Alison Games
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195335545
- eISBN:
- 9780199869039
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335545.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter explores the Virginia settlement, which set a new style of English overseas venture — the plantation colony — in the context of the trading world that produced it. Because of the ...
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This chapter explores the Virginia settlement, which set a new style of English overseas venture — the plantation colony — in the context of the trading world that produced it. Because of the heightened interest some English investors showed in colonies in the wake of Virginia's successful establishment, by the 1610s and 1620s a new population of experienced colonial governors emerged, men who ventured from one post to another.Less
This chapter explores the Virginia settlement, which set a new style of English overseas venture — the plantation colony — in the context of the trading world that produced it. Because of the heightened interest some English investors showed in colonies in the wake of Virginia's successful establishment, by the 1610s and 1620s a new population of experienced colonial governors emerged, men who ventured from one post to another.
William E. Nelson
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195327281
- eISBN:
- 9780199870677
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327281.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
Initially, the Virginia Company governed its 1607 Jamestown settlement through martial law. Beginning in the late 1610s, however, change began to occur as the basis of Virginia's economy shifted to ...
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Initially, the Virginia Company governed its 1607 Jamestown settlement through martial law. Beginning in the late 1610s, however, change began to occur as the basis of Virginia's economy shifted to agricultural production of a staple crop—tobacco. Land was distributed as private property to individuals, and the Virginia Company promised its colony self-government under the common law, all for the purpose of encouraging Englishmen to settle in Virginia. Reform, however, did not lead immediately to a free market legal order. The Virginia Company, and later the royal government, continued to regulate the economy extensively. Harsh, coercive mechanisms for maintaining public order and obtaining labor from settlers also remained in place in an effort to produce profits for English investors. A free market legal order could not develop until the Virginia Company was replaced by royal government in 1625.Less
Initially, the Virginia Company governed its 1607 Jamestown settlement through martial law. Beginning in the late 1610s, however, change began to occur as the basis of Virginia's economy shifted to agricultural production of a staple crop—tobacco. Land was distributed as private property to individuals, and the Virginia Company promised its colony self-government under the common law, all for the purpose of encouraging Englishmen to settle in Virginia. Reform, however, did not lead immediately to a free market legal order. The Virginia Company, and later the royal government, continued to regulate the economy extensively. Harsh, coercive mechanisms for maintaining public order and obtaining labor from settlers also remained in place in an effort to produce profits for English investors. A free market legal order could not develop until the Virginia Company was replaced by royal government in 1625.
Noel Malcolm
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780199247141
- eISBN:
- 9780191597992
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199247145.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Presents the discovery that Hobbes was a shareholder in both the Virginia Company and its sister organization, the Somer Islands Company (which dealt with the colonization of the Bermudas). He was ...
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Presents the discovery that Hobbes was a shareholder in both the Virginia Company and its sister organization, the Somer Islands Company (which dealt with the colonization of the Bermudas). He was granted a share in the former by his employer, William Cavendish (future second Earl of Devonshire) in 1622, and attended its meetings regularly over the following two years. The essay explores the internal politics of the Virginia Company during this period and discusses the ways in which Hobbes may have been influenced by this experience.Less
Presents the discovery that Hobbes was a shareholder in both the Virginia Company and its sister organization, the Somer Islands Company (which dealt with the colonization of the Bermudas). He was granted a share in the former by his employer, William Cavendish (future second Earl of Devonshire) in 1622, and attended its meetings regularly over the following two years. The essay explores the internal politics of the Virginia Company during this period and discusses the ways in which Hobbes may have been influenced by this experience.
Alexander B. Haskell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469618029
- eISBN:
- 9781469618043
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469618029.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter explores a new strategy for defending the Virginia project that emerged in the early seventeenth century as a male king, James I, ascended the English throne and as England's powerful ...
