This introductory chapter lays out the historical background of English New World colonization and sketches the argument of the book. It explains the English crown’s formal authority over colonization and introduces the principal–agent perspective as a framework to analyze the crown’s use of that authority. The chapter lays out the concept of contractual imperialism, or the early crown’s policy of early colonization embedded in letters patent to private colonizers, and of regulatory imperialism, or the later crown’s policy of regulating colonial political economies.