Journey to the New World – London 1606 to Virginia 1607 is on one level an account of the experiences of the men and women who set out to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America.

At the same time, the exhibition, running at Museum in Docklands from 23 November 2006 to 13 May 2007, “tells the story of the modern world as we know it,” according to David Spence, the Museum’s Director. And indeed, the impression that emerges from the artefacts on display is of an England and America which, though 400 years distant, are recognisable in many ways.

An unattributed 1620s landscape painting shows London as a verdant panorama with a scattering of church spires. But by contemporary standards – and in the opinion of the 104 settlers who left it behind – the capital was grotesquely overcrowded, its population standing at 250,000. Well-targeted advertising campaigns and a public lottery were among the tactics used to stimulate emigration once the new colony was established. “Come, boys,” leers one such advertisement, “Virginia longs till we share the rest of her maidenhead”. And if this was not inducement enough, the prospect of shores scattered with rubies and diamonds, and the equally misleading idea that gold chamber pots were a household staple in Jamestown, might have proved persuasive.

There were, in fact, fortunes to be made. Sir Thomas Myddleton – a stakeholder in both the Virginia Company and the East India Company – clearly had an eye for a long-term investment. The canny venture capitalist of his time, he realised that not only material wealth but improved status and even colonial governorship were the potential dividends of such enterprises.

Nicholas Comberford’s idiosyncratic and charming map of 1657 powerfully conveys the idea of the New World as an unknown quantity, its incidental illustrations of lions and gilled sea monsters lending an air of mystery and adventure. But the proportion of the world’s uncharted territory was rapidly diminishing. The complex web of trade beginning to criss-cross the globe can be traced through the blue ‘Neuva Cadiz’ beads which formed part of every settler’s trading kit. Named for a Spanish colony in Venezuela, they originated in the glasshouses of Venice and ended up as the prized possessions of the native Powhatan Indians of Virginia.

The search for mineral wealth in the new territory proved futile, and in the end it was tobacco that proved to be the mainstay of Jamestown’s trading success. Such was the importance of this crop that it became valid as currency, and 120 lbs of best-leaf was the standard bride-price. The plantation pioneer and cultivator, John Rolfe, and his Algonquinian princess, Pocahontas, were ideal ambassadors for this lucrative trade. Presented at the Court of King James in 1616, their marriage was widely credited with promoting peaceful Anglo-Indian relations.

But to take their example as indicative of the dynamic between native and settler in the Virginia of the 1600s would be a gross oversimplification. As part of this exhibition, the Museum has invited Chief Anne of the modern-day Rapahanock to explain how the incomers would have been perceived by the Powhatan Indians. She describes a peace-loving people in whose philosophy “the land was free for all to use for sustenance and could not be possessed by any man,” an outlook which arguably predestined them to exploitation at the hands of the colonists.

There were losers on the English side too, and the fairly unscrupulous measures used to satisfy the demand for manpower on the plantations are well documented. The children’s shoes on display are all the more emotive given that they formed part of the standard-issue kit supplied to the poor house inmates who, along with orphans and vagrants, were packed off on the gruelling voyage to a life of indentured servitude. As the exhibition text observes, “freedom and prosperity for some brought enslavement for others,” a pattern repeated again and again in the intervening four centuries between 1606 and today.

The content of the exhibition strikes a well-considered balance between artefacts excavated from the Jamestown site (razed to the ground in 1698 and uncovered in the 1990s) and material from the Museum’s collection.

The intrepid travellers set out a stone’s throw from the Museum, and a replica of the Discovery, the smallest of the vessels to have conveyed them across the Atlantic, is currently moored outside the Museum. Guided tours are planned in the new year.

Once settled, the colonists thoughts turned to home comforts, and dotted around the show are examples of the finery sent from London to meet the requirements of the wealthier settlers’ wives, and the paraphernalia of correspondence which not only kept the ladies in touch with the latest trends, but were a means of sending vital trading information and compelling accounts of life in the new colony.

The Museum in Docklands show succeeds in vividly encapsulating the experiences of the Virginian colonists whilst at the same time anchoring their story firmly in the wider story of the world 400 years ago.