The English Empire in America, 1602–1658:
Beyond Jamestown
L H Roper
Empires in Perspective
978 1 85196 992 0: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
978 1 85196 594 6
This study situates the colonization of Virginia, the centrepiece of early English overseas settlement activity, in the social and political landscape of the early seventeenth century. Roper explores how the early development of the colony was viewed from both sides of the Atlantic, using the documentary record of key figures in the Virginia Company, as well as the colonizers themselves. He paints a vivid picture of a political culture characterized by patronage, the pursuit of personal agendas and fierce grappling for factional advantage, as ‘Old World’ political behaviour was successfully transplanted to the colony. At the same time however, he shows how local concerns and identity competed with the Stuart monarchy’s attempts to centralize state affairs on the other side of the Atlantic.
Roper rejects the prevailing view of the early colonisers, the Virginia Company and Crown ministers as bumbling incompetents whose mismanagement nearly caused the failure of the Jamestown project. Rather, he argues, they had a clear sense of purpose for the colony, and successfully adapted and crafted inherited political systems to a very new situation.
Sample pages
Readership
Early Modern Studies, Empire Studies, Atlantic Studies
Contents
Introduction
1 Deep Background
2 Genesis
3 Birth Pangs
4 Fatal and Near-Fatal Attractions
5 An Empire of 'Smoak'
6 Some Measure of Success
Reviews
'Readers with a taste for detailed narrative, or in search of choice nuggets of information on the careers of specific individuals, will find this volume especially useful. Recommended.'
– CHOICE
'Roper's illumination of the manipulation, cultivation, and ultimate continuity of elite networks of political patronage on both sides of the Atlantic is crucial to our understanding of the early modern English world whether our focus is Atlantic colonial America or the British Isles.
– Shona Johnston, Journal of British Studies
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