Young George Washington & 1491

It's been about 15 years since I first started reading biographies of the American presidents, in chronological order, starting with the abridged version of George Washington by Douglas Southall Freeman.  Over the next few years I progressed through Adams, Jefferson, Madison, etc. through to Andrew Jackson before getting sidetracked.

What sidetracked me was a fascination with what I read those early presidents loved reading themselves: the histories, of and by, the ancient authors: Cicero, Plutarch, Pliny, Herodotus, Thucydides, Homer and many others.  This fascination led to a 15 year reading-tangent, back to the beginning of recorded history, starting with Mesopotamia, Egypt, etc., and slowly progressing through the centuries (and millennia).

My tangent is finally about to come full circle.  In my last post I wrote about Louis XIV, the subject of whom died in 1715.  George Washington was born in 1732, leaving just a 17 year gap between my circumnavigation of history and the logical beginning of U.S. presidential biography.  And while 18th century Europe (and beyond) includes a ton of history which I still need to explore, I just couldn't resist reading the first of the unabridged volumes in Freeman's George Washington, entitled Young Washington.

The book casts a wide net on the life and times of 17th and 18th century colonial Virginia.  Perhaps half of the book details colonial life, society and history before Washington is even born.  It also includes a substantial history of George's family, tracing its roots far back into English history.

Young Washington sets a terrific foundation on the life and times that will serve me well.  Even though I live very close to the region in question, I know very little of the pre-U.S. history of what became the mid-Atlantic.

Young Washington's life was more elevated than most, but he was far from perfect.  I anticipate that his early foibles will help offset the panegyric of his later life.

The book traces his early fascination with the sea, detailing an impressionable trip to the Caribbean where he witnessed his first military fort.  He became a land-surveyor as a teenager, whether by luck or prescience that anything having to do with land speculation would likely become lucrative.  He was financially scrupulous from his youth, saving aggressively from his survey work, which naturally led to land speculation in his own right.

The most noble act of young Washington's life - probably the first time we get a glimpse of his later renown - was his volunteering to lead a bold military mission.  Young George marched all the way to Williamsburg, the then-capital of the colony, to volunteer his services to Governor Dinwiddie.  Washington wanted to help deliver a potential deadly message to the French at Fort Le Boeuf, essentially telling them to stop encroaching on English lands.

Ultimately George ended up leading that expedition, which despite brutal conditions, first experienced brilliant success before tragic defeat.  Young Washington learned to lead during these expeditions through trial, error and more error.  His life trajectory began to take shape.

Following Young Washington, I realized that there was much of early American history (pre-Colonial) that was completely unknown to me.  This resulted in a quick download - and the highly enjoyable reading - of the book 1491 by Charles C. Mann.

Although a completely different book than anticipated, this book was fascinating.  What I thought was largely about the Jamestown era of early American history turned out to be a detailed examination of life across the Americas for millennia, prior to the arrival of Columbus.

Mann puts forth a still-controversial, though I believe directionally accurate, hypothesis on the history of the Americas.  Civilization across these continents reached back thousands of years earlier, reached considerably higher populations, and much more advanced degrees of sophistication than ever thought possible.

His investigation shatters the myth of a sparsely populated North America, filled with a patchwork of gentle natives who lived at one with nature.  Instead we learn that these "indians" actively managed nature, both plant and animal, on a continental scale.  Yes they respected nature, but they believed in actively using it to their own ends.  They burned forests and hunted game in devastating scales.

Central and South America were filled with mammoth populations - often larger in number than contemporary societies in Europe or elsewhere.  These were genuinely large, rich, expansive cultures that we are only beginning to know.

This book was hugely fascinating.  I still need to find a book on Jamestown, however.

Summer is winding down and Fall is approaching.  My favorite time of year makes me think of my favorite novelist:  Dickens is calling me after a hiatus of several months.