Roanoke - Essays
Discourse of Western Planting: Justifying the Movement
by Elizabeth Wambold
Propaganda
(1) Written with the intention of persuading Elizabeth I to provide financial support for colonization in the New World, Richard Hakluyt the Younger’s A Particuler Discourse Concerninge The Greate Necessitie And Manifolde Commodyties That Are Like To Growe To This Realme Of Englande By The Westerne Discoueries Lately Attempted, Written In The Yere 1584 (known most commonly as Discourse of Western Planting) is one of the most extensive and important pieces of propagandistic literature to emerge from late 16th century England – a virtual “tour de force of colonial promotion” (Horning 372). Touching upon a wide range of topics, Hakluyt carefully construes popular English concerns and interests to make a case for the validity of expansion and the overwhelming promise of positive rewards. The ideas and propositions he outlines deal with a “range of national problems which he proposed to solve by means of a brand of colonial adventure that presented itself as virtually risk-free, at least to the crown” (Scanlan 31). The relative ease and confidence with which Hakluyt presents his plan is the result not of a naïve, idealistic mind, but rather is the product of a thoughtfully constructed political agenda. Looking at this document through the framework of “justification literature,” that is, having to do with the representation and validation of overtaking a land that is already populated with people, Discourse of Western Planting gives a keen insight into the ideology of the Elizabethan mind. Through the presentation of the material, what is and is not included or acknowledged, and the depth of coverage, this document brings to light issues that were central to English interests.
Richard Hakluyt the Younger
(2) Before immediately jumping into this analysis, though, it is important to set a general frame of context for both the author of the document and the events surrounding its creation. Richard Hakluyt the Younger, who would later dedicate his life to the cause of English expansion into the New World, was a Protestant Reverend, educated at Christ Church, Oxford. Son of a member of the Skinner’s Company, Hakluyt supplemented his formal studies by making “regular trips to the principal seaports of London and Bristol to collect notes and records from sailors, offering intelligent insights into their problems and gaining the confidence of captains, merchants, and mariners alike” (Horning 368). The result of such trips was that Hakluyt developed an understanding of what it took to successfully outfit large voyages, knowledge that would become invaluable to him while writing Discourse.
(3) Commissioned in 1583 by Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State to Elizabeth I, Hakluyt goes to France to learn as much as he can about French and Spanish explorations and colonies in the New World. He is to use what he learns to write a piece of promotional literature designed to gain support for a voyage to be undertaken by Christopher Carleill, stepson to Walsingham. While there, Hakluyt reads Las Casas’s The Spanish Colonie (also known as A Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies), which dramatizes Spanish atrocities done to native populations in the New World. When Hakluyt returns to England in July of 1584, Carleill has already left on another voyage, having shifted his focus to a different realm. In spite of this, Walsingham still urges Hakluyt to write on the subject of colonization, though now with the intent of assisting Sir Walter Raleigh, who is himself seeking royal support to colonize what would be called Roanoke.
(4) The support, however, would not come as the men hoped for. Although Queen Elizabeth appreciated what Hakluyt was doing with the piece and even found some of his ideas tempting, she knew the realistic limits of her abilities. At the time she felt she had been lucky to avoid open conflict with Spain and knew that the most practical use of her investments would be in building up the English military, as the tensions between the England and Spain were sure to climax. In spite of this, the Queen did lend some support to Raleigh in his 1585 Roanoke venture, assisting him with “a ship, ammunition and power to enroll men for his venture if they were not willing enough to go as his servants” (Quinn, Discourse of Western Planting xxx). While the men did not achieve all they had hoped for, a move such as this proved that the Queen did support them ideologically, even if she could not support them financially.
Economics and Nationalism
(5) The major content of Discourse deals with the economic and nationalistic benefits that England will derive from colonizing the New World. Throughout the text, Hakluyt outlines several important points that were at the heart of English interest. He plays upon economic concerns, suggesting that North America will be the key in developing new outlets for trade and reinvigorating certain important industrial areas, such as the cloth industry, that were at the time lapsing. Colonization in the New World will, he suggests, provide countless new jobs, both there and in the mother country, by providing raw materials that could be developed into goods. Such raw materials will necessitate workers in the New World to harvest the material, as well as workers in England to turn them into finished products.
(6) In addition to reinvigorating the economy through new jobs, colonization will provide a solution for what many English considered to be an overcrowding of the country. Sending people to the New World will help to redistribute population growth and prevent people in England from going jobless due to overcrowding. This, in turn, will also cut down on crime in England, since there will be fewer jobless people to commit crimes. Even more, it would be possible to send current petty criminals to the New World where they can work and produce, rather than overcrowding English jails with nonviolent, non-threatening people, all at the expense of the taxpayers. Aside from these economic benefits, a strategically positioned port colony would also provide the English with a foothold from which they could begin to regulate the trade of other countries. Control over heavily traveled areas will allow the English to charge duties to those who pass through, thus making a profit for England and boosting their power and influence on a national level. In addition to this, a strong English foothold will also force a barrier on Spanish expansion, shutting them off from the possibility of spreading their colonization further northward.
