Abstract
The English colonies of the seventeenth century were founded by a variety of agencies and assumed many forms. The Royal African Company’s merchants and soldiers in West Africa did not exceed 330 at any time during the century, while the East India Company’s establishment in Asia was probably about one thousand men in 1668–90. English ambitions in Asia rarely transcended those of the Company. The Commonwealth’s expedition against pro-royalist Barbados in 1652, the capture of Spanish Jamaica in 1655 and the resumption of royal rights in Barbados and the Leeward Islands by Charles II in 1663 were the prelude to stronger metropolitan control in America, through royal governors subordinate to the Committee of Plantations. The development of royal government in the North American and Caribbean colonies, together with their acknowledged importance in the imperial trade system, won them a certain measure of national protection, admittedly inadequate, in European wars.
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