But the English crown was not itself prepared to
invest either men, material or money in such overseas enterprises. Henry VIII’s
ambitions began and ended in France; the youthful Edward reigned for too short a
time; Mary could not act so as to upset her Spanish husband; Elizabeth disguised
parsimony as prudence; while James I signed a peace treaty with the nation’s
colonial rival. Given such state disinterest, America remained peripheral to
English policy while paramount for the Spanish purse.
In contrast to Spain, England did not find the New World a source of wealth and gold--except when English pirates seized gold from Spanish ships. Also, the English colonists did not export religion--rather they sought freedom from England's state church:
Given a religious homogeneity at home, Spain also
exported Jesuits to proclaim and convert natives, often brutally, to the one
true faith. By contrast, although every English Royal Charter included a
paragraph on the need to spread the gospel, few English missionaries sailed to
North America.
[That little dig, "often brutally" is an automatic anti-Jesuit response--since the topic is North America, I think the author should have included consideration of French Jesuit missionaries. Even Francis Parkman admitted that the French missionaries respected and treated the native Americans well. I don't think Blessed Junipero Serra is known for brutality toward the natives, nor Father Kino--and the author certainly forgets that Spain sent Dominican and Franciscan friars too! It certainly means the author ignored the great Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P., "Protector of the Indians", who protested against Spanish colonists' abuse of the natives. Those words "often brutally" just betray sloppy anti-Catholicism, in my opinion.]
These people could not consider themselves to be sojourners; they had no future other than in the New World. However difficult life became, they had to make it work to survive because there was no going back. Their loyalties were to their community and they made their own laws to ensure that they could live and survive together. From rules, such as the Mayflower Compact, democracy in America was born. Thus, ironically, the future of the English New World was assured by those who arrived carrying the curse rather than the blessing of the court.
Although the phrase ‘British empire’, coined in 1577 by John Dee, gives the impression that Britannia wished to set her bounds ever wider for the glory of crown, country and the Protestant creed, the actuality is very different. The early argument for overseas settlement was, in truth, based around finding a passage to Cathay; discomforting Spain; settling indigent or criminal elements; monopolising the distant fishing grounds; searching for precious metals and resettling loyal but non-Anglican groups.
Read the rest here. So, although Elizabeth I is pictured in the Armada Portrait with her hand upon the globe of the earth to symbolize England's international power, she, like her Tudor predecessors, was not a great colonist or supporter of exploration of the New World (dare I say she was insular?). Image credit.
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