Envisioning America: English Plans for the Colonization of North America, 1580-1640

by Peter C. Mancall

This collection of documents gives twenty-first century readers a glimpse of the time when the possibility of colonizing North America was anything but certain. Pamphlets, accounts, and engravings from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century capture the process of English colonization from its origins in promotional propaganda to its realization on the shores of North America.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History

182 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 1995

About the author

A 1981 graduate of Oberlin college, Peter Mancall attended graduate school at Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in history in 1986. Mancall was a visiting Assistant Professor of History at Connecticut College from 1986 to 1987. After teaching as a Lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard for two years, he took a position at the University of Kansas in 1989. In 2001, Mancall took a position at the University of Southern California, where he helped to create the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute in 2003, becoming its first director. He has served on the editorial board of several journals, and from 2007 to 2009 he was Associate Vice Provost for Research Advancement at the University of Southern California.

Mancall has written five books and edited eight others, and written around forty book reviews in such journals as American Historical Review, Journal of American History, Journal of Economic History, Journal of the Early Republic, and many others. His newest book, Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson—A Tale of Mutiny and Murder in the Arctic was published by Basic Books on June 9, 2009. Mancall has accepted an offer to write Volume 1 of the Oxford History of the United States series covering American colonial history to c. 1680.

~from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_C....

Reviews

[Kaylynn Johnsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a hard read, and it was short. I could only read one essay every few days. It was eye bleeding and brain melting to read in their original words. It was interesting and eye opening. Something I wasn't taught in school.

Remember those peaceful Native American we killed with our germs and weapons? Well they didn't really exist. They were at war with each other constantly, torturing and taking as slaves. There were acts of kindness and in some cases saved the settler's lives. So, in honesty the Native American was somewhere in the middle of the idealized, peaceful savage at peace with the land and the savage, violent warriors.

And their germs killed a bunch of Europeans too. The difference was the Europeans kept sending replacements. One particular essay was from a journal entry over a couple of months. Someone, or multiple someones, died every day; some to starvation and cold, but most to unfamiliar bacteria in the water.

Many of the very early explorers and colonists used Sir Thomas More's Utopia as justification for expansion and war. The waste or inadequate use of land by inferior civilizations being a just reason for war. One small part of essay of Richard Hakluyt (the younger) I found particularly interesting and slightly prophetic was, "Wee shall by plantinge there inlarge the glory of the gospell and from England plante sincere relligion, and provide a safe and sure place to receave people from all partes of the worlde that are forced to flee for the truthe of gods worde."

[Amaranta · Rating 3 out of 5]

de pronto sí es interesante y entretenido leer sobre la colonización de américa, pero a veces es tedioso tener que leer todos los pensamientos que guiaron a todo lo que sucedió...

sólo leí la parte sobre
*Richard Hakluyt the younger:
:( aburrida

*de Thomas Harriot:
muy interesante porque Harriot sí llegó a hablar con la gente nativa de América
"the area was part of a region termed "virginia" after the unmarried Queen Elizabeth."

"For mankinde they say a woman was made first, which by the working of one of the gods, conceived and brought foorth children: And in su eh sort they say they had their beginning. But how many yeeres or ages have passed since, they say they can make no relation, having no letters nor other such meanes as we to keepe Records of the particularities of times past, but onely tradition from father to sonne. "


*y John Smith:
¿el de pocahontas? quien dijo que había que tratar bien a los nativos si es que iban a salvar a inglaterra, pero bueno...

[Rick Wong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for school. The intros were nice from Mancall, it helped to get a feel for what the different authors were writing about. Unless you're used to the Old English writing, it can be hard to read because of the "typos" that have to be reread, but Mancall has good footnotes to help in words that we normally don't use anymore.

[Brittany Darr · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is insanely repetitive, but interesting to see what people thought the new world would be like versus what they were actually met with. Painful to read, and wouldn't have picked this up on my own. Only had to read it for one of my classes.