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This chapter explores a new strategy for defending the Virginia project that emerged in the early seventeenth century as a male king, James I, ascended the English throne and as England's powerful secretary of state Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, sought to overcome the dishonor attached to Elizabethan sovereign engagements overseas through a robust vision of state-led colonization. Eager to usher in an era of vigorous English sovereignty under a fit male ruler but discouraged by James's uneasiness in challenging Spanish title across the Atlantic, Salisbury became the energetic prime mover behind the Virginia Company. Intended to embody the English body politic and thereby endow the colonizing venture with a legitimacy derived more from the public than the king, the company was from the outset a controversial entity that leaned on a rich literature of the providential state to argue for Virginia's commonwealth status. After Salisbury's death, the company would become vulnerable to the machinations of James's new treasurer, Lionel Cranfield, first earl of Middlesex, who would seek to reinvent the Virginia Company as a mere trading company whose function was less to found a viable American kingdom than to ensure a steady flow of revenue to royal coffers.Less
This chapter explores a new strategy for defending the Virginia project that emerged in the early seventeenth century as a male king, James I, ascended the English throne and as England's powerful secretary of state Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, sought to overcome the dishonor attached to Elizabethan sovereign engagements overseas through a robust vision of state-led colonization. Eager to usher in an era of vigorous English sovereignty under a fit male ruler but discouraged by James's uneasiness in challenging Spanish title across the Atlantic, Salisbury became the energetic prime mover behind the Virginia Company. Intended to embody the English body politic and thereby endow the colonizing venture with a legitimacy derived more from the public than the king, the company was from the outset a controversial entity that leaned on a rich literature of the providential state to argue for Virginia's commonwealth status. After Salisbury's death, the company would become vulnerable to the machinations of James's new treasurer, Lionel Cranfield, first earl of Middlesex, who would seek to reinvent the Virginia Company as a mere trading company whose function was less to found a viable American kingdom than to ensure a steady flow of revenue to royal coffers.
Gavin Hollis
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198734321
- eISBN:
- 9780191799167
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198734321.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Drama
This chapter analyzes the Virginia Company’s accusations that the players were the enemy of Virginia. The Company’s insistence on the players being diabolical, papist, and idle takes on renewed ...
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This chapter analyzes the Virginia Company’s accusations that the players were the enemy of Virginia. The Company’s insistence on the players being diabolical, papist, and idle takes on renewed significance in the context of Virginia, precisely because the image of the adventurer as craven bankrupt chimed with two other types that were invested in New World exploration: the Spanish and the players themselves. While the Virginia Company distinguished between the ideal adventurer and the unholy trinity of devil, papist, and player, plays collapsed the adventurer, devil, papist, and player into one another. Through analyses of both Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (1614), which unfavorably compares Virginia adventuring and the experience of playgoing, and of the promotion and ubiquity of tobacco in playhouse drama, we might begin to think of the playing companies as constructing and even celebrating a vision of the New World as anti-Virginian, albeit not anti-colonial.Less
This chapter analyzes the Virginia Company’s accusations that the players were the enemy of Virginia. The Company’s insistence on the players being diabolical, papist, and idle takes on renewed significance in the context of Virginia, precisely because the image of the adventurer as craven bankrupt chimed with two other types that were invested in New World exploration: the Spanish and the players themselves. While the Virginia Company distinguished between the ideal adventurer and the unholy trinity of devil, papist, and player, plays collapsed the adventurer, devil, papist, and player into one another. Through analyses of both Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (1614), which unfavorably compares Virginia adventuring and the experience of playgoing, and of the promotion and ubiquity of tobacco in playhouse drama, we might begin to think of the playing companies as constructing and even celebrating a vision of the New World as anti-Virginian, albeit not anti-colonial.
Paul Musselwhite
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226585284
- eISBN:
- 9780226585314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226585314.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter reveals the centrality of urban planning to the Virginia Company’s vision for the colony from 1607 until the Company’s dissolution. Company officials, strongly influenced by civic ...
