Existing comment:
"The Worst Country in the World"
In 1697, Virginia was labeled the "best" and "worst"––it was a potential Garden of Eden but its "natural advantages" were undeveloped. It had become a place to deposit "desperate Rogues" and other dregs of English society. And the colony was disparaged because tobacco cultivation had brought settlement along rivers without the towns found in civilized England and Europe. The image of Virginia needed reinvention. |