England vs. Spain
(7) This desire to close off or compete with the Spanish is an underlying theme in almost all of what Hakluyt writes. The Spanish are considered by the English as the ultimate enemy, and anything that can be done to injure them is viewed as beneficial to the English. It is primarily through this framework of competition with Spain that Hakluyt deals with the question of the Native Americans. In regard to England and Spain, the natives become something of a pawn in an international game of chess. Hakluyt constructs the natives as a tool that can be manipulated and used by the English to either benefit them (by helping them pull ahead in the competition with Spain) or, failing to do that, at least hurt the Spanish. His attitude towards the natives is utilitarian, presenting them as something to be constructed as the English see necessary, and then utilized to their fullest advantage.
(8) One of the most extensively developed means of utilizing the natives in this competition comes in the first part of Discourse, which deals with the spreading of the Protestant religion. Hakluyt presents the idea of conversion in a way that appears to be kind and gentle, suggesting the colonists plant themselves in with the natives and “firste learne the language of the people nere adioyninge (the gifte of tongues beinge noew taken awaye) and by little and little aquainte themselues with their manner and so with discrecion and myldenes distill into their purged myndes the swete and lively lignes of the gospell” (Quinn, Discourse of Western Planting 8). Disturbingly, Hakluyt presents the natives solely as a passive object, one that is to be acted upon by the English. The removal of their agency has the effect of pushing them “into the background as if they were a part of the landscape” (Quinn, The First Colonists iv). Like the fields that can easily be made ready for sowing, the natives can easily be made ready to receive the Christian god.
(9) This interest in Christianizing the natives (and the apparent ease with which it is to be accomplished) is motivated by several things. Protestantism during Elizabeth’s reign is deeply embedded in the English psyche and national identity; “the Church of England was the outward symbol of English nationalism – the phrase ‘God is English,’ first printed in 1558, was reiterated several times later in the reign” (Quinn, Discourse of Western Planting xxii). Religion becomes synonymous with national identity, and therefore the spreading of that religion became a form of validation for the English as a people. The necessity of this validation derives in part from Spain’s critique of the English church, whose “Catholic missionary successes, trumped in print by the Jesuits, in Asia, Africa, and especially in the Americas, enabled Catholic propagandists to sneer at the English church which had converted no heathen or pagan people and so remained purely insular” (Quinn, Discourse of Western Planting xxii). The desire to convert becomes a means of competition between the nations, and converting the “heathen or pagan people” of the New World is a form of validation for the English. By converting these people to Protestantism, the English felt they would be proving that their religion is as good, powerful, and “holy” as the Spanish Catholics. The natives, through this, function as a tool between the two nations.
(10) Hakluyt’s means of utilizing the natives against the Spanish is not solely through religion, however. He uses descriptions of Spanish atrocities committed against the natives, primarily from Las Casas’s accounts, to fuel the already present hatred between the nations and suggest ways in which the Indians can be used against the Spanish. In part eleven of Discourse Hakluyt suggests that the English use these atrocities to their advantage and incite the natives to rebel against the oppressive Spanish, saying “the Spaniardes haue exercised moste outrageous and more then Turkishe cruelties in all the west Indies, whereby they are euery where there become moste odious vnto them whoe woulde ioyne with vs or any other moste willinglye to shake of their moste intollerable yoke” (Quinn, Discourse of Western Planting 52). While this statement is supposedly about the injustices one people is capable of inflicting on another, Hakluyt does not set it up as a plea for humanity. Instead, he plays upon sympathies for the natives only to the degree that it will help the English in their struggle against the Spanish, demonstrating that the English were “not very sympathetic towards the Amerindian, and when the English proponents of American colonization did develop such a sympathy, it was only temporary, and more a response to necessity than to philosophic commitment” (Pennington 176).
(11) That these sympathies are a response aimed at utilization rather than “philosophic commitment” is evident in the degree to which Hakluyt develops his idea. While he suggests how the English may help the natives to rebel, he fails to take up the question of what will happen to the natives after the English help them break free from their “intolerable yoke.” It would seem more than unlikely that the English would help restore the natives to their own culture and help them rebuild what has been lost. Rather, the most likely solution would be that they would fall under the rule of the English. Their fate, while it would not be as cruel as Hakluyt portrays it to be in the hands of the Spanish, would still ultimately be one of conquest.
