Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Excellent: The World They Made Together

 

In America, in 1607 the first successful British settlement began in a land they called Virginia. Within a few decades another people began arriving, taken from their homes in Africa. Both peoples arrived imbued with the culture of their homeland. This book is a partial but substantial rendering how two very different peoples, also two different racial composites, learned to survive and achieve together in the Virginia wilderness during the 18th century.

The intertwining began slowly in the 17th century and became consummate in the 18th. They were mixing their cultures intimately to become together a singular people called Virginians. By the end of the century they would lead a new nation. And though the names of the leaders were in every instance British, the blood and cultures of these once very separate peoples had so interwoven by the end of the 18th century that no one can say the British would have succeeded so well or so thoroughly without the Africans.

2 comments:

  1. "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. "

    Thomas Jefferson

    Y'all have a nice day.

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