English imperial networks in the seventeenth century connected London, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, New England, and North Africa through intersecting commercial, religious, political, and intellectual commitments. These networks were populated by scholars, scientists, and slaves, as well as missionaries, merchants, and ministers. Their connections reveal relationships – between translation and conversion, commerce and religion, and English and Native peoples – that span from Malaysia to Massachusetts. This chapter focuses on the role of companies, violence, and translation in these multilayered global contexts and brings those features to bear on the way we understand American literary and cultural history and the role of puritanism in it.