Review: New World, Inc.: How England's Merchant Adventurers Created America

New World, Inc.: How England's Merchant Adventurers Created America by John Butman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've read a lot of early American history; more in the past than recently. While few subjects cause so much ink to be expended, what more can really be said? This book really does bring, for me, a new perspective. Reaching back to the 1558 end of the Pale of Calais and the English wool trade interests, this book sets up the economic and social motivations for reaching out to the markets of "Cathay" through -- whatever would work -- the Northeast or Northwest passage. On the surface, this seems rather dry, but the social motivation are an unruly populace exemplified by Robert Kett. Kett's Rebellion was a revolt in Norfolk, England during the reign of Edward VI, largely in response to the enclosure of land. It began with a group of rebels destroying fences. One of their targets was yeoman farmer Robert Kett who, instead of resisting the rebels, agreed to their demands and offered to lead them. This is a small part, and Kett does not even rate an entry in the largest "Cast of Characters" I have seen, but it is one of the spicy tales of unrest that shows how England, certainly by the time of Elizabeth I, truly needed to find a new market for its wool goods. This economic need may seem easy to satisfy in a globe being conquered and colonized left and right, but England was much behind the game compared to Spain, Portugal, and even France. In probing around the New World looking for a toehold, the first came about (and this is something I learned here) as New Albion claimed by Sir Francis Drake for England in 1579 on the coast of what is now California. So, this was years before Roanoke, Jamestown, etc. Of course those more well-known settlements get their due, which seems rather anti-climactic and back into the familiar territory. The author here spices this up with some insight by explaining how the impact and perceived relevance of The Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony) versus the Puritans (Massachusetts Bay Colony) began to be crafted as a sort of American forefather mythology, really in the days after The Civil War. (The Pilgrims offering an ideal; The Puritans a pragmatism so loose as to even admit slavery.) Either way, all were ultimately after lucre...

[I received a copy of this book from the publisher to review.]

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