Envisioning an English Empire

Jamestown and the Making of the North Atlantic World

Robert Appelbaum, John Wood Sweet, Robert Appelbaum, John Wood Sweet

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780812219036
• eBook ISBN: 9780812204421
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Envisioning an English Empire brings together leading historians and literary scholars to reframe our understanding of the history of Jamestown and the literature of empire that emerged from it.The founding of an English colony at Jamestown in 1607 was no isolated incident. It was one event among many in the long development of the North Atlantic world. Ireland, Spain, Morocco, West Africa, Turkey, and the Native federations of North America all played a role alongside the Virginia Company in London and English settlers on the ground. English proponents of empire responded as much to fears of Spanish ambitions, fantasies about discovering gold, and dreams of easily dominating the region's Natives as they did to the grim lessons of earlier, failed outposts in North America. Developments in trade and technology, in diplomatic relations and ideology, in agricultural practices and property relations were as crucial as the self-consciously combative adventurers who initially set sail for the Chesapeake.The collection begins by exploring the initial encounters between the Jamestown settlers and the Powhatan Indians and the relations of both these groups with London. It goes on to examine the international context that defined English colonialism in this period—relations with Spain, the Turks, North Africa, and Ireland. Finally, it turns to the ways both settlers and Natives were transformed over the course of the seventeenth century, considering conflicts and exchanges over food, property, slavery, and colonial identity.What results is a multifaceted view of the history of Jamestown up to the time of Bacon's Rebellion and its aftermath. The writings of Captain John Smith, the experience of Powhatans in London, the letters home of a disappointed indentured servant, the Moroccans, Turks, and Indians of the English stage, the ethnographic texts of early explorers, and many other phenomena all come into focus as examples of the envisioning of a nascent empire and the Atlantic world in which it found a hold.

Part I

Reading Encounters

Chapter 1

The Conquest of Eden

Possession and Dominion in Early Virginia

JAMES HORN

After good deliberation, hee [Wahunsonacock] began to describe mee the Countreys beyond the Falles, with many of the rest…Nations upon the toppe of the heade of the Bay…the Southerly Countries also…[and] a countrie called Anone, where they have an abundance of Brasse, and houses walled as ours. I requited his discourse, seeing what pride hee had in his great and spacious Dominions, seeing that all hee knew were under his Territories.

—John Smith

The land which we have searched out is a very good land, [and] if the Lord love us, he will bring our people to it, and will give it us for a possession.

—Robert Johnson

By the early 1580s, few promoters of colonization—whether statesmen, merchants, or scholars—seriously doubted England's right to take possession of those parts of the Americas uninhabited by Christians. Sir George Peckham invoked the “Law of Nations,” which sanctioned trade between Christians and “Infidels or Savages,” the “Law of Armes” which allowed the taking of foreign lands by force, and the Law of God, which enjoined Christian rulers to settle those lands “for the establishment of God's worde” to justify English claims. In ancient times and “since the nativitie of Christ,” he pointed out, “mightie and puissant Emperours and Kings have performed the like, I say to plant, possesse, and subdue.” Spain's exclusive claims to the New World—by virtue of first discovery and papal donation—were explicitly rejected. Elizabeth I did not understand why she or any “Princes subjects should be debarred from the Indies, which she could not perswade herself the Spaniard had any just Title to by the Bishop of Rome's Donation.” With laudable pragmatism if shaky geography, Richard Grenville advocated the establishment of English colonies in South America on the grounds that “since the Portugall hath attained one parte of the newe founde worlde to the Este, the Spaniarde an other to the weste, the Frenche the thirde to the northe: nowe the fourthe to the southe is by gods providence lefte for Englande.”¹

