ARRIVAL OF THE FIRST AFRICANS IN VIRGINIA BY RIC MURPHY
History is an enterprise that, somewhat counter-intuitively, benefits greatly from the perspective of distance, and even more greatly from the evolving trove of information stored and distributed by improved technology. The results may often look like Revisionist History, but as Ric Murphy demonstrates in his fascinating book, Arrival of the First Africans in Virginia, more often we are treated to a new, definitive clarification and interpretation of past events. And, make no mistake, this in-depth analysis of a most significant moment in history – the first arrival and impact of blacks in colonial America – turns most of our historical presumptions upside down. For those non-academics unfamiliar with recent analyses, it is quite enlightening to realize these early blacks were not ignorant beasts of burden – so often depicted as such by white historians – but served to ensure the very survival of the earliest colonial ventures, and more, from their embedded agricultural knowledge, turn them profitable for the first time.
Ric Murphy has no agenda for writing Arrival of the First Africans in Virginia other than to set the record straight. And his academic professionalism in providing extensively persuasive documentation along with a profoundly reasoned analysis leaves the reader quite astonished by the ignorance of one’s own faulty historical presumptions. Murphy’s precise recounting of the voyage unwillingly made by the first Angolans to arrive in Virginia’s faltering Jamestown community, as well as contextualizing the moment within an economic catastrophe predicated on power, piracy, and the corruption produced by various charters, makes for fascinating and enlightening reading. This is history at its best.
R. MURPHY
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