Norm or the Exception?: England in the New World (HIST 431)
“In sixteen hundred seven/We sail the open sea/For glory, God, and gold/And The Virginia Company!/For the New World is like heaven/And we’ll all be rich and free/Or so we have been told/By The Virginia Company!”
“The Virginia Company” from Disney’s Pocahontas¹
Historians are often puzzled where English colonization of the New World fits in the larger discussion on Early Modern colonialism. Reasons for this somewhat revolve around a simple fact: chronologically speaking, England was late to the colonial game.
Although English privateers had harassed the Spanish Main since the sixteenth-century, the English would not establish a permanent presence in the Americas until 1607. By the time England had founded Jamestown, Spain and Portugal had already carved out vast imperial holdings in North and South America, as well as the Caribbean. The French and Dutch too had established strong economic ties with the Native American populations in North America.
Early English efforts to settle the Americas had ended unsuccessfully at Roanoke in 1587. Other endeavors failed at Providence Island in the Caribbean (1641) and at Sagadahoc in modern day Maine (1608).² Jamestown itself initially seemed doomed to fail. Yet by the mid-eighteenth-century, Great Britain would undisputedly emerge as a world power, “[crushing France’s] colonial ambitions in North America” and leaving Spanish America “vulnerable. […] to British military power.”³
But — getting back to the historical dilemma — what set initial English colonization apart from other European efforts, allowing for English prominence in the New World and beyond? To many historians, the English colonization of the New World established the precedent of settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is often defined as the concept that settlers dominate native populations, replacing the identity of a region with that of the colonists.⁴ Settler colonialism differentiates itself from traditional colonialism, which subjugates native populations but lacks a large migration of non-native colonists. Seen as a more modern form of colonialism, settler colonialism often results in the creation of new identities separate from both the colonial power and the conquered native population.
Of course, problems with this English exception arise when looking at earlier colonialism in the New World, namely with the Spanish. The decrease of native populations throughout the Spanish Caribbean and mainland America certainly evince the idea of settler colonialism. Yet in looking at early Spanish colonization, we see the Spanish reliance on Native American labor, particularly in the encomienda system. At the same time, Spanish missions presented both a replacement of indigenous identity, while also utilizing native labor and tribute for economic development. Later monarchial restrictions and religious concern would even protect indigenous populations from European abuses (at least in theory and not necessarily out of moral concern).⁵
On the other hand, English settlers would quickly develop the perception of Native Americans as being less necessary to the settlement of the New World. For instance, English colonists at Sagadahoc (or the Popham Colony) understood Native Americans to be “obstacles to colonization, rather than conduits to it.”⁶ Indeed, historian Christopher Bilodeau argues that the failure of Sagadahoc mainly resulted from the lack of cooperation between indigenous groups and the English colonists — in the trade and diplomacy necessary for English survival.⁷ Similarly the lack of cooperation in Jamestown nearly resulted in the colony’s collapse, given the tense relationship between the Powhatan Confederacy and the English settlers.
The largely decentralized and pseudo-capitalist nature of initial English colonization — compared the more royally controlled colonies in New Spain — also separates Early Modern English colonialism. While sanctioned by the English monarchy, stock-companies dominated the English movement towards colonialism, seen with the Virginia Company and Jamestown. The power struggles within the colony — famously during the Starving Time between presidents John Smith and George Percy — demonstrate the influence such corporations held in the English economy.⁸ The market interest of having colonies in the Americas also derived itself from a shortage of industrial materials in England. The perceived lack of wood in the British Isles and mercantile competition in the European iron market pushed England to catch up to its colonial counterparts.⁹ Similarly, these notions of abundance in the New World created English expectations of colonialism, justifying the idea of colonial exploitation.
While the economic drive to settle the New World was shared among the European powers, England built upon earlier European efforts. Yet, the establishment of English colonies in North America created a new imperial and expansionist mindset.
- Stephen Schwartz, “The Virginia Company” in Pocahontas (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), 1995, https://genius.com/Walt-disney-records-the-virginia-company-lyrics
- Christopher J. Bilodeau, “The Paradox of Sagadahoc: The Popham Colony, 1607–1608,” Early American Studies 12, №1, (2014), 2.
- Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom, and Abolition in Latin America and the Atlantic World (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011), 79.
- Adam Barker and Emma Battell Lowman, “Settler Colonialism,” Global Social Theory, Accessed September 12, 2018. https://globalsocialtheory.org/concepts/settler-colonialism/
- Schmidt-Nowara, 22.
- Bilodeau, 11.
- Bilodeau, 19.
- Rachel B. Hermann, “The “tragicall historie”: Cannibalism and Abundance in Colonial Jamestown,” The William and Mary Quarterly 68, №1 (2011), 59.
- Keith Pluymers, “Atlantic Iron: Wood Scarcity and the Political Ecology of Early English Expansion,” The William and Mary Quarterly 73, №3 (2016), 426.