Graduation Term

2016

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Department of History

Committee Chair

John Reda

Abstract

On March 22, 1622, Native Americans under the Powhatan war-leader Opechancanough launched surprise attacks on English settlements in Virginia. The attacks wiped out between one-quarter and one-third of the colony's European population and hastened the collapse of the Virginia Company of London, a joint stock company to which England's King James I had granted the right to establish settlements in the New World. Most significantly, the 1622 Powhatan attacks in Virginia marked a critical turning point in Anglo-Indian relations.

Following the famous 1614 marriage of the Native American Pocahontas to Virginia colonist John Rolfe and her conversion to Christianity, English colonists in North America and English policymakers in Europe entertained considerable optimism that other Native Americans could be persuaded to embrace both English culture and the

Christian faith. After Opechacanough's surprise attacks, efforts to assimilate Native Americans into the Virginia colony stopped. The attitude on the part of English colonists in Virginia and policymakers in England became decidedly antagonistic toward Native Americans, and English colonial authorities engaged in callous Indian policies in the wake of the 1622 Uprising.

The inimical English attitudes toward Native Americans and the ruthless policies of separation from and extermination of Native Americans spread beyond Virginia during the seventeenth century and lasted throughout England's colonial presence in North America. Through primary source material including business records, journals, letters, and broadsheets; as well as the work of eighteenth century historians and modern historians and anthropologists, I intend to establish the lasting impact of the 1622 Uprising on Anglo-Indian relations.

Access Type

Thesis-Open Access

DOI

http://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2016.Kramer.M

Download

Share

COinS