Ep. 12: Bacon's Rebellion & the Invention of Race

Few contemporary or historical accounts of Bacon’s rebellion agree in every particular about the movement’s motivations and outcomes. For the Jacksonian Democrat, George Bancroft, Virginians had enjoyed free government for three generations on the edge of the wilderness. For Bancroft and nationalist historians, this was the prelude to the American Revolution—it was the people seizing their government, its policy-making apparatus, and its legitimacy so that the popular interest might once again govern Virginia. However, Twentieth-century historians with a more global perspective on British imperial activity recognized Bacon’s Rebellion as a racialized conflict against the Indians which transformed into a vehicle for the expression of popular discontent. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.