The History of Virginia, in Four Parts

The work offers a chronological account of the colony’s founding and development, opening with early voyages and failed settlements and progressing to the establishment of a permanent plantation, changes in governance, and episodes of scarcity and resupply. It examines relations with Indigenous nations, describing their customs, beliefs, warfare, and diplomacy; surveys the colony’s natural resources and commercial prospects, including tobacco cultivation and early salt and iron works; and outlines legal and political institutions, land distribution, assemblies, and the introduction of enslaved Africans, concluding with an assessment of the polity and material condition of the colony in the early eighteenth century.