Forces behind English overseas colonization in the late 16th and 17th centuries

At its peak, the British Empire covered one-fifth of the globe and ruled 400 million subjects belonging to various religious and ethnic groups. It acted as the “centre of the world” for trade, communications, migrations and naval-military power. In other words, it had become the Empire on which “the sun never set”. ¹ The foundation for such exploits was laid in the early modern period, especially late 16^th and 17^th centuries. The dynamics within the Empire continually evolved throughout the early modern period. It was also subject to external pressures, such as foreign rivals, wars, revolts and economic change. This essay explores the forces and interests that existed in those times.

The precedent

The history of British Empire building has its roots in the individual evolutions of the Three Kingdoms – England, Ireland and Scotland. Both England and Scotland were composite monarchies that applied “colonialist principles of settlement, acculturation and economic dependency to civilize its territorial margins and their inhabitants”. They also exhorted overseas adventures into the Atlantic during the early modern period.²

England’s reign over diverse annexes of territories during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries provides the first example of empire formation. The inhabitants of these lands were discriminated against and treated to military aggression. Even the indigenous pagan people, considered as barbarians, were coerced to convert to Christianity. So there is sufficient precedence to the British imperialistic endeavors that peaked during the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

To conquer the world, the English first needed a vision of themselves as an imperial nation. This self-image as an independent and omni-competent country, as well as one with the potential to control other countries and regions of the world, had to precede the acquisition of an empire and so the English needed an imperial ideology before they could begin to construct an empire in deed.³

Trade and Intra European Competition

In early modern Europe, the nature of relations between states was very volatile indeed. Reducing dependence and dominance over neighboring states were seen as essential. This meant that imperialism was considered a logical and legitimate policy.

It is surprising then that British-occupied territory during this period were usually ports, which acted as trade facilities rather than strategic vantage points. In fact, Asian, American and African peoples continued to hold major expanses of land. Expertise in maritime commerce as opposed to territorial acquisitions, directly translated into power. The Dutch cleverly recognized this and rose in dominance in-spite of being land-poor. So, maritime expansion offered new opportunities for traditionally weaker political entities like the Dutch and changed the orientation of power within Europe. The subsequent decline in Dutch influence on oceans during mid-seventeenth century coincided with British mastery of it. This is in large due to adoption by Britain the policy to separate military and commercial operations. It meant military expenditures no longer had to depend on commercial revenues. This policy proved significant in later British forays into Asian territory.⁴

Britain mixed caution with imperial ambition as is evident from its stand of neutrality during the Thirty Years’ War (1619-1648). Nevertheless, its relations with Spain soured when the latter’s ships carrying gold and silver necessary to finance its armies were looted by English pirates.

The chartering of navigational routes across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, further increased the intra-European competition. It soon opened the Newfoundland fishery to Europeans which was one of many contested prizes.

In short, transoceanic trade and colonization created significant new international conflicts and constellations of power outside existing arrangements. The insistence by the Netherlands, England, and France that Spain and Portugal could not claim sovereignty over the oceans necessitated state-to-state negotiations about the terms of interaction in this non-state arena. The international community needed some consensus about where sovereign, territorial waters ended and the international zone began. Likewise, the control of subjects on the high seas, particularly pirates, required new laws and agreements, and the need to police trade and to suppress piracy demanded state-supported navies.⁵

This strengthening of navy made territorial expansion across the ocean less difficult.  Government expenditures in England accordingly rose during the seventeenth century, with naval expenditures accounting for a large portion of the increase. Britain was in constant sea-borne strife with other European states, especially Netherlands, France, Spain and Portugal, almost the whole of seventeenth century. The institutional enhancements that were made to consolidate trade, were later to act as instruments for colonizing.

