The Historic Triangle Story
The Historic Triangle gave birth to the United States, and a huge nation grew from a tiny place in Virginia. In that same tiny place, Europeans, American Indians, and Africans first lived together and became the seed of the American people.
The first permanent English settlers sent by the Virginia Company of London were at Jamestown. The ideas of revolution were fanned at Williamsburg. Independence was won in the final victory at Yorktown.
Representative self-government started in the Historic Triangle, as did civilian control of the military and the right to private ownership of property. If even one of those concepts, any one, had been missing, the United States would be a completely different place. It might not even be the United States.
At times before our independence, the Dutch were to the north, the Spanish to the south, and the French to the north and west. If the Jamestown settlers had given up or the revolutionaries in Williamsburg been less intent or the British had won at Yorktown, what nation might have moved in?
We would not necessarily be better or worse, but we would be different.
Europeans, American Indians and Africans met each other here. It was not an equal meeting. Europeans enslaved Africans and killed and displaced Indians. Four hundred years later, we are still trying to deal with the results of all that began in the Historic Triangle.
Top