In Karl Marxʹs narrative of the birth of capitalism, Englandʹs exploration, exploitation, and colonization of the New World plays a crucial role. The event in Tudor history most commonly cited as emblematic of Marxʹs ʹso-called primitive accumulationʹ – i.e., the forcible separation of labourers from their traditional means of production as a necessary precondition of capitalism – is the enclosure of the Commons, which Marx describes as the systematic and legislative appropriation and transformation of arable land into privately held pasture land. In hisUtopia, Thomas More decries this very practice as a great social injustice, and a chief cause...

In the previous chapter, I interpreted the paradoxical conclusion to book 2 ofThe Faerie Queeneas a testament to the evolution of temperance into a term of colonial agonism. Guyonʹs tempestuous destruction of the Bower of Bliss – as well as the contrast between his own ataraxy, and the mournful and resentful affects of Medea and Grill, respectively – attest to the vexed status of temperance as an evaluative term used to describe the ethical postures and behaviours of English explorers and colonistsvis-à-visthe New World. The colonial setting, and the tempest generated by a poorly self-governed protagonist,...

After receiving its charter from James I in 1606, the Virginia Company of London began preparations for the December launch of its first envoy to North America. The first group of 104 ʹadventurersʹ completed their transatlantic voyage the following May, establishing the settlement they called Jamestown on the banks of the James River, sixty miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.¹

This New World endeavour would, of course, satisfy the Virginia Companyʹs pleonexia – first in the exportation of New World crops, which generated an enormous European appetite for novel luxury goods; and later in the slave trade, which...

In his 1601 tractSaint George for England Allegorically Described, the English ʹbullionistʹ Gerard Malynes introduces his polemic against usury, unregulated currency exchange, and the importation of foreign luxury goods with an elaborate adaptation of the opening sentence ofThe Canterbury Tales. Before reading that adaptation, though, a momentʹs pause and puzzlement over the Chaucerian template: Why not reach instead for Spenser? Like Malynesʹs polemic,The Faerie Queenechooses St George – patron saint of England since the time of Edward III; namesake of the humble, homegrown husbandsman (L.georgius) – as its first chivalric hero. Also like Malynesʹs tract,...