teohjitkhiam’s Reviews > The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume I: The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century Vol 1 > Status Update

"There is an instructive parallel between the course of events in England and America between 1685 and 1688. On opposite shores of the Atlantic James II..ruled in a fashion calculated to alienate..The King bypassed Parliament, and..the colonial Assemblies. The King incited religious hysteria by openly favoring the tiny Catholic minority in England..and..colonies where Catholics were prominent office-holders."

"As a result of the Glorious Revolution and..Williamite
campaigns in Ireland and Scotland and..the War of the Spanish Succession, Britain was now unquestionably Europe's dominant maritime and colonial power. It was evident that all the rival colonial empires were now in a strikingly weak position..and..there was no longer any viable basis for strategic collaboration on the part of the other..powers against Britain."

"..long turn-around times in transoceanic trade..stimulated refinements in credit practices to smooth..long chains linking a network of domestic suppliers..with overseas customers..Barbour suggested..familiarity with the bill of exchange may have encouraged acceptance of other forms of paper..By the end of the [17th] century..London..look set to overtake Amsterdam as Europe's major entrepot..and market for capital."

"To attract Barbadians and other slave-holders, the Proprietors made slavery legal from the outset..Carolinians never committed themselves to one crop as exclusively as Barbadians..but..did create an exploitative society..which free whites prospered on black slave labor. Their model was Barbados, and..succeeded in re-creating it closely enough that South Carolina became..the pattern for..North Carolina and Georgia."

"A policy of open war in [South] Asia was not to be repeated until the mid-[18th] century. It seems likely, however, that what kept armed action by the [East India] Company within limits was not any principled rejection of war as an instrument of trade..but a realistic calculation of costs and benefits..Once India became the main focus of its operations, there was little temptation to embark on expensive wars."

"Down to the late [17th] century, the European impact on western Africa remained limited, and the..English impact less significant than that of the Portuguese and Dutch..the English, rarely penetrated the interior..In the longer run, the growth of slave exports, together with imports of firearms, would have..provoking dramatic political upheavals..militarization of social structures..the beginnings..visible by 1700."

"The prominence of religion as a motive for emigration from England -and of religious dissent..for migration within New England- ensured that spiritual concerns would strongly influence the region's development..Although no colony allowed religious leaders to wield civil power directly, secular and spiritual authority were mutually supportive. The alliance between magistrates and ministers emerged most clearly.."

"The establishment of political authority and maintenance of social order were two of the most intractable problems which confronted Governors of Maryland and Virginia..early rulers experimented with a variety of forms of governance..military-style government based on models of garrison rule..corporate government organized along similar lines to boroughs in England, or..social order founded upon manorial principles."

"This pragmatic [i.e. via force] view did not immediately become the dominant one, but the two coexisted uneasily until the sequence of Indian uprisings [at English colonies in North America] discredited the accommodationist [i.e. 'civilizing'] view and made way for the ascendancy of its rival; the shift became easier after formal peace with Spain released Englishmen from moral competition with their Spanish rivals."

"Contemporaries from the [Stuart] King[s] down clearly regarded the Gaelic Irish and..[Scottish] Highlanders and Borderers, both mentally and culturally as..lower form of humanity..savages and barbarians who had failed to progress, to farm for their food, or to inhabit an ordered polity..Convictions of [English] racial superiority critically shaped attitudes about how best these remote regions could be 'civilized'.."