The voyages of Martin Frobisher to Terra Incognita in search of a northwest passage and gold between 1576 and 1578 and Sir Humphrey Gilbert's ill-fated attempt to establish plantations in Newfoundland and along the northern seaboard conjured up what seemed to be a very real possibility of the English becoming the dominant power in the North Atlantic. John Dee, the Hermetic magus who influenced a generation of mariners and explorers, believed an Imperium britannicum was imminent. Claiming America for the English on the grounds of discovery and conquest by the Welsh prince, Owen Madoc, the legendary King Arthur centuries before, and voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot in the reign of Henry VII, he set out the queen's right to take possession of “foreyn Regions”: By the “same Order that other Christian Princes do now adayes make Conquests uppon the heathen people, we allso have to procede herein: both to Recover the Premisses, and likewise by Conquest to enlarge the Bownds of the foresayd Title Royall.” Richard Hakluyt the younger, the greatest propagandist of his age, was perplexed that “since the first discoverie of America (which is nowe full fourscore and tenne yeeres), after so great conquests and plantings by the Spaniardes and Portingales there, that wee of Englande could never have the grace to set fast footing in such fertill and temperate places as are left us yet unpossessed of them.” Founding colonies would be a clear signal of England's intent to stake a claim to American lands and seas as other European powers had done, and not to be shut out of the New World by the Spanish or anyone else. The crown's dominions would be enlarged, the treasury's coffers filled, and national honor satisfied. The “plantinge of twoo or three strong fortes upon some goodd havens” on the mainland between Florida and Cape Breton would provide convenient bases for fleets of privateers operating in American waters, eventually weakening Spanish power in the Old World as well as the New. Finally, as the most forward-looking writers such as Christopher Carleill, Peckham, and the two Richard Hakluyts pointed out, colonies would promote valuable commerce and long-term prosperity, as well as social and economic well being at home.²

But while the English had little doubt about the justice of their rights to establish colonies or the long-term benefits they would bring, there was less certainty about how those rights would be realized and how English settlers would be received by native populations. If first discovery was vital to claims of possession so too was the fact of occupation. It is unlikely Spain and Portugal would have been able to hold onto their colonies for long without settling and developing them, and it was precisely those regions of the Americas largely uninhabited by the Spanish that other colonizing powers eventually seized upon. Rituals of possession—the unfurling of flags, solemn declarations, the erection of crosses and monuments—pronounced formal title to the land, but ultimately occupation and the capacity to defend settlements from internal and external aggressors proved to be the crucial test for all colonizers.³ In this sense, the founding of England's first permanent colony in America, Virginia, and the protracted struggle between the English and indigenous peoples that ensued, is of particular interest. English justifications for conquest and possession were not simply worked out in abstract but were significantly influenced by the experience of contact, notably by the hostilities that stigmatized Anglo-Indian relations at Roanoke and Jamestown.⁴

England's First Virginia

English settlement of Virginia began not on the James River but a hundred miles to the south at Roanoke Island, on the Outer Banks of modern North Carolina. Following the death of Sir Humphrey Gilbert on the high seas in September 1583 returning from Newfoundland, the mantle of chief sponsor of England's colonizing efforts fell on the broad shoulders of the queen's new favorite, Walter Ralegh. Letters patent issued by Elizabeth in the spring of 1584 empowered him to “discover search fynde out and viewe such remote heathen and barbarous landes Contries and territories not actually possessed of any Christian Prynce and inhabited by Christian people” and to “holde occupy and enioye…forever all the soyle of all such landes Countreys and territories so to be discovered or possessed.” The wording was conventional, derived from the patent granted by Henry VII to John Cabot before the voyage of 1497, which in turn was based on papal injunctions, such as the bull Inter Caetera issued by Alexander VI in 1493, the principal legal justification for Spanish claims to the New World. As we have seen, the English did not subscribe to the exclusionary intent of the Alexandrine bulls, but they adopted without question the centuries-old dictum that newly discovered “savage” or “heathen” lands could be legitimately possessed and settled by Christians.⁵

The decision to plant a colony at Roanoke was probably determined by Dee's understanding of the geography of the American coast, as illustrated by his map of 1580, and Simon Fernandes, the Portuguese master mariner in Ralegh's service who had explored the region some years earlier with the Spanish. Even so, much of the mid-Atlantic seaboard remained a mystery. While writers and propagandists had built up a growing body of knowledge about America in general during the previous three decades, and sporadic privateering expeditions had added more detailed information about the Caribbean and Spanish Main, relatively little was known about the mainland north of Spanish settlements. Ralegh could have had only a very rough idea about the extent or potential of the lands he now formally possessed, and consequently his first decision was to dispatch two small vessels under Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, guided by Fernandes, to reconnoiter the region and find a location suitable for settlement.

