Violence on the Fringes: The Virginia (1622) and Amboyna (1623) Massacres
Two events, both labelled massacres by the English who suffered death at the hands of their rivals, took place within the space of a year on opposite sides of the globe and in widely different overseas contexts. The first episode took place in Virginia in March 1622, when Opechancanough and his sold...
Saved in:
| Published in: | History (London) 2014-07, Vol.99 (336), p.505-529 |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | Two events, both labelled massacres by the English who suffered death at the hands of their rivals, took place within the space of a year on opposite sides of the globe and in widely different overseas contexts. The first episode took place in Virginia in March 1622, when Opechancanough and his soldiers killed one-third of the English colonists in a surprise attack. The second episode transpired in February 1623 in the Spice Islands, when Dutch East India Company officials in Ambon suspected English East India Company employees of conspiring with Japanese soldiers to seize the trading post, interrogated and tried them, and executed twenty-one men. This episode, known in England by 1624 as the 'Amboyna massacre', endured as a meaningful frame of reference well into the eighteenth century. This article explores the particular contexts of each episode and analyses what violence meant to different participants. It investigates how each event became a 'massacre' to survivors and to observers in England. In both Virginia and Amboyna, the English were victims, not perpetrators, of violence, and thus these events offer an opportunity to explore how victims of violence deployed their ordeals, in pamphlets, images, plays, and songs, to further their own ends. Labelled as massacres, these two episodes acquired a meaning apart from the actual course of events, helping the English to reassess their overseas goals, to re-evaluate their prospects and to define themselves anew. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 0018-2648 1468-229X |