To the chagrin of English merchants, however, the queen had little enthusiasm for a colony in North America. At the outset of her reign in 1558, Elizabeth was more interested in strengthening English control within the British Isles through the recolonization of Ireland and a political alliance with Scotland than in becoming involved with European rivalries on the continent or in America. However the transnational religious and political conflicts set off by the Reformation in continental Europe inevitably drew her attention outward. Dutch Protestants rebelled against Catholic Spain in 1568 and Spanish troops were sent to suppress the rebellion, just across the water from England. Spain annexed Portugal in 1580, disrupting a longstanding alliance between Portugal and England. Many English Protestants, recalling the religious strife that had divided England during the reign of Elizabeth's predecessor, Mary, believed Spain was conspiring with Rome to re-establish Catholic rule throughout Europe. A more assertive foreign policy towards Spain began to seem desirable, and English privateering bases in the Americas might be useful for such a policy.
However, any efforts to establish colonies would have to be financed by private investors, not the Crown. While Spain, Portugal, and France had provided some financial sponsorship for voyages of exploration and colonization efforts, Elizabeth refused to do so, pleading a lack of funds. Instead she would license private ventures and allow private investors to take the initiative. After Gilbert died in 1583, his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh took up Gilbert's patent, and managed to interest a number of influential courtiers and seafaring men like Sir Francis Drake and Richard Grenville in financing a venture. As a result an expedition comprising two small vessels was dispatched in April 1584 under Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe to explore the coast of North America. They duly made their way via the West Indies and early in July reached the outer banks of North Carolina, where they made contact with the inhabitants of Roanoke Island and the surrounding area. Before leaving they persuaded (or forced) two inhabitants, Manteo and Wanchese, to accompany them back to England, to provide more information, not least knowledge of their language.
Amadas and Barlowe were sufficiently encouraging about trading prospects and the defensive advantages of Roanoke to persuade Raleigh and his friends to dispatch a major expedition the following year, this time to establish a permanent base. Raleigh put considerable thought into planning the expedition. Not only were Manteo and Wanchese to return as interpreters but Thomas Harriot, a young Oxford graduate and scientist, and John White, an artist, were hired to assess the resources and draw the flora and fauna of the region, now called Virginia, in honor of the celibate queen.
Raleigh's expedition, comprising five large and two small vessels under the command of Grenville, left England in early April 1585 and arrived off the outer banks early in July. Here the English began to encounter the native inhabitants, and the Indians to get a close look at the English. Not surprisingly, some of the English were fearful and suspicious. As the English force explored the interior, a silver cup went missing. Grenville's decision to avenge this incident by burning an Indian village was hardly calculated to maintain good relations. Yet despite English blundering, not all relations between the English and the Indians were hostile. After Grenville departed for the Caribbean towards the end of August, Captain Ralph Lane remained behind with approximately 100 men to complete a fort and other dwellings. The Roanoke Indians and their chief, Wingina, sought out an alliance with the English, and Lane was able to explore the surrounding area, even dispatching a party under White to winter among the Chesapeake Indians. Harriot and White gathered considerable quantities of information for their report.
In the end, however, the Englishmen's suspicions got the better of them and poisoned the relationship between Lane and the local inhabitants. When supplies began to run low towards the spring, Lane became convinced that the Indians were plotting an attack and carried out a pre-emptive strike, murdering Wingina and a number of his people. The other Indian communities now refused to continue trading with the white men, thus intensifying the food shortage. Not surprisingly, when Drake called unexpectedly in June 1586 after a buccaneering expedition in the West Indies, Lane and his men insisted on returning home. When Grenville arrived a few weeks later with fresh supplies and men, the original party was gone, though Grenville left 15 men to hold the fort until a further group of colonists could arrive the following year.
Meanwhile, in England, White and a number of others remained optimistic about colonization. One major question that had to be answered before an English colony could succeed was whether the English should plan to subdue the native inhabitants by force, as the Spanish had. Several promoters argued that the English would have an advantage against the Spanish if they could win the Indians over as allies and friends, since the Indians would then ally with them to overthrow the Spanish Catholics. As White and Harriott began working on their Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, they sought to portray the Indians as sympathetic and fully human, if ignorant and in need of civilization. An illustrated version of the report which appeared in print a few years later would emphasize not only the Indians' apparent simplicity and backwardness, but also their attractiveness, their ingenuity, their apparent interest in European technology, and the orderly arrangements of their villages. The report's overwhelming message was that the Indians were capable of being civilized, and ready to be taught.8
White suggested a new plan to settle the Chesapeake area, which he believed would provide better harbor facilities and a more friendly population. Under White's prompting the scheme this time was less martial and more agricultural, being aimed primarily at establishing a colony of predominantly families and freeholders as opposed to soldiers and servants. It was to be called the City of Raleigh.
