The American Colonies and the British Empire, 1607-1783, Part I Vol 2

Steven Sarson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000161892
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art américain

This first part, volume 2 of an eight-volume reset edition, traces the evolution of imperial and colonial ideologies during the British colonization of America. It covers the period from the founding of the Jamestown colony in Virginia in 1607 to 1783.

[CROUCH], THE ENGLISH EMPIRE IN AMERICA

R. B. [Nathaniel Crouch], The English Empire in America: or A Prospect of His Majesties Dominions in the West-Indies … With an Account of the Discovery, Scituation, Product, and other Excellencies of these Countries. To which is Prefixed a Relation of the first Discovery of the New World called America, by the Spaniards. And of the Remarkable Voyages of several Englishmen to divers Places therein (London: Nath. Crouch, 1685).

Nathaniel Crouch (c. 1620–c. 1725) was a London-based publisher, bookseller and writer. He wrote and sold books on miscellaneous subjects, but his greatest interest seems to have been history. As a writer, he adopted the pseudonym R.B. after Robert Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy (1620) that translated classical literature into accessible English. Crouch’s equally accessible histories sold for just a shilling apiece, and often went through many editions (The English Empire in America went through eleven by 1760). The intelligentsia coveted Crouch’s histories too, including Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Johnson a century later and on then opposing sides of the Atlantic.¹ Among his many histories were Wars in England, Scotland and Ireland (1681), Historical Remarques (1681), Admirable Curiosities(1682), England’s Monarchs (1685)and The History of the Kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland (1686). After The English Empire,Crouch also published other works of wider scope, including A View of the English Acquisitions in Guinea and the East Indies (1687), The English Hero, or, Sir Francis Drake Reviv’d(1687) and The History of the Nine Worthies of the World (1687).²

Crouch saw his imperial histories not as separate from but as extensions of the English and British stories, opening the first chapter of The English Empire by noting that ‘Having already given an account of His Majesty of Great Britains three famous Kingdoms of England, Scotland,and Ireland, we shall now ship our selves for a New World’ (below, p.25). That chapter recounts Iberian discoveries and the next continues with English explorers, dwelling longest on Drake. The twenty remaining chapters describe the ‘Discovery, Plantation, and Product’ of particular colonies. Though Crouch treated colonies mostly individually, the book’s general scope and in particular its north-south topographical approach from Newfoundland to Jamaica, irrespective of chronology or other concerns, promoted the notion of a unified American empire.³

Crouch may have written of that empire as ‘English’ because he focused on landed territory, from which Scots were formally excluded until parliamentary unification in 1707. By contrast, advocates of a sea empire wrote of a ‘British’ empire because the already unified Crown of Great Britain, not the English Parliament, exercised oceanic sovereignty. Yet Crouch subtitled The English Empire ‘a Prospect of His Majesties Dominions’ and wrote of ‘Acquisitions and Dominions of the English Monarchy in America (below, pp.23, 25), so he too might have conceptualized empire as ‘British’ even before parliamentary union. Even then, however, the ‘little-Englander’ may still have called the empire ‘English’ as he still sometimes used ‘English monarchy’ to refer to the sovereign of the British Isles.⁴

Crouch often appears careless with geographical nomenclature. His use of ‘West Indies’ to include mainland North America is strange, even for the time, and his inclusion of Roanoke in the New England chapter is even stranger. Sometimes his eccentricities are politically explicable, however. Neglecting William Bradford’s and John Winthrop’s roles in settling puritan New England is understandable in the Restoration era. Not mentioning that Henry Hudson worked for the Dutch in a chapter on ‘English’ discovery saves him from undermining his implied argument for English possession of the region Hudson explored. Crouch’s justifications of English usurpations of Spanish and Indian land claims are mostly implicit, though thinly veiled. While implying right of possession by discovery, Crouch also portrays Spanish depredations against Indians as cruel, while Indians, besides being pagan, are ‘inconstant, crafty, timorous … angry … malicious … barbarously cruel … prone to injurious violence and slaughter … Letcherous … thievish, and great haters of Strangers, all of them Canibals’ (below, p.80). Harking back to his writing about Irish colonization to show that Indians could be similarly Christianized and civilized, ‘so were formerly the Heathen Irish, who use to feed upon the Buttocks of Boys, and the Paps of Women’ (below, p.80).