The guise of spreading Liberty

The theory of the republic has it that internally the subjects should be free to flourish and externally the empire manifest its grandeur. In this way the notion of the republic and liberty were interconnected. In early modern England, renowned thinkers like Machiavelli and Sallust were faced with the problem of sustaining empire, while maintaining liberty.⁶ Although the two aims of empire and liberty were conflicting, Machiavelli argued that it would not be possible to ignore compulsions for territorial expansion and the loss of liberty that it would impose on the conquered. He goes on, citing the example of Rome:

Rome could never have achieved grandeur without instituting the practical measures that had led to internal dissension and hence to the destruction of its republican liberty; likewise, those states that did not follow the expansionist policies of the Romans rendered themselves vulnerable to conquest by others and would still lose their liberty as their competitors overran them in due course.⁷

Machiavelli points to Venice and Sparta as counterexamples. Thus, imperialism was rationalized to mean bringing liberty to the acquired lands. It was also acceptable to impoverish individuals to stock-up coffers and maintain military discipline.

The British intellectuals further argued that the main reason to prefer the course of Rome was not glory but security in a world of change and ambition. Imperio and liberta would, at last, be incompatible. So, in the dilemma of Imperio and Liberta, the former was regarded as the higher duty.⁸Therefore imperialism was seen by some of its practitioners as a set of values that were essentially benign. This idea of the benevolent mission remained a genuine belief for a majority of imperial administrators settlers.

The English imperialists believed that they were bringing just laws, efficient governance and a sound economic system that would provide freedom from oppression. They also held the notion of illuminating the ignorant masses with the light of religion and morality. On the hindsight, we now know how ironic such beliefs were, but history has it that the Englishmen truly regarded them as their “duty”.

 

The Sense of Racial and Cultural Superiority

Through most of its history, Britain portrayed the East as the “Other”, the very opposite of the qualities of the West. While the Western model stood for progress, enlightenment, modernization, the Orient represented “backwardness”. The West defined itself in reference to others as inferior. The common literature during the early modern period also exemplifies such attitudes. In its extreme form, Englishmen were considered masculine, strong, courageous and accomplished, while the natives were thought weak, timid and effeminate. Such colonial discourse, not only indoctrinated the minds of the colonizers, but also of the colonized. The latter developed a sense of inferiority.⁹

Protestantism and the Missionaries

There is a strong historical relation between British imperialism and Protestant Reformations. Protestantism helped the English develop a strong national consciousness. The failure of the Three Kingdoms to unite under one version of faith led to a broader British national identity. In other words, Protestantism was the foundation upon which Great Britain was invented. It is the link joining state-formation and empire building, although British imperial ideology does not have a direct theological basis.

The Christian missionaries to Asia and Africa present some interesting evidence. There is a popular anecdote that goes: When the Englishmen came they had the bible and Africans had the land. A little later, the Africans had the bible and the Englishmen held the land. The missionaries welcomed assistance from colonial rulers to resist anti-Christian elements and entities that prevented religious conversion. However, they would also oppose the atrocities committed by the imperialists on innocent subjects.

The historian E. Ayandele described missionaries as “the pathfinders of British influence” for they provided the British government with some important local knowledge. They also acted as mediums for English language learning, upon which the legal system was based. ¹⁰

However, we cannot read too much into the connections between Christian mission and imperialism as they stood for different values. Missionaries were “egalitarian: all men, regardless of race were equal in the eyes of God and in need of salvation”¹¹, which contradicts the values of English empire builders.

Naval Mastery and Mare Liberum

Britain’s geographical insularity meant that it would be a Naval power, quite distinct from the rest of the European continent. As a result, its destiny seemed compelled by nature. British naval mastery came to seem as inevitable as the expansion of the British Empire. In due course, such conceptions also underlay the ideological definition of Britain as a maritime power, with a commercial destiny based on its natural insularity.

As Cicero put it, in a passage that is quoted very often:

There is no private property by nature. Property becomes private either by ancient usurpation, men finding them void and vacant, or by victory in war, or by legal condition or composition in peace. However everything produced by the earth is for the benefit of humanity as a whole, and humans are born to help one another.¹² (De Officiis)

This means, all property – private or public – should be protected. Also, through mutual help free commerce would be facilitated that would consolidate relations across cultures. On such grounds, commerce should be free and the seas open to all. This natural jurisprudential claim would become the basis of all later British assertions of the freedom of the seas.

