“Mercyfull Warres agaynst These Naked People”: The Discourse of Violence in the Early Americas

Abstract

“‘Mercyfull Warres agaynst These Naked People’: The Discourse of Violence in the Early Americas” explores how several early modern propagandists for colonial expansion construct Indigenous peoples and promote specific action. Working from the textual collections of Richard Eden and Richard Hakluyt, this paper examines how each writer takes specific steps to control terminology. By configuring Indigenous people as either violent or docile, they, in turn, become candidates for extermination or conversion respectively. The paper argues that Hakluyt's more complicated, contradictory, and subtle framing of colonial progress in fact urges a significantly more imperious and universal colonial project, invested in a widespread homogenization of culture and identity.