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Hidden History of Bermuda is Reshaping the Way We Think About Colonial America

University of Rochester historian Michael Jarvis uncovers Bermuda’s pivotal role in reshaping our understanding of colonial America.

May 6, 2025

1 min

Early colonialism in the Americas tends to conjure images of Jamestown and Plymouth Colony. But long before settlers there acclimated to the New World’s growing conditions and overcame starvation conditions, an English settlement established in Bermuda in 1612 was wealthy and prosperous.


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University of Rochester historian and archaeologist Michael Jarvis has been uncovering the hidden history of Smith’s Island in Bermuda and its pivotal role in reshaping the understanding of colonial America.


Nicknamed “Chainsaw Mike” by his students, he has spent 14 years excavating Smith’s Island and one of the first English settlements in the New World.


Jarvis argues that Bermuda’s role in supplying Jamestown with food and influencing early colonists make it a cornerstone of America’s origin story rather than the historical footnote to which it has largely been relegated.


His research on Smith’s Island was recently the cover story of Smithsonian magazine and was featured on the History Unplugged podcast.


Jarvis is an expert on colonial America, the international and intercolonial networks of trade at the time, and settlement patterns in eastern North America, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the communities surrounding European gold- and slave-trade forts in West Africa.


He can be reached at 585-275-4558 and michael.jarvis@rochester.edu.



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