58 Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and EnslavementMorgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: Th e
Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975.
Parent Jr., Anthony S. Foul Means: Th e Formation of a Slave So-
ciety in Virginia, 1 660– 1 740. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2003.John, Prester
Prester John, and his kingdom, refers to what Europeans
on expeditions of conquest and imperialism into various
regions of the world, specifi cally Africa, recognized as a po-
tential Christian ally against an expansive Muslim enemy.
Prester John’s Kingdom was believed to be located in what
would be modern-day Ethiopia. Despite various points of
contention regarding Prester John’s origin and whether he
was merely an allegorical fi gure or an actual historical per-
sonage, Prester John no less represents larger ideas about
European exploration and exploitation from the 12th cen-
tury on, and can be understood as a catalyzing fi gure for
imperial conquest. Th ough there was a degree of haze sur-
rounding his existence, there does exist some confi rmed
information regarding Prester John.
A letter ostensibly written and sent by him in 1165 to
Byzantine Emperor Manuel Comeneus who later forwarded
it to Fredrick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, was a sig-
nifi cant document in positioning Prester John favorably into
the minds of Europeans. Th e letter is supposedly marked by
a tone of condescension as Prester John goes on to promul-
gate the enormity of his wealth and power and vastness of
his diverse Christian sovereignty and the various natural
wonders that his kingdom possesses, while simultaneously
professing his humility, which he states should be apparent
through the adoption of the name Prester as opposed to a
more grand appellation. Prester John and his kingdom are
of particular importance to Iberian ideas of conquest, and
he represents an important lens through which to under-
stand much of the complexity and motivation behind Eu-
ropean conquest, specifi cally in regard to geopolitical and
economic interests.
In terms of geopolitics and economics, European colo-
nizing expeditions are conceived of in terms of two types
of goals—long term and short term. During the 1500s in
Iberia there existed a Christian minority within a larger
Muslim majority. For this minority the idea of an estab-
lished Christian kingdom already in Africa coupled withEnglish customs, language, laws, and religion. Th ey were
much less assimilated than the Creoles who had made up
the majority of slaves before 1680, and to white Virginians
they seemed strange and less human than the earlier Afro-
Virginians had. In addition, there were greater numbers of
blacks in Virginia than ever before. Th e large numbers of
unassimilated slaves seemed threatening, and white Virgin-
ians began to discriminate against them in ways that had
never before seemed necessary. Th is was especially true
in the wake of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, the largest social
upheaval in Virginia history before the Revolution. Dur-
ing Nathaniel Bacon’s revolt against Virginia’s leadership in
Jamestown, indentured servants, poor landless white free
men, and slaves banded together to the fi ght the emerging
Virginia gentry. Aft er the rebellion was over, the dangers
of a combined underclass of poor whites and black slaves
was not lost on the wealthy white planters. Th ey began to
actively promote discrimination against blacks in order
to drive a wedge of racial diff erence between poor whites
and slaves. Th ey accomplished this in part by passing laws
that punished blacks more harshly than whites for identical
crimes, forbade marriage between whites and blacks, and
limited blacks’ ability to use the courts to defend themselves
against white depredations. Gradually, poor whites began
to associate themselves more with upper-class whites than
with black slaves who shared their economic condition.
By the end of the 17th century, as the Jamestown era
ended, blacks in Virginia were much worse off than they
had been when the colony was new. Th e foundation for a
society that despised and mistreated African Americans
had been laid by an elite that both feared black Virginians
and hoped to profi t by them.
See also: Bacon’s Rebellion; Chesapeake Colonies; Freedom
Dues; Headright System; Indentured Servitude; Racialized
Slavery; Rolfe, John
Jennifer Bridges OastBibliography
Berlin, Ira. Many Th ousands Gone: Th e First Two Centuries of
Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University, 1998.
Breen, T. H., and Stephen Innes. “Myne Owne Ground:” Race and
Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1 640– 1 676. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980.
Kulikoff , Allan. Tobacco and Slaves: Th e Development of Southern
Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1 680– 1 800. Chapel Hill: Univer-
sity of North Carolina Press, 1986.