Selling Virginia: Promoting English Emigration in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

It is estimated that in the seventeenth century roughly 150,000 English emigrated to the Chesapeake Bay of North America to own and labor on plantations. They suffered extremely high mortality rates. Yet a large amount of promotion literature in a diversity of formats was published by the Virginia Company, the Crown, and other vested interests to encourage, persuade, and entice English men and women to emigrate. This article reviews the historical context of recruitment and within that context, analyzes some of the promotion literature of the day. It summarizes the difficulties faced by colonists in Virginia, particularly early Jamestown, and notes the effect of Virginia's dismal reputation in England which the propaganda continually defied.