Key Points, Taking Possession

The “Taking Possession” story line examines the colonists’ quest for land ownership and discusses how their quest affected Native Americans, settlers from other nations, and the development of fundamental American values.

Background and Thesis

The availability of land fueled the immigration of Europeans to Virginia and the colony’s westward expansion onto lands occupied by Native Americans.

Cross-Cultural Interaction

Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans attempted to secure their own interests—which differed according to their cultural values—through trade, negotiation, and armed conflict. None emerged unscathed or unchanged.

Land Acquisition

The colonists’ exploration, mapping, acquisition, and exploitation of land evolved from European cultural and legal precedents and consumed much of their time and resources.

Williamsburg’s Central Role

As the capital of a vast territory, Williamsburg was the center of shifting networks of political, economic, diplomatic, and military relationships that linked colonial Virginians, European powers, Native American groups, and other colonies.

Williamsburg as a Hub

It was a commercial, administrative, and communications center and home to many institutions and activities—the passage of laws, the licensing of surveyors, the recording of transactions, and the negotiation and adjudication of disputes—that shaped Virginians’ relationships to the land.

Legacy

In the process of taking possession of the land for themselves, colonial Virginians altered the environment and began to develop an exploitative land-use ideology.

Land Ownership

The emergence of a large freeholding population fostered Americans’ belief in freedom, egalitarianism, autonomy, and the ideal of individual ownership of land. After two centuries, these rights and privileges have not been fully extended to Americans from all cultural, social, and economic backgrounds, however.