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Gale eBooks: History - Naugatuck Valley Campus This link opens in a new window A wide-ranging collection of historical documents, including primary source materials, covering topics including civil rights, the environment and conservation, immigration and immigrant communities, LGBTQ+ history, the Middle Ages, the Middle East, women's rights, Native Americans, and issues of nationalism and populism.
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History Reference Source This link opens in a new window Full text for more than 1,990 reference books, encyclopedias and non-fiction books from leading history publishers. Covering both U.S. and world history topics, History Reference Source is a full-text database featuring historical reference books, magazines, journals and thousands of primary source documents. View the EBSCO Search Tutorial Video
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In Context: World History This link opens in a new window A range of topics such as Aztecs, Industrial Revolution, Silk Road, the Buddha, Space Race, and more provide a wide perspective across the globe. Rare primary sources, reliable reference, and multimedia content are aligned to curriculum and put this vast subject into context for students. World History is cross-searchable with Gale In Context: U.S. History for users with access to both resources.
Books
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Love and Hate in Jamestown
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Call Number: F 234.J3 P68 2005ISBN: 1400031729Publication Date: 2005-01-04A New York Times Notable Book and aSan Jose Mercury News Top 20 Nonfiction Book of 2003In 1606, approximately 105 British colonists sailed to America, seeking gold and a trade route to the Pacific. Instead, they found disease, hunger, and hostile natives. Ill prepared for such hardship, the men responded with incompetence and infighting; only the leadership of Captain John Smith averted doom for the first permanent English settlement in the New World.The Jamestown colony is one of the great survival stories of American history, and this book brings it fully to life for the first time. Drawing on extensive original documents, David A. Price paints intimate portraits of the major figures from the formidable monarch Chief Powhatan, to the resourceful but unpopular leader John Smith, to the spirited Pocahontas, who twice saved Smith’s life. He also gives a rare balanced view of relations between the settlers and the natives and debunks popular myths about the colony. This is a superb work of history, reminding us of the horrors and heroism that marked the dawning of our nation. -
The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown
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Call Number: F 234 .J3 G58 2008ISBN: 9780805086546Publication Date: 2008-08-05A freshly researched account of the dramatic rescue of the Jamestown settlers The English had long dreamed of colonizing America, especially after Sir Francis Drake brought home Spanish treasure and dramatic tales from his raids in the Caribbean. Ambitions of finding gold and planting a New World colony seemed within reach when in 1606 Thomas Smythe extended overseas trade with the launch of the Virginia Company. But from the beginning the American enterprise was a disaster. Within two years warfare with Indians and dissent among the settlers threatened to destroy Smythe's Jamestown just as it had Raleigh's Roanoke a generation earlier. To rescue the doomed colonists and restore order, the company chose a new leader, Thomas Gates. Nine ships left Plymouth in the summer of 1609--the largest fleet England had ever assembled--and sailed into the teeth of a storm so violent that "it beat all light from Heaven." The inspiration for Shakespeare's "The Tempest," the hurricane separated the flagship from the fleet, driving it onto reefs off the coast of Bermuda--a lucky shipwreck (all hands survived) which proved the turning point in the colony's fortune. -
The Forty Years That Created America
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Call Number: E 162 .L35 2014ISBN: 9781442236592Publication Date: 2014-10-03The names Jamestown and Plymouth have become synonymous for most students of American history with founding, and birth both, of the American nation, and of freedom and democracy themselves. In this book, author Ted Lamont asks us to reconsider our country s formative years, and explore the stories, lives, achievements, and failures of America s earliest founding fathers: those who paved the way for the Colonial Era, and the American Revolution. They were explorers, investors, passionate religious leaders, and determined developers who struggled for generations to successfully plant the English flag in this strange new soil. Lamont deftly details the ways in which the stories and struggles of figures like Sir Walter Raleigh, Bartholomew Gosnold, Richard Hakluyt, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and Captain John Smith were not just related, but connected in ways that help us better understand the colonies and culture born of their efforts. The infancy of America from Roanoke s founding in 1585 through the firm establishment of Jamestown and Plymouth in 1625 is where we first see planted the seeds of the rest of America s colonial, economic, political, and cultural history, that was the immensely difficult, and often overlooked, first step toward the New World we are still working to perfect."
Great Britain in North America
Some highlights
- By 1607 Great Britain was the only European country not involved in North America.
- John Smith was in charge of Jamestown. He instituted a policy "no work no eat".
- Colonists had to deal with Algonquin and their leader Powhatan. Powhatan accepted white settlers for their technologies such as metal that native Americans did not have.
- Pocahontas married John Rolfe.
- Trial of Anne Hutchinson
If you are looking for primary sources, check out this short Youtube video on how to find them in the NVCC databases.
Primary Sources
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John Smith: The General Historie of VriginiaThe Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, first published in 1624, was written by Captain John Smith, a colonist, military veteran, adventurer, and the man largely responsible for the survival of Jamestown, the first permanent British colony in the New World. The work as a whole consists of six books; included here are excerpts from Chapters 1 and 2 of the third book, which describe the journey from England to the New World (including charges of mutiny brought against Smith), the settlers’ arrival in Virginia, and their encounters with the Indians. Also detailed is the well-known story of Pocahontas, the favorite daughter of Algonquin chief Powhatan. Smith had been captured by Powhatan's men in 1607. He was on the verge of execution when she interceded and saved his life, despite being only about twelve years old at the time. In the wake of this event, relations between the settlers and the tribe improved.
Chronology