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This chapter reveals the centrality of urban planning to the Virginia Company’s vision for the colony from 1607 until the Company’s dissolution. Company officials, strongly influenced by civic humanist thought, were acutely conscious of the need to manage the threat of self-interest in the new commonwealth, and they did so by seeking to build urban spaces and institutions for defense and market regulation. The mass cultivation of tobacco only accentuated leaders’ fears about private interests. It pushed a faction within the Company to promote a plan for incorporated boroughs, drawing upon the flourishing civic corporate traditions of England’s chartered towns and cities, in an effort to instill virtue into a society increasingly dominated by staple production. But other planters or investors rejected the corporate plan and their opposition to this spatial ordering of the colony was critical to the bitter factionalism that engulfed the Company in the 1620s. The specter of semi-autonomous city-states, which proved incapable of defending themselves against the 1622 Powhatan uprising, finally convinced James I to revoke the Company’s charter, allowing the surviving settlements to evolve into military-agricultural outposts. Virginia’s first planter class were thus born of frustrated urban corporate plans.Less
This chapter reveals the centrality of urban planning to the Virginia Company’s vision for the colony from 1607 until the Company’s dissolution. Company officials, strongly influenced by civic humanist thought, were acutely conscious of the need to manage the threat of self-interest in the new commonwealth, and they did so by seeking to build urban spaces and institutions for defense and market regulation. The mass cultivation of tobacco only accentuated leaders’ fears about private interests. It pushed a faction within the Company to promote a plan for incorporated boroughs, drawing upon the flourishing civic corporate traditions of England’s chartered towns and cities, in an effort to instill virtue into a society increasingly dominated by staple production. But other planters or investors rejected the corporate plan and their opposition to this spatial ordering of the colony was critical to the bitter factionalism that engulfed the Company in the 1620s. The specter of semi-autonomous city-states, which proved incapable of defending themselves against the 1622 Powhatan uprising, finally convinced James I to revoke the Company’s charter, allowing the surviving settlements to evolve into military-agricultural outposts. Virginia’s first planter class were thus born of frustrated urban corporate plans.
Gavin Hollis
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198734321
- eISBN:
- 9780191799167
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198734321.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Drama
This chapter focuses on the impact of George Chapman’s The Memorable Masque for the royal wedding of 1613, in particular how its display of Christianized “Virginian priests and princes” to promote ...
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This chapter focuses on the impact of George Chapman’s The Memorable Masque for the royal wedding of 1613, in particular how its display of Christianized “Virginian priests and princes” to promote investment in the Virginia Company’s religious mission in the New World was parodied in three plays. Fletcher and Field’s Four Plays, or Moral Interludes, in One borrows Chapman’s Virginians, but excises his conversion plot, staging Indians in thrall to lucre and the converting colonist as a lost soul. Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Henry VIII invokes a “strange Indian with the great tool,” who instead of inspiring charity invokes only lust and greed. In The Tempest (which was revived at court in 1613), Trinculo’s recollection of the “dead Indian” that wowed England memory forms part of the play’s satire of both The Memorable Masque and the Virginia Company’s rhetoric of conversion as embodied in their display of Virginian bodies.Less
This chapter focuses on the impact of George Chapman’s The Memorable Masque for the royal wedding of 1613, in particular how its display of Christianized “Virginian priests and princes” to promote investment in the Virginia Company’s religious mission in the New World was parodied in three plays. Fletcher and Field’s Four Plays, or Moral Interludes, in One borrows Chapman’s Virginians, but excises his conversion plot, staging Indians in thrall to lucre and the converting colonist as a lost soul. Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Henry VIII invokes a “strange Indian with the great tool,” who instead of inspiring charity invokes only lust and greed. In The Tempest (which was revived at court in 1613), Trinculo’s recollection of the “dead Indian” that wowed England memory forms part of the play’s satire of both The Memorable Masque and the Virginia Company’s rhetoric of conversion as embodied in their display of Virginian bodies.
John Gilbert Mccurdy
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814727805
- eISBN:
- 9780814728475
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814727805.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
On May 14, 1607, 104 men and boys landed on a small peninsula in the Chesapeake and established Jamestown. The colonists sailed not for themselves but for the Virginia Company, whose shareholders ...
