Savage Kingdom

The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America

By: Benjamin Woolley

Narrated by: David Drummond

Published to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the first American colony, Savage Kingdom presents a bold, even reckless, political adventure driven by a sense of imperial destiny and dogged by official hostility.

Four centuries ago, and 14 years before the Mayflower, a group of men - led by a one-armed ex-pirate, an epileptic aristocrat, a reprobate cleric, and a government spy - left London aboard a fleet of three ships to start a new life in America. They arrived in Virginia in the spring of 1607 and set about trying to create a settlement on a tiny island in the James River. Despite their shortcomings, and against the odds, they built Jamestown, a ramshackle outpost that laid the foundations of the British Empire and the United States of America.

Drawing on new discoveries, neglected sources, and manuscript collections scattered across the world, Savage Kingdom challenges the textbook image of Jamestown as a mere money-making venture. It reveals a reckless, daring enterprise led by outcasts of the Old World who found themselves interlopers in a new one. It charts their journey into a beautiful landscape and a sophisticated culture that they found both ravishing and alien, which they yearned to possess but threatened to destroy. They called their new home a "savage kingdom", but it was the savagery they had experienced in Europe that had driven them across the ocean and which they hoped to escape by building in America "one of the most glorious nations under the sun".

An intimate story in an epic setting, Woolley shows how the land of Pocahontas came to be drawn into a new global order, reaching from London to the Orinoco Delta, from the warring kingdoms of Angola to the slave markets of Mexico, from the gates of the Ottoman Empire to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

©2007 Benjamin Woolley (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.

Critic reviews

"Highly readable....Fast-paced narrative." (Publishers Weekly)
"Brilliantly framed narrative...fascinating....A well-told story." (Kirkus)

Utterly riveting, deeply impactful

Classic storytelling meets meticulous research. Glorious characters in a hideous lottery of life, death and almost unbearable cruelty and injustice. I listen while doing long training runs often for 6 hours or so primarily using trails made by American Indians. Perfect audible book as I know I will listen to it again.

Outstanding!

Listened to it all at once, could not cut it off.
Great work all 'round.

Very Interesting

Very intersting early Virginia history. You can not help wondering after the first few chapters why they kept trying, but they did.

Fascinating history!

I was instantly hooked by this history, and there was never a dull moment. It's an interesting subject anyway, but this book was particularly good. The author tries to understand both the English and Native side of the story, and in his exploration finds fascinating parallels between the two cultures. Well narrated, and just a great book.

Somewhat Dry…But Excellent..

If only because the author eschews Political Correctness and…Just the Facts, Ma’am. And this Joe Friday approach may not be entirely entertaining or satisfying to those with an agenda, but it is what is needed when most modern historians have become finger, waggingpundits interested more in lecturing (in a non-academic sense) than in relating what actually occurred. Happily, there is almost no “good Indian, bad white man“ reproach. We discover in this excellent research two cultures, not necessarily in collision, but one vying for survival, and the other, naturally and understandably, looking for benefit from the newcomers. Loved the often overlooked “revelation” that the advent of American slavery owed as much to the ravenings of black Africans as it did European greed. That fact has been known for a long time, but suppressed because it does not meet the expectations of the Woke revisionists. praise unto the author for having the courage to tell the truth.