Which Of The Following Turned Jamestown Into A Profitable Enterprise - T-Tees - Your Answers Await, Life's Questions Unraveled

Colonial Virginia: Origins of the American Chemical Enterprise

It is difficult to separate the history of Jamestown from the myths obscuring the first successful English settlement in the Americas. The most enduring story surrounds Pocahontas saving the life of Captain John Smith. Popular history also has it that a few decades before Jamestown, in what is now North Carolina, the fledgling Roanoke colony, an English settlement of over 100 men, women, and children, disappeared, a mystery that remains unsolved.

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Scholarship supported many of these myths, the most important of which held the settlers in both Roanoke and Jamestown underestimated the new environment. Further, the conventional view maintained that ill-prepared colonists sailed to America to undertake a reckless and ultimately failed search for gold or other riches. Indeed, accounts from early Jamestown note that most of the colony had gone crazy with its “gilded refiners” and their “golden promises.” Historians have often concluded that the London-based management of the Virginia colony, in its pursuit of economic exploitation of the New World, simply miscalculated based on ignorance and greed.

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A new narrative has emerged to challenge these assumptions. The evidence comes from archaeological excavations at both Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, location of a fort built by Roanoke colonists, and Jamestown National Historic Site and Historic Jamestowne, the two adjacent modern properties occupying ground along the James River in Virginia. These properties mark the location of the James Fort of 1607, the first permanent settlement of English-speaking people in North America. Combined with historical scholarship, archaeological discoveries reveal the intersection of many interests, including English ambitions to create chemical industries involving glass and metals and a Native American trading empire within which copper was the most valued metal, imported to Virginia from the Great Lakes. Further, the English ambitions ushered in another European presence, Germans and Poles who served as glassblowers, miners, apothecaries, and other chemical practitioners.

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What is more, new archaeological evidence, coupled with a re-examination of the historical record, points to early Virginia as the birthplace of the American chemical enterprise. Recent archaeological investigations at Jamestown in particular have revealed the presence of chemical tools and apparatus to detect, identify, and process natural resources for various commercial purposes. In early Virginia—which in 1607 stretched from Spanish Florida to modern Canada—settlers participated in carefully designed schemes to gather and export a host of resources, especially those needed to further industries in England. The English search for and exploitation of native resources for metallurgy, pharmacology, perfumery, and other applications led to the establishment of American chemical practices which eventually transformed into modern industries.

Artifacts from Roanoke and Jamestown have produced several “firsts”, including: the earliest known piece of European glass in North America, a piece of chemical glassware (Roanoke); the presence of the earliest Jew in North America, a chemist/metallurgist from Prague named Joachim Gans (Roanoke); the earliest experimental research center in English North America, a place of chemical experimentation and assay (Roanoke); and the first permanent colony of English-speaking peoples in North America at Jamestown. Jamestown built upon the exploratory goals of the Roanoke ventures involving natural resources to assist established commercial centers in England. Experimentation led to the first chemical industry in North America, glass production, and later metal manufacturing.

Until recently, archaeologically-recovered artifacts of chemical processes have received relatively little attention from historians. The archaeological remains of Elizabethan chemistry, particularly, are not common; those that have been found are frequently nondescript. These artifacts include dull glass or ceramic fragments of vessels that wore out and were discarded, making it difficult for archaeologists to date by type or function. Jamestown and Roanoke have yielded chemical artifacts, along with mining sites in the Canadian Arctic established by Martin Frobisher, who made three voyages to the New World in the late 16th century in search of the fabled Northwest Passage.

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At most of these European archaeological sites, tools of distillation and fire assay (testing of metals for commercial viability) have been found. Evidence of distillation is not surprising, as alcohol-rich substances were produced for a variety of purposes, such as medicines and perfumes. Recent archaeological analysis at European sites in North America in recent years has focused on the material remains of fire assay, specifically the humble crucible and other ceramic vessels. We now know that most European crucibles and other ceramics were German-made to a very precise tolerance in order to withstand high heat, remain chemically inert, and serve dependably for repetitive processes under like conditions. Colonists brought with them the best available apparatus. At Jamestown, the evidence of crucibles and residues of assay have highlighted the evidence for non-ferrous metallurgy c. 1607-1624. Taken as a whole, the archaeological evidence at Jamestown and Roanoke speaks to a colonial leadership adept at mathematical learning, including astronomy and surveying, with practical skills in mining, metallurgy, and medicinal arts to serve the needs of commercial centers in England, from glass production to metal manufacturing.

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