Figure 7 Roanoke and its vicinity, 1585, by John White. Colored engraving by Theodore de Bry. From Admiranda Narratio … (1585–1588). Service Historique de la Marine, Vincennes, France/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.
Accordingly in April 1587 some 85 men, 17 women, and 11 children set sail, this time for the Chesapeake. Unfortunately the two vessels were late in departing, and the captain insisted on leaving the settlers at the old site on Roanoke. White may have agreed to this, for the Englishmen Grenville had left behind would be present to welcome the newcomers. Unfortunately, it turned out the men were no longer there. Not surprisingly, after the murder of Wingina local people had turned against the Englishmen and driven them away. This meant that no crops had been sown, nor habitable accommodation maintained. In this critical situation it was decided that White should return to England for additional help.
Unluckily for the settlers, war broke out between England and Spain before White could return with fresh supplies. Philip II had been increasingly angered by Elizabeth I and her policies. England had begun covertly supporting the Dutch revolt against Spain, and the activities of Drake and Grenville clearly challenged Spain's legal claims in the Americas. Having previously been married to Elizabeth's half-sister and predecessor, Queen Mary, Philip still had pretensions to the English throne. His religious belief – he was a devout Catholic and received the title of “most Catholic monarch” from the pope – also led him to oppose Protestant England, much as many English leaders opposed Catholic Spain. By 1588 he had decided on a course of action. With the support of Pope Sixtus V, he resolved to invade England, claim its throne for himself, and rid the world of a dangerous heretic.
Thanks to the war all communication with Roanoke was severed until after the Spanish Armada had been defeated. Finally in August 1590 a relief vessel got through, but all trace of the settlers had vanished. White had left instructions that the colonists were to move to a neighboring location in the event of trouble, providing a message as to their whereabouts. The only message was the word “Croatan” carved on a doorpost, an apparent reference to a neighboring island on which Manteo's people lived. But no other clue to the settlers' fate could be found, and diminishing supplies
and poor weather prevented a visit to Croatan itself.
The fate of the Roanoke settlers has never been determined. Possibly they died of starvation, were killed by hostile Indians, or drowned at sea while trying to make their escape. However, some scholars believe it likely that some of the settlers survived. Local indigenous people in the Chesapeake region many years later told stories that survivors had intermarried with the local people and migrated into the interior of the continent or had gone north to join the Chesapeake Indians. These stories would shape relationships between these peoples and English explorers and settlers in the region during the early 1600s, though they could never be definitely confirmed.9
There were several reasons for the English failure to sustain a permanent presence on the continent at this time. The first was poor timing. Had the Armada not sailed, the Roanoke settlers would probably have been rescued by White's relief expedition. The second was the poor nature of the site, which was swampy, not readily accessible, and disease-ridden. A third and even more important factor was the project's poor organization, which stemmed mainly from Raleigh's limited funds. Mounting an expedition so far from home in such uncertain conditions required either huge resources, or considerable cooperation from the local inhabitants. Since the English had offered the local Indians no real reason to work together with them, such cooperation was unlikely.
Another cause of England's early failures was the expectations of both the investors and the would-be colonists. The Roanoke colony was really an adjunct to English privateering, that is government-licensed attacks on foreign ships by privately owned merchant vessels. English investors in Roanoke were interested mainly in seizing existing wealth, either from newly discovered empires or from Spanish treasure fleets. Indeed the lure of such conquests remained strong until the next century, despite the diminishing returns that even successful buccaneers like Drake and Grenville experienced. As late as 1617, Raleigh was still proposing another expedition to discover a new El Dorado, reputed to be a fabulously rich Indian empire in the interior of Guiana. But privateering bases were unstable, impermanent places. The settlers who came to them lacked the motivation and practical skills to get a settlement started, and had little incentive to establish the kinds of trade ties with the Indians that allowed French traders to thrive in Canada during the same period.
Although the last decade of the sixteenth century witnessed no fresh attempt at settlement by the English, promoters continued to advocate the colonization of North America. Yet their vision for colonies was beginning to change, if subtly. Increasingly, it was not only the prospect of carrying away silver and gold that made the Americas attractive. Atlantic commerce was becoming more diversified. By the 1580s there was growing awareness of the wealth being produced by Spanish and Portuguese American plantations. Thanks to the French example in Newfoundland and Acadia, it was now appreciated that even the northern coastline of North America offered potential opportunities for profit. Thus, promoters argued that precious metals and jewelry were not the only commodities to bring wealth. Increasingly sugar, cotton, cacao, coffee, tobacco, furs, and even fish were being recognized as having equal value. Indeed, as the Dutch were beginning to demonstrate by 1600, shipping these goods alone could be a highly profitable undertaking.
