About the lecture

In this module, we look at what the Atlantic World looked like in 1607. At the start of our period, the Americas were dominated by Spain which had expanded from the West Indies into Central and South America. The English looked on Spanish wealth with jealousy and sought to establish their own colonies in the Americas. They gave a variety of reasons for this, including: (i) to spread Protestant Christianity; (ii) to discover the Northwest Passage; (iii) to bring ‘glory’ to the Crown; (iv) to disperse their population; and (v) to create new markets for their goods. Their attempts at establishing a colony failed until they established Virginia in 1607.

About the lecturer

Professor Peter Mancall is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Linda and Harlan Martens Director of the Early Modern Studies Institute and Professor of History and Anthropology at the University of Southern California. He specialises in early modern history and the early modern Atlantic world and has written widely on the process of European colonisation of the Americas, including Hakluyt's Promise: An Elizabethan's Obsession for an English America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007) and Virginia 1619: Slavery, Freedom, and the Emergence of English America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019).