Beyond the Atlantic: English globetrotters and transoceanic connections

William and Mary Quarterly

Volumn 63, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 675-692

  Games, Alison ^a  

^a GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 40949129741     PISSN: 00435597     EISSN: 1933-769     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (55)

1. On the political, social, and geographic ideas that have shaped the popular continental divisions of the world, see esp. Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley, Calif., 1997).
2. See Alison Games, "Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities," American Historical Review III, no. 3 (June 2006): 741-57.
3. Those sharing Mapp's vision should visit www.feegi.org, the Web site of the Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction.
4. This piece comes from a project I am completing on English expansion around the globe from 1560 to 1660. On the global transmission of pathogens, see, for example, William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Garden City, N.Y., 1976);
5. Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge, 1986). Studies of commodities are all the rage these days, with salt, kola, peanuts, pepper, coffee, chocolate, rice, and cod finally getting the press they have long deserved.
6. The classic progenitor of this field is Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1985).
7. H. V. Bowen, Elites, Enterprise and the Making of the British Overseas Empire, 1688-1775 (New York, 1996), 5.
8. For the Portuguese, see A. J. R. Russell-Wood, A World on the Move: The Portuguese in Africa, Asia, and America, 1415-1808, Aspects of Portugal (New York, 1993).
9. Setting the Dutch Atlantic in a global context, Pieter C. Emmer and Willem W. Klooster have argued that in fact there was no Dutch Atlantic (Emmer and Klooster, "The Dutch Atlantic, 1600-1800: Expansion without Empire," Itinerario 23, no. 2 [1999]: 48-69). Their argument hinges on personnel and income.
10. For a different approach that argues that the Netherlands was transformed by its engagement with the Atlantic, see Benjamin Schmidt, Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570-1670 (Cambridge, 2001).
11. Kenneth R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1650 (Cambridge, 1984), is one example of a book that connected different types of enterprises, but the model has not generally been followed, particularly for later periods. Instead, the pattern has been to examine different geographic regions of English activity around the globe discretely, even within a single oceanic basin.
12. Separate essays, for example, explore English activity in the Chesapeake, New England, the Caribbean, western Africa, Asia (primarily south Asia), Ireland, the middle colonies, and the lower South in Nicholas Canny, ed., The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, Oxford History of the British Empire (Oxford, Eng., 1998).
13. Nicholas Canny, "The Origins of Empire: An Introduction," in Canny, Origins of Empire, 19.
14. Richard S. Dunn, Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1650-1717 (Princeton, N.J., 1962), 61-62;
15. John Pory to Sir Dudley Carleton, Virginia, Sept. 30, 1619, in William S. Powell, John Pory, 1572-1656: The Life and Letters of a Man of Many Parts (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1977), 106-9 (quotation, 106).
16. M. Epstein, The Early History of the Levant Company (1908; repr., New York, 1968), 17-19;
17. S. A. Skilliter, William Harborne and the Trade with Turkey, 1578-1582: A Documentary Study of the First Anglo-Ottoman Relations (Oxford, Eng., 1977), 23;
18. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds (Berkeley, Calif., 1995), 1: 612-27.
19. For an illustration of this trend to emphasize dichotomies in the region, see the first section of Linda Colley's Captives (New York, 2002).
20. A significant exception that rejects this world of opposites is Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe, New Approaches to European History (Cambridge, 2002).
21. On the importance of rereading early encounters through the prism of assimilation, not conquest, see, for example, Braudel, Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, I: 629;
22. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Ithaca, N.Y., 2000).
23. See also Kenneth Parker, Early Modern Tales of Orient: A Critical Anthology (London, 1999), 28-29.
24. [George Sandys], A Relation of a Iourney begun An: Dom: 1610. Fovre Bookes. Containing a description of the Turkish Empire, of Ægypt, of the Holy Land, of the Remote parts of Italy, and Ilands. Adioyning (London, 1615), 249;
25. Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary Written By Fynes Moryson Gent. First in the Latine Tongue, and Then Translated by him into English (London, 1617), pt. 3: 29;
26. [Henry Blount], A Voyage into the Levant. A Breife Relation of a Iourney, lately performed by Master H. B. Gentleman, from England by the way of Venice ... (London, 1636), 32-33.
27. See esp. David Beers Quinn, The Elizabethans and the Irish (Ithaca, N.Y., 1966);
28. Nicholas P. Canny, "The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 30, no. 4 (October 1973): 575-98;
29. James Muldoon, "The Indian as Irishman," Essex Institute Historical Collections III, no. 4 (October 1975): 267-89. Muldoon approached the connection from the perspective of a medieval historian of Spain and argued that Ireland should play the same explanatory role in studies of English America as the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula has played in studies of the Spanish conquest of America. Muldoon's call for a reconceptualized historiography of English expansion has been enthusiastically answered, as the first volume of Oxford History of the British Empire, with its rich exploration of the internal conquest of the British Isles, makes clear.
30. See Canny, Origins of Empire, esp. Canny's introd. and the contribution by Jane H. Ohlmeyer, "'Civilizinge of those rude partes': Colonization within Britain and Ireland, 1580s-1640s," 124-47.