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On May 14, 1607, 104 men and boys landed on a small peninsula in the Chesapeake and established Jamestown. The colonists sailed not for themselves but for the Virginia Company, whose shareholders were financing this foray into the New World. The colony was established as a military outpost. The Virginia Company purposely outfitted the early colony like an army unit due to concerns over the extraction of resources and fears of a hostile native population. At the moment when Jamestown was settled, the English military was undergoing a profound transition. Dubbed the “military revolution” by scholars, the change reordered the weapons, organization, and ideas of war. The constructions of manhood in early Jamestown reflected these changing ideas. This chapter explores how conflicting ideas of manhood arising from changes in the military led to conflict among the settlers. It argues that Anglo-American masculinity was being defined on the ground at the same time that definitions of masculinity were threatening the cohesion of the fledgling colony.Less
On May 14, 1607, 104 men and boys landed on a small peninsula in the Chesapeake and established Jamestown. The colonists sailed not for themselves but for the Virginia Company, whose shareholders were financing this foray into the New World. The colony was established as a military outpost. The Virginia Company purposely outfitted the early colony like an army unit due to concerns over the extraction of resources and fears of a hostile native population. At the moment when Jamestown was settled, the English military was undergoing a profound transition. Dubbed the “military revolution” by scholars, the change reordered the weapons, organization, and ideas of war. The constructions of manhood in early Jamestown reflected these changing ideas. This chapter explores how conflicting ideas of manhood arising from changes in the military led to conflict among the settlers. It argues that Anglo-American masculinity was being defined on the ground at the same time that definitions of masculinity were threatening the cohesion of the fledgling colony.
Sheldon Brammall
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780748699087
- eISBN:
- 9781474412384
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748699087.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Between 1584 and 1632, there were three new English translations of the Aeneid published in print. This chapter demonstrates that all three of these were written by prominent members of the Virginia ...
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Between 1584 and 1632, there were three new English translations of the Aeneid published in print. This chapter demonstrates that all three of these were written by prominent members of the Virginia Company. The primary aim of this chapter is to explore different ways the Aeneid could be used to reflect on the colonial activities and foreign policies of England from the years 1615 to 1632. The three translators under consideration — Sir Thomas Wroth, Sir Dudley Digges and George Sandys — chose different books of the Aeneid and approached colonial politics from different angles. This chapter also argues that isolating a single book of the epic enabled translators to apply the poem to current political concerns.Less
Between 1584 and 1632, there were three new English translations of the Aeneid published in print. This chapter demonstrates that all three of these were written by prominent members of the Virginia Company. The primary aim of this chapter is to explore different ways the Aeneid could be used to reflect on the colonial activities and foreign policies of England from the years 1615 to 1632. The three translators under consideration — Sir Thomas Wroth, Sir Dudley Digges and George Sandys — chose different books of the Aeneid and approached colonial politics from different angles. This chapter also argues that isolating a single book of the epic enabled translators to apply the poem to current political concerns.
Christopher N. Warren
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198719342
- eISBN:
- 9780191788550
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198719342.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter augments existing scholarship that has focused on Hobbes’ royalism by emphasizing how Hobbes’ translation of classical history steered between the Scylla of antiquarianism and the ...
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This chapter augments existing scholarship that has focused on Hobbes’ royalism by emphasizing how Hobbes’ translation of classical history steered between the Scylla of antiquarianism and the Charybdis of baldly instrumental rhetoric. The chapter shows the formidable interventions a translator could make amidst the seventeenth-century poiesis of international law. The stakes of Thucydides included the accuracy of the Genesis story, the extent or existence of natural obligations, and the capacity of men, as one of Hobbes’ notes put it, to “gr[o]w … civil.” Reading Hobbes’ translation in the context of seventeenth-century debates over the law of nations offers a chance to see how history and humanism intersected in the making of international law.Less
This chapter augments existing scholarship that has focused on Hobbes’ royalism by emphasizing how Hobbes’ translation of classical history steered between the Scylla of antiquarianism and the Charybdis of baldly instrumental rhetoric. The chapter shows the formidable interventions a translator could make amidst the seventeenth-century poiesis of international law. The stakes of Thucydides included the accuracy of the Genesis story, the extent or existence of natural obligations, and the capacity of men, as one of Hobbes’ notes put it, to “gr[o]w … civil.” Reading Hobbes’ translation in the context of seventeenth-century debates over the law of nations offers a chance to see how history and humanism intersected in the making of international law.
