The creation of British America

Gabriel Glickman

Causes of Empire #1Political change within the British Isles

• Reformation vindicated through idea of establishing a royal ‘empire’ (absolute sovereignty).

• Extension of English control over Scotland and Ireland further engenders imperial ideas.

Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimage (1613)

Causes of empire #2European competition

• Spanish Empire also created after union of European territories: Aragon & Castile, followed by expansion into Portugal, Valencia, Naples and Sicily.

• Spanish enrichment through gold and silver bullion threatens to change balance of power in Europe.

Viceroyalty of New Spain(depicted by John Ogilby, 1671)

Causes of Empire #3Growth of navigation technology

• Belief that better ship-building, cartography, instruments of navigation enable Europeans to establish new, more durable empires.

• Purchas – ‘Barbarous empires’ of the past failed because they were exclusively land empires.

-past empires could not command oceans, therefore like ostriches which ‘spread fair plumes, but are unable to rayse themselves from the Land...’

• Improved navigation technology results in more extensive English travel: creation of a global consciousness.

Causes of Empire #4Growth of English trade

• English commerce :i) Reaching across wider global zone.ii) Centred on increasingly sophisticated

organisation - joint-stock companies.• Companies establish own settlements to

trade overseas.• Establish military and naval forces .• Act in name of the English nation.

The Royal Exchange, engraving by Frans Hogenburg (1569).

Sir Thomas Dale (d.1619), Deputy Governor of Virginia

Chesapeake Bay (1719 map)

New England (1650 map)

Empire as re-creation of old forms of authority

• Proprietary grants = return to legal precedents of late Medieval England e.g. Maryland grant modelled on charter granted to C14th bishops of Durham.

• Return to old method of governing marchlands and border-lands by establishing local magnates with wide degree of autonomy.

• At odds with attempted centralisation of the kingdoms at home.

Challenges in the colonies

• Problems of adaptation to new climate – high levels of disease and mortality.

• Social pressures- gender imbalances in nee settlements.

• Conflict with local Indians.• Conflict with neighbouring settlers from other

European kingdoms. • Internal political and religious conflicts.

Empire - ideological questions

• Question of how far company or proprietary provinces = subject to royal authority.

• How far should the English Empire possess a religious mission and spiritual justification?

• What sort of relationship to develop with Indian population – incorporation of exclusion?

Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1583)Translated into English out of original account by Bartholome Las Casas

Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company, 1629