Marooned

Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin

Joseph Kelly

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English

Bloomsbury
01 December 2020

History; History of the Americas

For readers of Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower, a groundbreaking history that makes the case for replacing Plymouth Rock with Jamestown as America's founding myth.

We all know the great American origin story. It begins with an exodus. Fleeing religious persecution, the hardworking, pious Pilgrims thrived in the wilds of New England, where they built their fabled city on a hill. Legend goes that the colony in Jamestown was a false start, offering a cautionary tale. Lazy louts hunted gold till they starved, and the shiftless settlers had to be rescued by English food and the hard discipline of martial law.

Neither story is true. In Marooned, Joseph Kelly reexamines the history of Jamestown and comes to a radically different and decidedly American interpretation of these first Virginians.

In this gripping account of shipwrecks and mutiny in America's earliest settlements, Kelly argues that the colonists at Jamestown were literally and figuratively marooned, cut loose from civilization, and cast into the wilderness. The British caste system meant little on this frontier: those who wanted to survive had to learn to work and fight and intermingle with the nearby native populations. Ten years before the Mayflower Compact and decades before Hobbes and Locke, they invented the idea of government by the people. 150 years before Jefferson, they discovered the truth that all men were equal.

The epic origin of America was not an exodus and a fledgling theocracy.

It is a tale of shipwrecked castaways of all classes marooned in the wilderness fending for themselves in any way they could--a story that illuminates who we are today.

By: Joseph Kelly
Imprint: Bloomsbury
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 634g
ISBN: 9781632867780
ISBN 10: 1632867788
Pages: 512
Publication Date: 01 December 2020
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Joseph Kelly is a professor of literature at the College of Charleston and a member of the American Studies Association. He is the author of America's Longest Siege Charleston, Slavery, and the Slow March Toward Civil War, and the editor of the Seagull Reader series. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

Reviews for Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin

Original and illuminating . . . This thoughtful and rewarding study should be taken seriously by scholars and enjoyed by general readers. It is an essential contribution to American history. -- Orville Vernon Burton, author of The Age of Lincoln on AMERICA'S LONGEST SIEGE An important contribution to Southern antebellum history . . . Highly recommended. -- Starred Review * Library Journal on AMERICA'S LONGEST SIEGE * A tenacious chronicle of the pernicious construction of South Carolina's slave-driven political orthodoxy. * Kirkus Reviews on AMERICA'S LONGEST SIEGE *