William E. Nelson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- July 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190880804
- eISBN:
- 9780190882174
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190880804.003.0002
- Subject:
- Law, Legal History, Constitutional and Administrative Law
This chapter examines the early years of Virginia and Maryland. At its outset, Virginia was constituted as a trading company governed by military law. But when the trading company went bankrupt, ...
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This chapter examines the early years of Virginia and Maryland. At its outset, Virginia was constituted as a trading company governed by military law. But when the trading company went bankrupt, Virginians needed English investment. Virginia then adopted the common law to assure Englishmen that their investments would be safe and thereby to encourage them to invest. By the 1630s, the common law had been received in Virginia. Maryland, in contrast, adopted the common law in the earliest years of its settlement. Lord Baltimore, who founded Maryland as a haven for Roman Catholics, appears to have understood that the common law provided the best possible protection of property rights and that protecting the property rights of Catholic settlers would ensure their ability over time to practice their faith.Less
This chapter examines the early years of Virginia and Maryland. At its outset, Virginia was constituted as a trading company governed by military law. But when the trading company went bankrupt, Virginians needed English investment. Virginia then adopted the common law to assure Englishmen that their investments would be safe and thereby to encourage them to invest. By the 1630s, the common law had been received in Virginia. Maryland, in contrast, adopted the common law in the earliest years of its settlement. Lord Baltimore, who founded Maryland as a haven for Roman Catholics, appears to have understood that the common law provided the best possible protection of property rights and that protecting the property rights of Catholic settlers would ensure their ability over time to practice their faith.
Henry S. Turner
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226363356
- eISBN:
- 9780226363493
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226363493.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Chapter Four turns to the examples of English joint-stock companies formed for colonization and international trade, using them to illustrate the limits of the period’s arguments about sovereignty ...
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Chapter Four turns to the examples of English joint-stock companies formed for colonization and international trade, using them to illustrate the limits of the period’s arguments about sovereignty and to explore the formal problems implied in the corporation as a “person” and “body politic.” The chapter discusses two corporate ventures founded by Sir Thomas Smith at the end of his life and then follows the joint-stock company from Ireland to Russia and Virginia, as recounted in Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffics and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589; 1599-1600). It examines the corporation as a system of administration with distinctive modes of archiving information as a form of capital, and it considers the narrative logic of corporate discourse and the role that ideas of “value” have in corporate writing. The chapter concludes by showing how the corporation becomes a micro-state unto itself, issuing in the establishment of the colony of Virginia, but it also uses the idea of the corporation to make visible the fragile and compositional nature of all political bodies, states, and nations.Less
Chapter Four turns to the examples of English joint-stock companies formed for colonization and international trade, using them to illustrate the limits of the period’s arguments about sovereignty and to explore the formal problems implied in the corporation as a “person” and “body politic.” The chapter discusses two corporate ventures founded by Sir Thomas Smith at the end of his life and then follows the joint-stock company from Ireland to Russia and Virginia, as recounted in Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffics and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589; 1599-1600). It examines the corporation as a system of administration with distinctive modes of archiving information as a form of capital, and it considers the narrative logic of corporate discourse and the role that ideas of “value” have in corporate writing. The chapter concludes by showing how the corporation becomes a micro-state unto itself, issuing in the establishment of the colony of Virginia, but it also uses the idea of the corporation to make visible the fragile and compositional nature of all political bodies, states, and nations.