31. James Horn, "The Conquest of Eden: Possession and Dominion in Early Virginia," in Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the Making of the North Atlantic World, ed. Robert Appelbaum and John Wood Sweet (Philadelphia, 2005), 31.
32. William Strachey, The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania, ed. Louis B. Wright and Virginia Freund (London, 1953), 18, 26.
33. For Smith's early trading enterprises, see "Between 10 September and early December, 1608. Captain John Smith to the Treasurer and Council of Virginia, London," in Philip L. Barbour, ed., The Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter, 1606-1609 ..., Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society (Cambridge, 1969), 1: 243.
34. For references to "cape merchant," see "20 November 1606. Instructions for Government," in Barbour, Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter, 1: 41;
35. Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company: The Failure of a Colonial Experiment (New York, 1932), 51.
36. The Spanish conquistadors had quickly established this pattern of using indigenous women from noble families to cement their authority at the top of pre-conquest hierarchies. Cortés arranged five successive marriages for Tecuichpotzin, the daughter of Moctezuma (and renamed Doña Isabel by the Spanish), to bolster Spanish authority over the toppled Aztec empire (Donald E. Chipman, Moctezuma's Children: Aztec Royalty under Spanish Rule, 1520-1700 [Austin, Tex., 2005], chap. 2).
37. On the possibility of Smith's own marriage to Pocahontas, see John Smith, "A Map of Virginia. With a Description of the Covntrey, the Commodities, People, Government and Religion ...," in Barbour, Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter, 2: 458-59;
38. Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown (Charlottesville, Va., 2005), 142.
39. On Dale's envisioned marriage, see [Ralph] Hamor, A Trve Discovrse of the Present Estate of Virginia, and the successe of the affaires there till the 18 of Iune. 1614 ... (London, 1615), 40-42.
40. Strachey, Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania, 192.
41. On English sexual interest in Indian women, see Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma: An American Portrait (New York, 2004), 112;
42. Flores [Zuñiga] to Philip III, in Alexander Brown, The Genesis of the United States: A Narrative of the Movement in 1605-1616, which Resulted in the Plantation of North America by Englishmen ... ([1890]; repr., Bowie, Md., 1994), 2: 572-73 (quotation, 572).
43. Interest in Indian women was hardly unique to Virginia. The planters of Providence Island proposed to their employers in London that they bring Indian women to the island. The company rejected this scheme (Letter to Captain Bell, Apr. 20, 1635, in Public Record Office, Colonial Office 124/1, fol. 77r).
44. William Monson, "Advice how to plant the Island of Madagascar, or St. Lawrence, the greatest Island in the World, and a part of Africa," in M. Oppenheim, ed., The Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson in Six Books Edited with a Commentary Drawn from the State Papers and Other Original Sources by M. Oppenheim, Publications of the Navy Records Society 45 (1913): 434-39 (quotations, 437-38).
45. Wa[lter] Hamond, A Paradox. Prooving, That the Inhabitants of the Isle called Madagascar, or St. Lawrence (in Temporall things) are the happiest People in the World ... (London, 1640);
46. Walter Hamond, Madagascar, The Richest and most Frvitfvll Island in the World ... (London, 1643);
47. Richard Boothby, A Breife Discovery or Description of the most Famous Island of Madagascar or St. Lavrence in Asia neare unto East-India ... (London, 1646), on headrights, 61, on Virginia attack, 18, on Trinidad, 61-64, quotation, 62. Powle Waldegtave refuted the comparison with the people of Virginia. Even the enemy the English encountered in Madagascar was different from the open enemy of Virginia.
48. The English, Spanish, and Portuguese did well against such a clear enemy, but the people of the bay were crafty: they would trap the English with promises and with "heathenish Rhetorique and circumstances" yet would try to kill or starve their European visitors (Waldegrave, An answer to Mr Boothbies Book, of the Description of the Island of Madagascar. In Vindication of the Honorable Society of Merchants trading to East-India, from the many Aspersions laid upon them by the said Boothbie [London, 1649], 24). Waldegrave attacked the use of headrights. He thought men might be deceived; the voyage was so long to Madagascar and the expense of transporting goods so great that men who paid their own way would find promises to be empty. What worked for Virginia would not, he insisted, work for Madagascar (ibid.).
49. On the expansion of the Sakalava in this period, see Raymond K. Kent, Early Kingdoms in Madagascar, 1500-1700 (New York, 1970).
50. Hamond, Paradox, B4V.
51. Robert Hunt, The Island of Assada, Neere Madagascar Impartially defined, being a succint, yet Plenary Discription of the Situation, Fertility and People therein Inhabiting. Clearely demonstrating to the Adventurer or Planter, the right way for disposing his Adventure ... (London, [1650]).
52. The search for survivors is detailed in Captain Blackman's relation of his voyage to the East India Company, Jan. 14, 1651/2, from Swally Marina, in British Library, E/3/22, fol. 275V.
53. See, for example, the journal of John Luke, who reported regularly on viewing the mole and on the status of repairs to the mole during his time in Tangier from 1670 to 1673 (British Library, Add. MSS 36,528).
54. The quotations are drawn from James Wilson to [?], Oct. 5, 1661, in British Library, Add. MSS 4191, fols, II-14.
55. Wilson anticipated the recruitment schemes of the Jersey and Pennsylvania plantations in North America, which similarly relied on continental pietists to settle land. E. M. G. Routh cites another version of this proposal in British Library, Harl. MSS 1595, in which the author is anonymous (Routh, Tangier: England's Lost Atlantic Outpost, 1661-1684 [London, 1912], 21).