Hello and welcome to a history of the United States. Episode 11, Introduction to Social History.

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telling the full fleshed out story of the United States. Our newest pioneers this week are

listeners Robbie and Kerry. Thanks guys. I couldn't do

this show without you. We're beginning to enter a significant moment in the narrative as we last left

things in 1619 following the creation of the General Assembly. What we've been doing since

episode two is telling the story of the

Jamestown settlement, but last week we began to stop doing this. This is for a couple of reasons.

We haven't had as much material since Smith left the colony, making it harder to form a narrative,

but perhaps, more importantly, it's simply gotten too big.

For years, James Town was all there was to the United States, but it really isn't anymore.

Remember how big a deal it was when we began setting up all the settlements outside of Jamestown,

or how when Rolfe assessed

the colony in 1616, there were only six recognised settlements. By 1620, they were close to 30.

This means changing the nature of the way I tell the story, since it would really be impractical for me to talk

about such micro-decision as we dealt with at Jamestown in 30-odd different settlements.

That would be as uninteresting as it is irrelevant to telling the story of the United States,

which is what I'm trying to do. In short, what I'm trying to say is that

this is the point where we stop telling the story of Jamestown and begin to move into

telling the story of Virginia. So, we're not going to be moving the narrative forward very much

...