Encountering Early America

This book traces the history of England’s first century of encounters with America. Arguing that the 1500s represent a discrete and influential period in this relationship, it covers a crucial chapter in the larger history of the development of the British Empire. The march of British imperialism was by no means inevitable or exceptional. The emergence of English colonies in the Americas was the result of a century-long engagement with the imperial practices of other European nations, and of a dynamic and adaptive approach to exploration and settlement that was often born from previous failure. To illuminate these processes, the book uncovers the cultural associations that shaped English perceptions of the New World, and in turn English approaches to exploration and colonisation. It assesses how English colonisers and explorers constructed theories of empire using Old World frameworks of understanding, examines how explorative failures and an oscillating English religious, economic, and cultural landscape affected New World ventures, and explores how the practicalities of English trade and settlement manifested themselves in descriptions of Indigenous appearance and behaviour and in accounts of American environments. Encountering early America will be of particular interest to scholars and students working on early English colonialism in North America and European cultural encounters with the New World.