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Preface

The title of this book is, I hope, challenging but not emotive. From the moment, in 1496, Henry VII conferred upon John Cabot the right to ‘conquer, occupy and possess’ all lands ‘unknown to Christians’, the English committed themselves, albeit slowly, to the conquest of America. The conquest was intended to be both permanent and absolute, involving the acquisition of ‘all the land, mineral rights and commodities whatsoever’ that might be developed or discovered, as long as it ‘was not actually possessed by any Christian Prince or People’. Not being Christian, those in prior possession would have no right of retention. Not that the faith of foreigners was that important to the English, who were at the same time carrying out a similar occupation of Catholic Ireland that also aimed to drive the natives from their land.

Before they could occupy, the English needed to invade. So, in the long century that stretched from 1497 to 1630, they concerned themselves, once ashore, with establishing secure beachheads along the lengthy American littoral. Thus the first permanent structure to be erected in Virginia in 1585 was a fort, while, as late as 1624, the Virginia Assembly ordered ‘that every dwelling house shall be pallisaded’, a degree of defence that was equally necessary in New England. Not until that secure hold was achieved could the invasion transform itself into a conquest, a process that began with the arrival of Winthrop’s Massachusetts Bay colonists in 1630, and continued with the mass immigration caused by Archbishop Laud’s policy of persecuting Puritans and their fellow-travellers.

A great number of studies have been made of the several arrivals of North America’s first European settlers. Most have examined these beginnings as independent events separated by the long latitudes that lay between each landing. Yet the encouragement for them came from the same country, even the same three cities (London, Bristol and Plymouth), while the right of occupation was awarded by just one authority: the English sovereign.

Treating the invasions as a collection of separate stories rather than as episodes in a single serial ignores the commonalities which form the main characters of this saga. Thus problems such as reinforcement and resupply, evacuation and abandonment, defence and leadership can be seen to be present throughout the period. Two other topics that are so often ignored are seamanship and navigation, as if writers, like most of the settlers, are so keen to step ashore that they forget the craft and art that brought them safe to land. Looked at collectively it can be seen that the invaders’ very survival depended on control of the waterways and support from the sea, which is not surprising because they were engaged in the longest amphibious operation in English history. By dealing thematically with the topics listed above, I hope the importance of each will be clearly shown.

The arrival of the English did not lead to a clash between ‘civilization’ and ‘savagery’, whatever the contemporary propagandists tried to suggest. The term ‘civilization’ implies a certain level of development and infers a degree of humane behaviour. During their conflict throughout the long century, it is not easy to decide which, if either, side earned that admirable epithet, for the much-heralded civilizing mission of the English was never dispatched. From our most distant and greener-biased age it is very easy to discern that it was the Amerindians who had a more environmentally friendly and sustainable way of life than the English, whose planting of nutrient-hungry tobacco, and demand for more and more fur, destroyed both fauna and flora. Yet, in their social interaction, the ‘savages’ also showed signs of belonging to a superior civilization. In their treatment of and attitude to, women, sex, including homosexuality, crime and punishment, rules of war, religious toleration and care of the elderly, the ‘savage’ Amerindians were much more in tune with the liberal and ‘civilized’ views of the enlightened twenty-first century than were the more ‘barbarian’ invaders. So this clash along the coast was a struggle between two competing cultures, one of which was a more specialized society with more technologically advanced support, especially in the arms that they possessed. In the end it was the arms that counted, along with the alien epidemics – that first and most fatal invader which so depleted the population that it left too few to absorb the onslaught of the English. In America as a whole, as Francis Jennings wrote: ‘On a thousand frontiers Europeans used the technology of superior ships and guns to gain beachheads; they then imposed on top of indigenous societies the devices best understood by the conquerors.’

What, along with their better weaponry, the English also had in their favour was a fitter, larger and more fecund population. Over time, they beat their opposition by their activities in the bedroom, not their prowess on the battlefield. Their long decades sheltering behind palisades on riverbanks or bays until more babies born in Britain could be exported as manpower is proof enough of that.

Finding themselves, because of their seaside sojourn, forced to recognize their foe, the English propagandists turned to irrefutable fact to stiffen their diatribe against the handful of people that were preventing their breakout from the beachheads. Even then, such derogatives as ‘illiterate’ had little meaning in a society that had no need for the written word. Indeed, such ‘backwardness’ benefited the invaders, for the distraught villagers of Virginia, unlike the downtrodden Irish or the overridden peasants of Europe, were not able to lay down their woes on paper for future generations to read about and comprehend their grief. And ‘ignorance’, another pejorative, could be turned on its head when comparing the likely chances of survival of an Englishman and an Amerindian, both lost within the new world’s woods. Even when huddled among their own, the invaders proved to be incapable of survival without the help of those whose ways they most readily spurned, so that they were forced to live in a snarling symbiosis with those they regarded as savages. It was then that the inability of the English to deal with that recalcitrant ‘other’ became manifest. While the invasion was taking place, many opportunities arose for innovative ways of establishing friendly relations between two disparate peoples. None of these, including intermarriage, was seen as a path to success. The Bible, newly translated into English, had instilled in its readership both a biblically induced terror of miscegenation and a belief in their own racial superiority as new Israelites entering their own promised land. Thus did an alien myth infect and damage a new world.

In the preparation of this book I have had much recourse to original documentation, some of which is quoted at length. After much thought I have made changes to modernize some of the spelling and punctuation, a decision that sacrifices much pleasure for greater clarity. I have also referred to the native peoples of America as Amerindians: this may not be the term that they themselves use, but to define them as Indians, as did the confused and careless invaders of that land, does not, I think, acknowledge their essential geographic and ethnic difference from those whom the English believed they were at first meeting and, finding themselves in error, were too idle to correct.

The work as presented is not a narrative history, rather it examines individual aspects of the invasion of America and suggests how these influenced the people and events of this confused, conflicting and challenging time. Those who would wish to read episodically are referred to the most excellent volumes of the Hakluyt Society and any work by that peerless recorder of the early English colonization of America, David Quinn.

Unless otherwise specified, all the pictures are from my collection.

I would like to express my thanks: to my publisher, Rob Gardiner, for commissioning this work and accepting my many changes to the original concept with equanimity; to Jessica Cuthbert-Smith for her incisive editing and helpful suggestions, all of which led to an improvement; and to Dominic Fontana of the University of Portsmouth for the great deal of time he spent turning my rough scribbles into presentable maps, which were then completed for publication by Peter Wilkinson. Finally, this book would not have been written were it not for the support of my long-time travelling companion and wife, Jane.