Old Dominion, New Commonwealth

 Ronald L. Heinemann, John G. Kolp, Anthony S. Parent Jr., William G. Shade. Old Dominion, New Commonwealth: A History of Virginia, 1607-2007. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2007.

For the 400th anniversary of the founding of Virginia, the University of Virginia Press brought forward a new narrative history of the Commonwealth for general readers as well as students. Written in collaboration by four historians (Heinemann assumed primary editorial duties as well, with assistance from Kolp), each of whom took a different chronological era, the book does a solid job of updating standard narrative accounts of Virginia social and political history, and was the first such general history of the state published since the 1970's.

The book is solidly written and the work and perspective of the four different historians rarely if ever seem in disagreement. Overall, the collective authorship focused on concisely telling a straightforward narrative centered on a handful of key themes, such as the ongoing conflict between progressive economic reforms and the deeply-rooted political and fiscal conservatism that has defined Virginia politics for generations. A work of synthesis, this volume is not only an excellent introduction for a reader completely unversed in Virginia's history, but would also be a useful corrective for older natives of the state who learned earlier narratives either through popular understanding, grade-school social studies, or outdated popular histories. All four authors at least make some effort to bring (then-) new scholarship into their accounts. 

But while solid and useful, the volume can also be a little unsatisfying. Partly that may be conceptual--the book is not merely a political history, but politics are centered rather firmly in this account, and while a case could be made that this is appropriate as the polity of Virginia is the sole parameter of this study, the authors could have been more explicit about this point of view. 

However, this shortcoming may ultimately be an endemic feature of textbooks. The broader the scope, the thinner the analysis. The book's shortcomings mostly come into focus when the authors move away from a narrow focus on politics and economic development; consideration of issues of race in particular, while well-intentioned and generally sound, can almost seem perfunctory and contextually removed from the main thrust of the narrative. There is no way to tell even the political history of Virginia without reference to race, but the occasional attempts to broaden the story only highlight how little space the book allows for aspects of social and cultural life outside the narrow field of politics. And given that the book still comes in at well over 300 pages, that may be unavoidable. Textbooks which try to cover a wide range of historiography as well as the subject matter can end up spreading themselves too thin.

All in all, this is a very readable introduction to the subject, and can form a good temporal framework for further reading.