Scott here with another episode of the History on Plug podcast.

Years before Jamestown planters made New World farming profitable by growing tobacco,

and years before their countrymen up north and the slimmuth colony managed to avoid

starvation conditions and acclimate to the growing cycle in New England,

there was an English settlement

in Bermuda that was wealthier, larger, and more prosperous. It was established in 1612 on an island

less than one square mile, but grew to become the beating heart of the entire Atlantic economy

a century later. Bermuda was once home to more settlers than Virginia or Massachusetts,

and it became England's first profitable

plantation, pioneering tobacco cultivation and the use of enslaved Africans, practices that

later spread to the mainland, and becoming a template for Britain's global colonial empire.

In this episode, I'm talking with historian and archaeologist Michael Jarvis to uncover

the hidden history of Bermuda in its place in the 17th century age of discovery. Jarvis is known as chainsaw Mike by his students,

and he spent 14 years excavating Smith's Island, a tiny island where British colonization

of Permuda began, and he's cleared away endless brush and unearthed one of the first English

settlements in the new world. From supplying Jamestown with food, influencing early colonial economics, we see that Bermuda is a missing cornerstone to America's origin story,

much more than the footnote it's been relegated to. We'll be joined this discussion with Michael

Jarvis. And one more thing before we get started with this episode, a quick break for a word from our

sponsors.

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