offer the myth we need, one that contains 'the trampled seed of democracy.' Though Hopkins and those like him left few records, Kelly fleshes out the available glimpses with a vivid, detailed description of the settlement and its English and Native American contexts ... Kelly’s dynamic narrative brings Jamestown to life and shows how history reflects the present as well as the past.
Despite the volume of this book and the controversial interpretations, it makes a fast easy adventure in reading. It includes the familiar such as John Smith but so much else. Solid scholarship, Marooned has an extensive bibliography, documentation, and illustration.
Marooned is a long, dramatic historical and sociological tract. There are many illuminating facts and anecdotes to be discovered here ... I recommend the reader ignore the polemic about whether Plymouth or Jamestown was the real 'birth of America' and enjoy all the new and fascinating details to be learned in Marooned.
Kelly...opens with a recounting of the settlement’s dismal beginning. Ships brought about 100 adventurers searching for gold and a passage to the Pacific. Neither turned up, and, unable to obtain food from the unwelcoming natives, most starved to death. Some deserted to the Indians. Others followed John Smith, an ambitious, pugnacious soldier of fortune who made himself leader in 1608 and probably saved the colony by extorting food from native villages ... However, writes Kelly, 'appealing as that view is, it misinterprets what really happened that day in Jamestown ... Discovering seeds of democracy in Massachusetts’ zealots or Virginia’s autocratic patricians has never been easy, but Kelly’s lively, heavily researched, frequently gruesome account gives a slight nod to Jamestown as the 'better place to look for the genesis of American ideals.'
America is the land of runaways from colonial tyranny, according to this stimulating history of Jamestown. College of Charleston literature professor Kelly recounts the tumultuous five years after the 1607 founding of Jamestown, Va., England’s first permanent colony in America ... Amid famine and race war, as starving Englishmen deployed fire and sword to extract corn from Native American villages, Kelly highlights settlers who defied company edicts, escaped the Jamestown gulag, and lived peacefully among the natives ... Kelly sets this gripping narrative against an intelligent discussion of sociocultural context, ranging from political philosophy to Shakespeare’s The Tempest...he paints a superb portrait of the founding, combining brilliant detail with epic sweep.
