At the beginning of the novel, Jacob reflects on the “people’s war” in Virginia, and how it was a motley gathering of men coming together against putatively tyrannical authority. This war is most likely Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676, an infamous uprising that forever changed the dynamic of labor in the colonies.
Seventeenth-century Virginia was an agricultural economy, populated by both large plantations and small farms. Tobacco, a cash crop, brought in a tremendous amount of revenue, as did the buying and selling of slaves from Africa. Slaves labored in all of the thirteen colonies, though in much smaller numbers in the Northern and Middle colonies and overall a smaller percentage of the labor force than at the turn of the 18th century and beyond.
The main labor force for the Southern colonies for much of the 17th century was not slaves but indentured servants. Indentured servants were mostly European men (and some women) who were looking for economic opportunities that eluded them in the Old World. They signed a contract with a farmer or other colonial employer that stipulated the employer would pay their passage over, have them work on their land or as a domestic servant, and then at the close of the contract, which was usually around seven years, grant the former servant “freedom dues” of food and clothes and, ideally, a plot of land. This was an appealing prospect, and thousands of British, Dutch, Scottish, and Irish immigrants came to the colonies under such a contract.
Indentured servitude was not slavery, but it did have severe limitations on servants’ freedoms. Many indentured servants complained of poor treatment during their working years and then disappointing plots of land when the contract ended. As Europeans, they were entitled to some rights but chafed at the growing sense that they were languishing at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Bacon’s Rebellion was named for Nathanial Bacon, a prominent Virginian who was nonetheless not part of Governor Berkeley’s inner circle and who found it advantageous to stoke the flames of rebellion.
Virginia was wealthy from the tobacco trade, but that wealth was concentrated in the hands of the few. Poorer Virginians who did not own land had no voice in their colony’s governance, and chafed at the lack of rights even though they were technically Englishmen. Tensions rose even higher when Berkeley refused to clear out Native Americans on the borders of the colony, which would have made more land accessible to the landless men.
Bacon and Berkeley publicly clashed, and Bacon eventually led a ragtag militia into Jamestown, burning it down. After Bacon died of dysentery, the rebellion collapsed; 23 of Bacon’s compatriots were hanged. In the aftermath, wealthy white planters had to reckon with what the volatile white labor force underneath them could do, and gradually began phasing out indentured servitude. The presence of slaves in Bacon’s militia was also deeply disturbing to the elite, so not only did slavery increase as indentured servants vanished, stricter and harsher laws separating the races were also enacted throughout the Southern colonies.
