Dimensions
156 x 234 x 16mm
Why did England, acknowledged masters of the seas during Elizabeth I's reign, possess not a single square mile of American land by the end of her reign? The Spanish colonisation of the Americas is justly famous: England's failure in those parts during the sixteenth century is less well known.
From the visionary John Cabot, granted a royal patent in 1496 "to discover in any part of the world lands formerly unknown to Christians, to annex, conquer, and occupy them in the king's name", to Sir Walter Raleigh, whose 1584 colony struggled for some brief years and died, hardly any good resulted from a waste of energy and lives.
This story is one of devious policy allied to misplaced idealism, high-flying ambition, and plain greed. The men who trust themselves into the work of colonisation were men with various and suspicious motives. Buffeted by forces they could neither control nor understand they acted as best they could, suffered and died.