As well as writing in an accessible style, Crouch focuses on topics he felt would appeal to a wide audience. Despite the chapters’ generic titles that promise attention to Eurocentric issues, many chapters in fact focus primarily on Amerindians. Though distorted by obsession with Indian otherness,Crouch nevertheless gives extraordinary attention to Indians and Euro-Native American relations. He even transcribes here a fascinating captivity narrative from Metacom’s War by ‘one Stockwell of Deerfield’, Massachusetts (below, pp.79–93).

Notes:

1. R. C. Simmons, ‘Americana in British Books, 1621–1760’, in K. O. Kupperman (ed.), America in European Consciousness, 1493–1750 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), pp. 361–87, on p.377; R.Mayer, ‘Nathaniel Crouch, Bookseller and Historian: Popular Historiography and Cultural Power in Late Seventeenth-Century England’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 27:3 (Spring 1994), pp. 391–419.

2. J.McElligott, ‘Crouch, Nathaniel [pseud. Robert Burton] (c. 1640–1725?), Bookseller and Writer’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, H. C. G. Matthew and B.Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 14, 465–6; Nicholas Canny notes that the Beinecke Library at Yale University also lists R.B. as Robert Burton: ‘The Origins of Empire: An Introduction’, N.Canny (ed.), The Origins of Empire, Oxford History of the British Empire, 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp.1–33, on p.22, n.59.

3. D.Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2000), p.174; J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,2006), pp.118–19; J. E. Crowley, ‘A Visual Empire: Seeing the Atlantic World from a Global Perspective’, in E.Mancke and C.Shammas, The Creation of the British Atlantic World: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), pp. 283–303.

4. Nicholas Canny justifiably calls Crouch a ‘little-Englander’ for his celebratory tone and for his inattention to Scottish and Irish migrants to English America: ‘The Origins of Empire’, p.22.

THE ENGLISH
EMPIRE
IN
AMERICA:

Or a Prospect of His Majesties Dominions in the West-Indies. Namely,

Newfoundland	Carolina	Antego
New-England	Bermuda’s	Mevis,Or
New-York	Barbuda	Nevis
Pensylvania	Anguilla	S.Christophers
New-Jersey	Montserrat	Barbadoes
Maryland	Dominica	Jamaica
Virginia	St. Vincent

With an account of the Discovery, Scituation, Product, and other Excellencies of these Countries.

To which is prefixed a Relation of the first Discovery of the New World called America, by the Spaniards. And of the Remarkable Voyages of several Englishmen to divers places therein.

Illustrated with maps and pictures.

By R. B. Author of Englands Monarchs, &c. Admirable Curiosities in England, &c.Historical Remarks of London, &c. The late Wars in England, &c. And,The History ofScotland and Ireland.

LONDON, Printed for Nath.Crouch at the Bell in the Poultrey near Cheapside.1685.

TO THE READER.

VAriety and Novelty are the most pleasant Entertainments of Mankind, and if so, then certainly nothing can be more divertive than Relations of this New World, which as our English Laureat Sings, is so happy a Climate.

As if our Old World modestly withdrew,

And here in private had brought forth a New.

Here nature spreads her fruitful sweetness round,

Breaths on the Air, and Broods upon the Ground;

Here days and nights the only seasons be,

The Sun no Climate does so gladly see,

When forc’d from hence, to view our parts, he mourns,

Takes little Journeys, and makes quick returns;

Nay in this Bounteous, and this Blessed Land,

The Golden Ore lies mixt with Common Sand,

Each down fall of a flood the Mountains pour,

From their Rich Bowels, rolls a Silver Shower;

All lay conceal’d for many Ages past,

And the best portion of the Earth was wast.¹

I need say no more in commendation of this Land of Wonders, but only to add, that the continued Encouragement I have received in publishing several former Tracts of this volume, especially those which had reference to His Majesties Dominions in Europe, have induced me to proceed upon those Gallant Atchievements of our English Hero’s in this New World, and to give my Countrymen a short view of those Territories now in possession of the English Monarchy in the West-Indies, of which many have only heard the names, but may here fi nd the nature, commodities and other Excellencies therein, which I doubt not will suffi ciently recommend it to the perusal of every Ingenious Reader. So wishes

R.B/

THE FIRST DISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD CALLED AMERICA.

CHAP. I.

HAving already given an account of His Majesty of Great Britains three famous Kingdoms of England, Scotland,and Ireland, we shall now ship our selves for a New World, and therein discover the Acquisitions and Dominions of the English Monarchy in Amercia [sic].