Britain would support the freedom of trade even as it built the empire with its naval exploits. Similarly while determined to rule the seas, it would also support its freedom. This ideology, conflicting as it may be, remains the bottom line of the sprawling empire that is yet to be.

Thus, the English Crown argued for mare liberum on the natural jurisprudential grounds that all are at liberty to navigate the vast ocean, since the use of the sea and the air are common to all. No nation or private person can have a right to the ocean, for neither the course of nature nor public usage permits any occupation of it.¹³

Like the more general arguments for British maritime supremacy, these particular assertions of the insufficiency of prescription to guarantee possession and the freedom of the seas for navigation would become staples of later British imperial ideology.

The Influence of Intellectuals

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth geographers and cartographers, including such intellectuals as John Dee and John Wolfe endorsed certain prejudicial set of attitudes and assumptions. This had significant influence on the public mind, as their thoughts and opinions were highly valued. One such doctrine is the view that the English are separate and superior to the rest of the world.

Many students and politicians studied John Dee’s General and Rare Memorials and believed in their inherent superiority and their ability to control the world they then understood.

In fact, the study of geography helped the English develop an imperial world-view based on three underlying assumptions: a belief that the world could be measured, named, and therefore controlled; a sense of the superiority of the English over peoples and nations and thus the right of the English nation to exploit other areas of the globe; and a self-definition that gave these English students a sense of themselves and their nation. This message of superiority and the possibility of imperial expansion was aided by the iconographic images present in many geographical works. Through the constant repetition of such messages, students of geography began to envisage a world open to the exploration and exploitation of the English.¹⁴

The audience for General and Rare Memorials was relatively small, but included the most influential privy councilors members. Although the recommendations presented in the book were never implemented, many of Elizabeth’s key advisors appreciated and shared this vision for an empire. It also provided the English with a sense of superiority and potential hegemony, as well as with examples of the “heroic feats of those champions of English expansion who had gone before”. That vision also prophesized that Britain would undertake a great imperial adventure.

Another such influential intellectual was John Wolfe , who published a translated version of Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s Discourse of Voyages in 1598. In the introduction to the work he extorts the English to take their rightful place as an ocean-going, imperial nation, both for the riches such action would bring to England and for the civility they would return to inferior parts of the world. The narrative further encourages the English to spread the message of Christianity and civility to the uncivilized natives of foreign lands. However, Wolfe mentions, that trade and commerce were more important than domination of the rest of the world.

Conclusion

The British Empire, as we saw was not one monolithic enterprise. The form it took in its peak during the 19^th century, was the culmination of complex sequence of historical events. However, the late early modern period provided shape for things to come. Commercial interests, religious propaganda, advancement in naval technology, competition from neighboring states and most importantly ideologies, all contributed in one way or the other. Some of the ideological foundations were based on prejudice and naiveté, as we now know. It includes racism and the notion of spreading liberty. The late 16^th and 17^th centuries laid the foundation for the peak that the British empire would ultimately reach.

References

Armitage, David. (2000). Ideological Origins of the British Empire.

Port Chester, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.

Canny, Nicholas. Writing Early Modern History: Ireland, Britain and the Wider World. The Historical Journal ,46,3 (2003), pp.723 – 747 f 2003 Cambridge University Press

Cormack, Lesley B. Britannia Rules The Waves?: Images of Empire in Elizabethan England. Early Modern Literary Studies 4.2 / Special Issue 3 <URL: http://purl.oclc.org/emls/04-2/cormbrit.htm>

Johnson, Robert. (2003). British Imperialism.

Gordonsville, VA, USA: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mancke, Elizabeth. Early Modern Expansion and the Politicization of Oceanic Space.,  Geographical Review, 00167428, Apr99, Vol. 89, Issue 2

Notes:

1 Johnson, Robert. (2003). British Imperialism.