(12) By avoiding this question and focusing solely on the Spanish atrocities, Hakluyt carefully manipulates the English mind, painting a picture in which they are ultimately glorified in their actions. His images, therefore, “not only serve as propaganda, but also reveal the hope, and even the faith, that the elect will triumph over evil, that England will subdue Spain, that Protestantism will curb the passions of the Catholic whore” (Bess 4). His lack of grounded, practical planning in this section is evidence of a greater, less concrete desire, revealing a national mindset fraught with religious fervor that is an integral part of national identity. Regardless of the true motives behind English action, however, the reality still remains that the natives are construed as passive recipients, expected to fulfill a role that is imposed upon them. As with the desire to bring them into the Protestant religion, this desire to “save” the natives from the Catholic Spanish is based upon a need to compete with and do injury to Spain, and the natives are expected to fulfill their part in the plan.
Right to Colonize
(13) While English motives for colonization and the use of native peoples certainly have a lot to do with the desire to compete with Spain, Hakluyt nevertheless goes to great pains to establish English legitimacy in the New World. He cites the story of Madock, a Welsh seafarer who was a direct ancestor of Elizabeth, as the means by which England has claim in the Americas. Telling the story, he says that Madock
made twoo voyadges oute of Wales & discouered and planted large Contries which he founde in the mayne Ocean southwestwarde of Ireland, in the year of our lorde 1170. […] And this is confirmed by the language of somme of those people that dwell vpon the continent betwene the Bay of Mexico and the granunde Bay of Newfounde lande, whose language is said to agree with the Welshe in diuers wordes. (Quinn, Discourse of Western Planting 88)
The appearance of such a story, had, at least for the English, the result of rendering both the Papal bull Inter caetera (which handed the New World over to Spain in 1493) and the Treaty of Tordesillas (which divided the New World between Spain and Portugal) as legally unfounded.
(14) The way in which the Madock story is presented in Discourse is extremely significant. The story as Hakluyt tells it is a version full of previously inserted editorial interpretations. Cut down to its “historical skeleton,” as Gesa Mackenthun calls it, the story does little to justify English claims in the New World. According to Mackenthun, without the editorial interpretations the story would read much more along the lines of “Owen Gwyneth, Prince of North Wales, died. His relatives fought for succession. Madoc, son of Owen Gwyneth, left the country by ship and sailed west. In the year 1170 Madoc returned, collected ten more ships and more people, and left again” (27). In this form, there is no way the tale could stand up as legal justification. Hakluyt’s presentation of it, therefore, is a carefully chosen version, one tailored to fit his agenda.
(15) While the tale as reiterated by Hakluyt opens the door to legal opposition between European nations, it also had an interesting side effect in relation to the native populations. Through certain ambiguities in the narrative, the story of Madock opens up the question as to the legal and moral grounds of colonization on any level, from any nation. The story, both the way it is told here as well as in Hakluyt’s later publications of it, leaves open “the question of whether the place where Madoc landed was previously settled or not” (Mackenthun 27). Although validity of the story is in part based upon “the language of somme of those people that dwell vpon the continent,” it is not made clear whether those people were natives who learned the language from the Welsh or were the remnants of a Welsh colony.
(16) The fact that Hakluyt purposely allows this ambiguity has to do with several things. In terms of validity, it is necessary for him to include the reference of language, as this is used as one of the main sources of evidence behind the story. However, he may have resisted explicitly referencing the people as descendent from the Welsh because this could become a point of attack for other nations, as it could become something impossible to prove. In addition to this, even if Hakluyt could provide evidence that the people were Welsh descendents, acceptance of this idea may also prove detrimental to the English, as it could possibly suggest a weakness in English culture, a tendency to “devolve” without other “civilized” nations present, since the culture and practices of peoples in the America were overwhelmingly viewed as inferior.
(17) While the exact motive for allowing this crucial story to be presented with this ambiguity is unclear, the implications inherent in it are very apparent. It demonstrates Hakluyt’s desire to suppress the presence of native tribes by refusing to deal with them directly. Here, as well as elsewhere, the Indians are mentioned or alluded to only in passing, and when appropriate to English interests. Unlike the sections dealing with Spanish competition, in which the natives are dealt with more fully so as to develop how they can be used and the (obviously unsound) reasons behind why this is to their advantage, sections such as this one, which are more obviously about the justification of colonization, tend to gloss over the native question. Hakluyt’s avoidance of this issue indicates a severe disinterest in and devaluation of native culture and rights, as the “Englishmen were to be thrust into land that was assumed to be virtually empty and where there was plenty of room for them, without necessarily disturbing the inhabitants unduly, but with no recognition whatever given to their indigenous rights of occupation” (Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke 211). It points to feelings of presumed cultural superiority so great that it negates any motivation for justifying the taking of the natives’ lands. Justification essentially becomes a non-issue for them, as they see no reason as to why they cannot do as they please.