Arriving off the Outer Banks in early July 1584, after a week or so sailing along the coast, Fernandes eventually discovered an entrance into the inner “Sea” where Amadas and Barlowe formally took possession of the region “in the right of the Queenes most excellent Maiestie” and their master, Ralegh. Barlowe's account, carefully edited for publicity purposes, revealed a land ripe for occupation. On the island of Hatarask, there were “many goodly woods, full of Deere, Conies, Hares, and Fowle, even in the midst of Summer.” The forests were not like those of Muscovy and Bohemia, “barren and fruitlesse,” but contained “the highest and reddest Cedars of the world” as well as “many other [trees] of excellent smell, and qualitie.” After a few days on the island they encountered a group of local Indians, described as a “very handsome, and goodly people, and in their behaviour as mannerly, and civill, as any of Europe.” The king of the local tribe (Secotans) was called Wingina and, Barlowe observed, was “greatly obeyed, and his brothers, and children reveranced.”⁶ Here was Eden, a land of plenty where the “earth bringeth foorth all things in abondance, as in the first creation, without toile or labour.” In a phrase reminiscent of Peter Martyr, the great Milanese scholar who had written an influential account of America half a century before, the Indians were described as a “very handsome, and goodly people,…most gentle, loving, and faithfull, void of all guile, and treason,…such as lived after the manner of the golden age.” Besides emphasizing the Indians' simple way of life, Barlowe was careful to detail their weaponry and methods of warfare, themes developed in Thomas Hariot's more elaborate description published a few years later. He, like Barlowe, believed the Indians “in respect of troubling our inhabiting and planting,” posed little threat, and was hopeful that “through discreet dealing and governement” would be brought to “the trueth, and consequently to honour, obey, feare and love us.”⁷

Effective as it may have been as a piece of propaganda, Barlowe's account was highly misleading in providing a realistic assessment of the difficulties of establishing a settlement in the Outer Banks. The shallow waters of the sounds and treacherous waters offshore were wholly unsuitable for oceangoing vessels, which were forced to anchor a couple of miles off the coast exposed to the fury of Atlantic storms. As a potential harbor for privateering fleets a worse location could hardly be imagined. His depiction of the natural bounty of the region, a land of milk and honey where little effort was needed to subsist, was merely a conventional reworking of the age-old fantasy of Arcadia, which had little to do with the practicalities of provisioning a colony and creating self-sufficiency in foodstuffs. Finally, his view of simple and pliant Indians who would not only assist English colonists in establishing themselves but, in time, would provide a docile labor force, ignored evidence all around him of warlike and independent peoples who would fight tenaciously to defend their lands. Successful in raising interest and financial backing in England, Barlowe's account left the first colonists dangerously unprepared for the conditions they would encounter and ultimately contributed to the disasters that followed.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that within six months of the arrival of a colonizing expedition under the command of Ralph Lane the following year relations with local tribes had broken down, mainly as a result of English aggression. The Secotans, Lane reported, were convinced the settlers were “fully bent to destroy them…[and] they had the like meaning towards us.” Hariot was told of a prophecy “that there were more of our generation [English] yet to come, to kill theirs and take their places.” The collapse of the Roanoke colony and the hostilities that scarred Anglo-Indian relations left an enduring legacy. Menatonon, chief of the Chowanocs, informed Lane of a powerful king who lived in the north on a great bay, who “had trafficke with white men” but who was “loth to suffer any strangers to enter into his Countrey.”⁸ This was Wahunsonacock, paramount chief of the Powhatans, at that moment consolidating his territories to the north in Virginia, and it is more than likely news of the violent and unpredictable behavior of the English had come to his ears. For their part, the English remained convinced of the potential bounty of “the maine of Virginea” and of the imperative to possess it. Richard Hakluyt believed the conquest of Virginia could be accomplished with far less difficulty than the subjugation of the “warrelike” Irish. A well-armed force would be quite capable of overcoming “such stubborne Savages as shall refuse obedience to her Majestie.” Events at Roanoke revealed that the Indians were far removed from the innocent and peace-loving peoples characterized by Barlowe. To English eyes, the treachery and hostility of local tribes, (“betrayed by our owne Savages,” said Lane) together with their obstinate resistance to civilized ways, rendered them a more intractable presence than had been anticipated.⁹ It was a lesson taken seriously by the Jamestown colonists twenty years later.

