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Journal article
Making a massacre: The 1622 Virginia “massacre,” violence, and the Virginia Company of London’s corporate speech
Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal,, Vol.19, pp.419-456
19
2021
Abstract
When news reached London that the Powhatan Confederacy had mounted an assault on the Virginia colony in March 1622, the loss of colonists, infrastructure, and goods came to the Virginia Company of London as crisis among crises. Colonists were resisting efforts to diversify the colony’s commodities and shareholders were growing impatient with the lack of dividends. The Virginia Company responded to news of the attack by embarking on a print publication campaign to depict the violence not as a mere incursion but as a “massacre.” This article
examines this publication campaign to argue that the Virginia Company leveraged its corporate rhetoric to convert the violence of the so-called massacre into a dividend for shareholders and a vindication of the company’s economic program. Ultimately, the article argues that we
must read the Virginia Company’s publications through the lens of corporate strategy—not as reportage but as active efforts to generate capital.
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Details
- Title
- Making a massacre
- Publication Details
- Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal,, Vol.19, pp.419-456
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- University of Pennsylvania Press; United States
- Series
- 19
- Copyright
- © 2021 The McNeil Center for Early American Studies. All rights reserved.
- Identifiers
- 99380090299806600
- Academic Unit
- College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities; English
- Language
- English