The Roanoke Colonies
(18) Hakluyt’s Discourse sets the stage for many attitudes that will carry over into the English/native relations of the actual settlements. In particular, a mixing of this feeling of cultural superiority with the view of natives as utilitarian will continually emerge and be the root cause of many of the settlements’ problems. The way these issues play out together in Roanoke creates an interesting tension. While the settlers feel themselves to be generally superior to the natives, it is an undeniable fact that they were often dependent upon them for survival; “a basic weakness of the English in Virginia was their reliance upon the Indians for food: corn and fish, especially. This reliance developed as a cause of friction” (Porter 227). The settlers, unable to self-sufficiently provide for themselves, were often in the position of pressuring the natives to provide them with food and other forms of material assistance. In this, way, they view the native as a functional tool, there to be used as they see fit.
(19) The result of casting the natives in this way has two different but related effects. In terms of the colonies’ survival, the most important result was the natives’ reaction to the English’s use of them. Unlike the docile, obedient, accepting natives that Hakluyt paints, the Roanoke natives were not willing to play the role of provider, instead actively resisting the English demands. In terms of psychological consequences, the Roanoke colonies’ use of the natives sets up an interesting paradox. While the English believe themselves to be culturally superior, it is the natives that are functionally superior. The English reliance on them proves their own weaknesses and shows them, at least in one way, as being inferior to the people they consider secondary.
(20) While the lack of food was in many ways the main instigator of problems, poor misplaced goals and poor judgment on the part of settlement leaders also heavily contributed to the colonies’ troubles. The first colony, which set out in June of 1585, was led by Sir Richard Grenville. Shortly after arriving, however, Grenville returned to England for supplies, leaving Ralph Lane, his second in command, in charge. Although the colony was in somewhat of a constant struggle for food, Lane led expeditions for precious metals and pearls, often times kidnapping natives and forcing them to act as guides for him. Many natives felt they were severely mistreated by Lane and resented the colonists for this; “There is little doubt that Lane’s actions inflicted long-term damage to the relations between the colonists and the inhabitants” (Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke 121). Bad feelings such as these were not to go away with the colonists when they abandoned the settlement in June of 1586. Instead, they would return to haunt the next group of settlers.
(21) The second attempt at settlement began in July of 1587 when John White and 12 assistants returned with over 100 settlers to the site of the previous settlement. Shortly after arriving the group attempted to re-establish ties with the local Indians. This proved to be more difficult than anticipated, due in part to the fact that “some of Lane’s cruelty to the Indians may have been silently censored, which meant that the next group of colonists […] had less than realistic expectations about their possible relationship with Americans around them” (Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony 104). Though apprehensive, the Croatoan Indians eventually agree to rekindle old relations and provided the English with information about other tribes that had been sporadically attacking them, in one instance even resulting in the death of one of White’s assistants. As an act of retaliation against these tribes, White and his men attacked one of their villages, only to learn that they had attacked the friendly Croatoans by mistake. In all of these instances, English ideas about natives as utilitarian come into play. Whether it be to obtain food, learn about the country, or gain knowledge about other tribes, the English treated the natives as if they were there strictly to act as their resource. The overall poor handing of the situations points to the negative and dismissive attitude with which the English viewed the natives, an attitude which was to help mold the severe tensions between the groups.
(22) Although Discourse of Western Planting is intended as a practical guide to colonizing in the New World, it is full of much deeper implications. Discourse opens the door to an understanding of the Elizabethan mindset that informs all English action and interaction in the New World. By looking at what is outlined in the document and how it is done, we can use Discourse as a sort of frame through which to read the motivations behind actions and incidents in the colonies.
Works Cited
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Horning, Susan Schmidt. "The Power of Image: Promotional Literature and Its Changing Role in the Settlement of Early Carolina." North Carolina Historical Review 70.4 (1993): 365-400.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony. Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield, 1984.
Mackenthun, Gesa. Metaphors of Dispossession: American Beginnings and the Translation of Empire, 1492-1637. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1997.
Pennington, Loren. “The Amerindian in English Promotional Literature.” The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic, and America 1480-1650. Ed. K. R. Andrews, N. P. Canny, and P. E. H. Hair. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1978. 175-94.
Porter, H.C. The Inconstant Savage: England and the North American Indian 1500-1660. London, Gerald Duckworth and Co, 1979.
Quinn, David B., ed. Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1985.
Quinn, David B., and Alison M. Quinn, eds. A particuler discourse concerninge the greate necessitie and manifolde commodyties . . . known as Discourse of Western Planting. London: Hakluyt Society, 1993.
---. The First Colonists: Documents on the Planting of the First English Settlements in North America, 1584-1590. London, Oxford UP, 1973.
Scanlan, Thomas. Colonial Writing and the New World: 1583 –
1671. London, Cambridge UP, 1999.
