Status Updates From THE WEB OF EMPIRE ENGLISH C...

Because overseas investment was entirely in private hands, the character of settlements and factories was fragmented. The only national institution that the English companies consistently transported overseas was the church. Yet the clergy were themselves deeply fragmented, and so could provide no uniformity to overseas ventures, which continued to be shaped by indigenous constraints ... and English personnel (253)

The Virginia Co failed to establish a trading post because 1) English settlers did not act like traders, failed to offer marketable commodities, and operated on different ideas of exchange for their indigenous neighbors, and 2) pressures of starvation and warfare encouraged dominion as opposed to cohabitation of the land (134). Thus a colonial model of expansion emerged to rival the trading one of the Mediterranean.

Cosmopolitans ‘willingness time adapt to the uncertainties and opportunities of foreign commercial centers helped reorient English trade in the 17th c. The nations growth thus hinged on men with global interests. The English procured foreign commodities and created global trade networks because individual men deliberately adapted to unfamiliar customs.’ (115)

RQ: Why and how did England go from an Elizabethan backwater to a European power from 1550-1650? A: ‘by relying on men who served simultaneously their sovereign, their pocketbook,their employer, and whatever personal satisfaction they derived in their global ventures.’ (15). In a word, cosmopolitans were crucial to binding together the first British empire and providing it knowledge and experience.