Rachel Winchcombe. Encountering Early America.

Abstract

At Elizabeth I’s death in 1603, an Atlantic English empire was still very much in doubt after a string of failed ventures in North America. Nevertheless, Rachel Winchcombe argues in Encountering Early America, sixteenth-century attempts at expansion were not mere precursors to permanent colonies, as many scholars suggest, but the foundation upon which they were built. Focusing on assumptions in promotional literature about life’s quotidian aspects (climate, dress, and food) and how they explicated cultural differences and a region’s commercial prospects—what she calls the “embodied nature of early colonization” (18)—Winchcombe amply demonstrates that English attitudes toward the New World were not static. Instead, from initial American encounters through translations of Spanish, French, and Portuguese chronicles and sporadic early voyages to more sustained Elizabethan efforts in the Arctic, Newfoundland, and Virginia, English ideas about the New World shifted and were reshaped, sometimes radically, to assess what had gone wrong and modify the approach in subsequent attempts. Adjustments in the imperial narrative were only partly consolatory; other factors like deteriorating Anglo-Spanish relations, metropolitan anxieties surrounding luxury, idleness, and the progress of reformed religion, and economic volatility in staple industries played a more significant role in its evolution. This process was “messy and unsuccessful, but also adaptive, dynamic, and crucial to later success” (6).