Nicolaes Visscher's map of New Netherland, New England and part of Virginia, about 1656
Novi Belgii, Novaeque Angliae nec non partis Virginiae tabula [Map of New Netherlands, New England, and part of Virginia], ca. 1656
Marked Jamestown

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Jamestown and the American colonies

English settlers founded Jamestown in 1607 in the land of the Powhatan, and Plymouth in 1620. Thirteen colonies grew along the Atlantic coast, built on taken land and, increasingly, on enslaved labour.

Place
Jamestown · Werowocomoco · Plymouth · SalemThe Americas
Laid out as
A civilisationA society seen from the inside: its rulers, places, work, beliefs and daily life, laid out like the rooms of a house.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IThe Powhatan and Jamestown
  2. IIPocahontas: the real story
  3. IIIPlymouth and the Wampanoag
  4. IVTobacco and enslaved Africans
  5. VSalem
  6. VIColonies at war

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Wahunsenaca (Powhatan)
  • Pocahontas
  • John Smith
  • Tisquantum (Squanto)
  • Metacom

Objects

  • Finds from Jamestown Rediscovery
  • The Powhatan’s mantle

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1607 to 1763. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?