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1 results

  • Chapter 2 - Colony as Microcosm

  • Lauren Working, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Making of an Imperial Polity
    Published online:
    11 January 2020
    Print publication:
    16 January 2020, pp 64-97
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  • Summary

    In 1607, the English established a presence in a place Algonquians called the Chesapeake and claimed it for themselves. On the other side of the Atlantic, news from the colony suffused metropolitan discourse. From table conversations to printed books, diaries to Parliament speeches, debating Virginia imbued domestic political discourse with an interest in the imperial. This chapter explores how the first sustained experience of colonization beyond the British Isles shaped articulations of the English polity and increasingly put pressure on policy-makers to commit to empire. Shifting practices in statecraft, concerted attempts to ‘civilize’ others as a method of expansion and control, and the intense political friendships and rivalries that underpinned elite honour all played a role in how gentlemen – and eventually the king himself – came to associate the integrity of their own political authority with the survival of ‘the London colonie’ in Virginia.