Isle of Devils, Isle of Saints: An Atlantic History of Bermuda, 1609–1684, by Michael J. Jarvis

This book on Bermuda between its first permanent settlement in 1609 and the abolition of the Somers Island Company, which oversaw the colony, in 1684 is an impressive example of the new approaches now being taken in Atlantic history. It combines archaeological and historical analysis with a sensitive understanding of the ecological and environmental changes brought about by human settlement. New perspectives are offered on the relations between the company and its colony, on the economic imperatives driving both, on the forms of government in church and state in Bermuda and on the experiences of planters, their wives and children, servants and slaves. Older models of relations between an English centre and a peripheral colonial hub have been superseded by a new spatial approach emphasising the growth of a wider, interconnected English empire. Given the range of material covered, Michael Jarvis has set out an agenda which will shape future research.

Some of this treatment, for example, on the early importance of tobacco production and the subsequent diversification of Bermuda’s economy, is relatively familiar. So, too, is the account of the quarrel between Sir Edwin Sandys, Sir Thomas Smith and the Earl of Warwick in the early 1620s: Jarvis is particularly acute on Sandys’s failings as a colonial manager. The presence of Puritan ministers from the start, the spectacular quarrels with religious Independents in the 1640s and 1650s, and the persecution of Quakers after 1660 is equally familiar territory. Moral supervision of the inhabitants remained a preoccupation for the governors and councillors in Bermuda for decades, a preoccupation reinforced by legal sanctions and fears over sexual offences and witchcraft. There were intermittent fears over slave revolts as well.

Where new ground is broken is with the argument that, from the late 1620s, Bermudians developed a new sense of identity and emerged as a distinct people, an example of growing ‘Americanness’. This is sustained by coverage of the exchanges between Bermuda and the company in London. Complaints and grievances formulated by the officers and settlers in Bermuda were often ignored or rejected by the adventurers, right down to the acerbic exchanges of the late 1670s which precipitated the company’s demise in 1684. This is not an entirely convincing case. Appeals to the rights of English subjects, to Parliament and to the King recurred throughout the period. Bermudians still claimed to be ‘English’. Bargaining and negotiation, petitioning and the presentation of grievances were well established features of English corporate life before, during and after the seventeenth century. Mechanisms for securing consent went well beyond Parliamentary elections. The same was true of other colonial powers such as the Dutch and the Spanish.

Other, more modest reservations are tenable. A few archival sources in England have been overlooked. Part of the Somers Island Company’s papers are still extant, for example. Fragments of the Rich family’s correspondence also survive, as do more of Nathaniel Butler’s strategic reflections. But nothing should detract from Jarvis’s overall achievement in depicting Bermuda’s culture, economy, government and society in these years. It is a book to be savoured and read again and again.