Encountering Early America - Paperback

by Rachel Winchcombe (Author)

This is the first major study to comprehensively analyse English encounters with the New World in the sixteenth century and their impact on early English understandings of America and changing approaches to exploration and settlement. The book traces the dynamism of early English encounters with the Americas and the many cultural influences that shaped English understandings of the new lands across the Atlantic. It illustrates that rather than being a period of inconsequential colonial failure in the Americas, the sixteenth century was in fact an era of assessment, adaptation and application that culminated in the survival of the first Anglo-American colony at Jamestown. Encountering early America will appeal to students and scholars working on early English colonialism in North America and European cultural encounters with the New World.

Back Jacket

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.

Author Biography

Rachel Winchcombe is a Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Manchester.