The New World is the most proper name for this immense Countrey, and new, as being discovered by Christopher Columbus, not two hundred years ago, in 1492. The Ancient Fathers, Philosophers, and Poets, were of opinion, that those places near the North and South Pole were inhabitable [sic], by the extremity of cold, and the middle parts, because of unreasonable heat, and thought it a great solecism or contradiction, to believe the Earth was round, for holding which opinion Pope Zachaus² was so zealous against Bishop Virgil,³ that he sentenced him, To be cast out of / the Temple, and Church of God, and to be deprived of his Bishoprick for this perverse Doctrine, that there were Antipodes, or people whose feet are placed against was, though this discovery of America has fully confirmed these opinions, and evinced that there is no such torrid Zone, where the heat is so noxious, as to unpeople any part of the Earth, and the yearly compassing of the World, evidenceth the necessity of Inhabitants, living on all parts of this earthly Globe; The next inquiry may be, whether the Ancient had any knowledge of these Regions, which many incline to think they had not; for though Seneca says in his Medea,⁴ That new Worlds shall be discovered in the last Ages of the World, and Thule in Norway,⁵ shall be no longer the utmost Nation of the World, yet this seems only to intimate the common effects and discoveries of Navigation; And Plato’s Atlantis,⁶ cannot intend this Countrey, because he placeth it at the mouth of the Streights or Mediterranean Sea, which is separated from America by a vast Ocean, and saies it is not now in being, but was by an earthquake sunk and over-whelmed in the Sea: Other Authors since that time have mentioned some Islands in that Great Sea, but they seem rather to be some of those on the Coasts of Africa, than America, it being improbable, if not impossible, any should undertake such long and dangerous Voyages, before the compass was found out, when they were only directed by the motion of the Sun and Stars.

Yet is it not incredible but that in former Ages, some Ships might by Tempest or other Casualties be driven to these parts, whereby some parts of America were peopled, but it is likely none ever returned back again to bring any news of their voyage. The most probable Relation of this kind is that of Madoc ap Owen Gwyneth, who upon the Civil dissentions in his own Countrey of Wales, adventured to Sea, and leaving Ireland on the North, came to a Land unknown, where he saw many very wonderful things, which by Dr.Powel and Mr. Humfrey Lloyd is judged to be the main Land of America,⁷ being confirmed therein, as well by the / saying of Montezuma Emperor of Mexico, who declared that his Progenitors were Strangers as well as the rest of the Mexicans, as by the use of divers Welch words amongst them observed by Travellers; the story adds, that Madoc left several of his People there, and coming home, returned back with ten sail full of Welchmen, yet it is certain there are now left very few footsteps of this Brittish expedition, and no signs thereof were found at the Spaniards Arrival; they indeed used a Cross at Cumana. and worshipped it at Acuzamil, but without the least memory or knowledge of Jesus Christ, and the Welch words are very few, which might happen by chance to any other Language. Mr. Bretewood, and other learned writers are of Opinion, that America received her first Inhabitants from those parts of Asia, where the Tartars first inhabited the Coasts of both Countreys, being in that place not far asunder, and the likeness of the People favouring the same, though the Indians in general are so very ignorant as to ascribe their beginning, some to a Fountain, and others to a Lake or Cave; But leaving these uncertainties, let us give a brief account of the real discovery thereof by Columbus, which is thus related by Gomara and Mariana,⁸ two Spanish writers.

A certain Caravel sailing in the Ocean, was carried by a strong East wind of long continuance to an unknown Land never mentioned in the Maps or Charts of that Age; this Ship was much longer in returning than going, so that all the company perisht by famine or other extremities, except the Pilot, and three or four Mariners, who all likewise died soon after their arrival, leaving to Columbus their Landlord their Papers, with some account of their Discoveries; the time, place, Countrey, and name of this Pilot is uncertain, and therefore other Authors affirm it to be a fable or Spanish contrivance, as envying that an Italian and Forreigner should have the glory of being the first di...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• [Josias Fendall], ‘Complaint from Heaven wth a Huy & Crye and a Petition out of Virginia and Maryland’ (1676)
• R. B. [Nathaniel Crouch], The English Empire in America: or A Prospect of His Majesties Dominions in the West-Indies (1685)
• John Palmer, The Present State of New-England Impartially Considered, In a Letter to the Clergy (1689)
• [Edward Rawson and Samuel Sewall], The Revolution in New England Justified, and the People there Vindicated from the Aspersions cast upon them by Mr. John Palmer (1691)
• [William Cleland], The Present State of the Sugar Plantations Consider’d (1713)
• Editorial Notes