This realization in turn led some to conclude that a different kind of operation was required to profit fully from the New World. Buccaneering might result in the interception of a treasure fleet; it could hardly enable a crop to be harvested. To grow marketable crops, a more sober type of colonist was needed. Richard Hakluyt, Jr. advocated this and other ideas in his book The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, which appeared in 1589. In various chapters Hakluyt listed the advantages which would result from plantations, as he called them. The new settlements could provide naval stores like pitch, tar, and hemp. Ships would be required to supply them, thus increasing the pool of seamen and naval resources of the nation. It was not that Hakluyt's vision was necessarily realistic in all respects, for he (and others) clearly misunderstood the North American climate. He assumed that since the region around the Chesapeake shared approximately the latitude of Spain, commodities like olives, vines, and citrus fruit could be grown, thus ending both dependence on foreign producers and the drain on bullion. But the idea of colonies was changing. Instead of bases for pirates' raids on Spain, North American settlements, he predicted, would “yield unto us all the commodities of Europe, Africa and Asia … and supply the wants of all our decayed trades.”10
Promoters further argued that colonies could solve England's growing problems of overpopulation and unemployment. England's population was soaring, even as its economy was undergoing a wrenching transformation that was turning farms into commercial ventures and forcing tenant farmers from their homes to wander from town to town in search of work. As Sir George Popham, one of the first architects of English settlement in Virginia argued, a colony in America could employ not only the ex-soldiers and “poor artisans” but also “the idle vagrants” and many others who could not find work at home. The poor need no longer burden the rest of the community, while the power of the state would greatly increase, as would the profit of the individual.
Investors who might consider risking their capital in a North American colony were given an important boost around this time by the rise of the joint stock company, a new institution which promised to overcome the limitations of exploration by individuals such as Raleigh. By selling shares in an enterprise, such companies could harness the resources of many individuals, making possible a larger and more sustained effort. The first such ventures were the Russia and Eastland companies, formed in 1553 and 1572 respectively to trade with Muscovy, followed in 1592 by the Levant Company, set up to trade in the eastern Mediterranean. The most famous was the East India Company, established in 1600 to trade with India and the Far East. The development of these companies reflected not only the growing concentration of monied wealth, especially in London, but also the increasing opportunities for commerce. Indeed, historians have regarded European expansion in the sixteenth century as proof that the continent was emerging from its feudal, theocratic, and communal past into a more aggressive, individualistic, and capitalistic era.
Opportunities for English colonization and trade were greatly increased in 1604 by the formal signing of peace with Spain. Although Spain did not recognize the right of the English to contravene the Treaty of Tordesillas, the agreement did promise a new era in which their colonial ventures stood a better chance of success. The Spanish implicitly accepted that they had enough difficulty controlling their existing possessions without attempting to police the activities of other nations farther to the north. Moreover the treaty ended England's privateering war with Spain, cutting off English opportunities lawfully to profit by raiding Spanish galleons and forcing investors to find other ways to make a profit in the Americas.
A final contributing factor may have been English success in the colonization of Ireland. Since the beginning of her reign Elizabeth I had made determined efforts to anglicize Ireland by imposing English law, customs, and officials to bind the country more securely to the Crown. In the process a number of settlers had also been sent, and military force had been successfully employed to subdue the local population and remove rebellious natives from their lands. Of course colonizing Ireland was very different from settling North America. Ireland was nearby. It had a large population with a highly developed agriculture. Many of its people spoke English.11 North America was 3,000 miles distant. The main challenge there was to tame a totally different environment, whose inhabitants the English knew little about. The English colonization of Ireland was nevertheless an important precedent, if only for the experience it provided. Significantly, it provided several important English promoters with the experience of having subdued the Irish, whom many Englishmen viewed as wild and uncivilized. If the indigenous peoples in North America proved similarly savage, presumably they t
oo could be tamed.
There would be reasons, too, for certain Englishmen to consider emigrating to a North American colony themselves. One of these was religious conflict. Although Elizabeth I had tried to devise a religious settlement that permitted theological diversity, many groups were still dissatisfied. The Puritans in particular yearned for greater cleansing of the national church. They believed that there were still too many corrupt Roman Catholic elements in the Episcopalian settlement, and their discontent increasingly brought them into conflict with the authorities. As a result, some Puritan dissenters had begun to think of leaving England to establish communities elsewhere where they could be free from such corruption. Another reason for emigration was unstable economic conditions, not only for the poor but also for weavers whose livelihoods depended on the ups and downs of the cloth trade.
By the turn of the seventeenth century, then, incentives for English merchants to invest in colonies in the New World had grown. Spain's political control in the Atlantic had been weakened, and investors had realized they might have new opportunities to profit in the Americas. Potential competition from French as well as Dutch merchants loomed. When English investors learned in 1603 that the French were sending out various expeditions under Samuel Champlain to explore the area of the St. Lawrence, they renewed their voyages of exploration. Sir George Weymouth visited the coast of Nantucket and Maine in 1605 and returned with five Abenaki Indians and a highly optimistic account of the possibilities for trade and settlement. The English public was intrigued.
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