“Fatall Possession”: The Founding of Jamestown

By the time the English attempted once again to establish permanent settlements in America, the entire complexion of European colonization had changed. During the 1580s and 1590s, scores of English privateers had set out to plunder Spanish treasure fleets on the high seas or mount daring assaults on Spain's rich possessions in the West Indies and along the Main. Most were modest ventures made up of one or two ships in consort but some, such as Drake's voyages of 1585 and 1595, were full-scale military expeditions involving large fleets and several thousand men. Never before had English shipping been so common in American waters, and as a result increasing numbers of mariners and merchants acquired invaluable knowledge of transatlantic crossings, Caribbean islands, and the American coast. At the same time efforts to plant colonies continued, encouraged in part by the seemingly tenuous hold of the Spanish over much of their American empire and by the persistent vision of finding gold and other precious minerals or at the very least establishing a trade in the valuable natural commodities of the region. Ralegh's exploration of the Orinoco to the “rich and beawtifull Empire of Guiana” in search of the golden city of El Dorado was believed practical because that part of the Main was virtually uninhabited by Spanish settlers or “any Christian man, but onely the Caribes, Indians, and salvages.” He played for high stakes and dreamt of English colonies in Guiana comparable in wealth to Mexico and Peru, of an English New World (a New Britannia) that would eventually rival Spain's in riches and power, but justly governed by a virtuous English monarch avoiding the cruelty and tyranny of the Spanish conquista. Even when tales of the fabulous Indian civilization of Manoa proved worthless, the English continued exploring the area from the Orinoco to the Amazon (known as the Wild Coast), owing to the emergence of the area as a major producer of tobacco, which by the 1590s and early 1600s was becoming increasingly popular in Europe and commanded high prices.¹⁰

The Wild Coast marked the southernmost limit of English voyages in this period, but at the same time West Country and London merchants, backed by influential statesmen such as Lord Burghley, the Lord Treasurer, were renewing their interests in the far north, initially the Gulf of St. Lawrence and its valuable fisheries where the French and Basques were establishing themselves, and subsequently along the coast of Maine and New England. In the late 1590s, the failure of an unlikely scheme to plant a colony of Puritan dissenters in the Magdalen Islands on “Ramea” (Amherst Island) in the Gulf persuaded English investors to look further south where they would avoid direct competition with the French. Voyages between 1602 and 1605, involving explorations of Penobscot Bay and nearby islands, Cape Cod, and the coastline as far as Narragansett Bay, were followed by enthusiastic descriptions of the natural fertility of the land, waters teeming with fish (in greater plenty than was found off Newfoundland), and the friendliness of local Indians.¹¹ But perhaps more important than individual discoveries themselves was the broader implication of the voyages. By the opening years of the seventeenth century it was becoming clear that if Spanish warships remained a threat along much of the coast from Florida to South Carolina, and the French were tightening their grip on the St. Lawrence, then to have any real chance of success English colonizing projects would necessarily have to be located somewhere along the nine hundred miles from Cape Fear to Nova Scotia. New England represented one possibility; the other was the Chesapeake.

The succession of James I to the throne in 1603 marked an important change in foreign policy. Having little desire to continue the war against Spain, he quickly negotiated a peace treaty ending the plunder of Spanish shipping and possessions. But although condemning piracy in the Atlantic and Caribbean, James had no intention of renouncing English claims to the American mainland north of Florida and lent his tacit support to a number of schemes to establish colonies along the northeastern seaboard. West Country merchants were anxious to exploit the fish, oil, furs, and timber of New England, while their London counterparts, with connections in the Mediterranean and Levant, were keen to promote colonies that would produce commodities traditionally imported from southern Europe—citrus fruits, wine, olives, raisins, sugar, dyestuffs, salt, and rice—as well as the kinds of industrial crops that were being intensively cultivated on marginal lands around London and elsewhere in southern and central England. By the royal charter of April 10, 1606, the North American coast was divided into two spheres of interest: the Plymouth group (which also represented merchants and financiers from Bristol, Exeter, and smaller outports) was permitted to settle lands in latitudes between 38 and 45 degrees, namely New England, while the London group was allowed to establish colonies in the south between 34 and 41 degrees, from North Carolina to the Chesapeake.¹²

Leaving shortly before Christmas 1606, the expedition financed by the London Company set out for t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction: Sea Changes
• Part I. Reading Encounters
• Part II. The World Stage
• Part III. American Metamorphosis
• Conclusion: Jamestown and its North Atlantic World
• Notes
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Acknowledgments