The History of the Americans

At some point in the second week of August, 1588, a merchant ship from one of the cities of the Hanseatic League, sailing through the North Sea off the east coast of England, found itself surrounded, in the middle of nowhere, by a herd of horses and mules, swimming, with no land in sight anywhere. This is, among other matters of greater historical significance, the story of how those poor creatures ended up paddling frantically, and unsuccessfully, for their lives. We look again at the geopolitics of 1588, considered a "year of dire portent" in Europe for at least a hundred years, the struggle of the Armada to sail free of Iberia in some of the strangest summer weather old sailors had ever seen, the famous game of bowls, and the long fight up the English Channel as the Duke Medina Sidonia sailed to protect the Duke of Parma's invasion force which was to cross the Channel on barges. Oh, and we learn where Tolkien got the idea for the Beacons of Gondor. Selected references for this episode Garrett Mattingly, The Armada Robert Hutchinson, The Spanish Armada: A History

On August 28, 1587, John White, the leader of the last Roanoke Colony, climbed on board Edward Spicer’s flyboat and returned to England. His mandate was to secure supplies and more settlers to reinforce the people he had left behind, who included his own daughter and granddaughter, Eleanor and Virginia Dare.  He would not in fact be able to return for almost three years, by which time the roughly 116 colonists back in North Carolina had vanished completely, leaving behind only scant clues. White would take three years to return because an undeclared but existential war had broken out between England and Spain, known to history as the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585-1604. The war was existential not for England the country – had Philip II and Spain won the war, England would have continued to exist as a country, and in their daily lives most English people would have seen very little change. Philip II would have become King of England, as he had already been years before during his marriage to Mary Tudor, and the liturgy at church on Sunday would have changed in ways that we moderns would have regarded as hilariously trivial.  However, the war was existential for Elizabeth I and her Protestant elite who, among other things, sustained English naval power and supported North American colonization. It is very hard to imagine that an England ruled by Philip II and an entirely different batch of nobles, Catholic “recusants” emerged from the political shadows, would have settled North America.  Nor would there have been successful Protestant Dutch settlement, because the defeat of Elizabeth would also have meant the end of Dutch Protestantism as a political force. The city in that harbor discovered by Verrazzano more than sixty years before would more likely have been New Seville or New Lisbon than New Amsterdam or New York. Fortunately, the English had Sir Francis Drake, who in the spring of 1587 would raid the Spanish port of Cadiz and occupy Sagres roadstead off Cape St. Vincent, destroying more than 100 Spanish and Portuguese ships and boats and much of the supplies for the Spanish Armada. And then he would go on to grab a Portuguese treasure ship that would substantially bolster Elizabeth's finances just when she needed it most. Selected references for this episode Garrett Mattingly, The Armada Robert Hutchinson, The Spanish Armada: A History John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake Andrew Shepherd, "The Spanish Armada in Lisbon: preparing to invade England"

This episode looks at the fate of the 15 settlers Sir Richard Grenville had left on Roanoke Island in 1586, and the expedition of 1587, which Sir Walter Ralegh, John White, and more or less everybody else intended to land at Chesapeake Bay. They never got there, and after August 26, 1587, no English person would ever see them again. Oh, and we meet Virginia Dare! Link to the Merch! (Scroll down) Selected references for this episode James Horn, A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606 Mary Queen of Scots (2018) execution scene

We are back in the summer of 1585, and careful listeners could hear the ever louder drums of war between Spain and England. In this episode we tell the story of Drake’s voyage to the West Indies in 1585-86, which fundamentally ended with the rescue at Roanoke Colony.  There are three reasons why we are devoting an episode to Drake's West Indies expedition. First, it was this mission more than any other affront to Philip that made direct war between Spain and England inevitable. Without that war, and without the defeat of the Spanish Armada in the course of that war, it is far from clear that English settlement in North America would have unfolded as it did, or that it ever would have happened.  Second, Drake burned down St. Augustine and affected the course of the Roanoke Colony, both of which are decisively within the mandate of the podcast. Finally, Drake’s West Indies voyage was a great moment in military history, an extraordinary example of amphibious warfare long before we used that term. Oh. And please listen to the end -- I tackle a historical mystery and wonder if some of the academic historians who have written about it have done so ... carefully. Selected references for this episode John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake Angus Konstam, The Great Expedition: Sir Francis Drake on the Spanish Main 1585–86 Mary Frear Keeler (Editor), Sir Francis Drake's West Indian Voyage, 1585-86 (Hakluyt Society, Second Series) Michael Guasco, Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World 3:10 to Yuma

This is our special Columbus Day episode, dropped on "old school" Columbus Day, instead of the "Canadian Thanksgiving" Columbus Day long-weekend holiday. This episode is not actually about the Columbus Day social war, except in passing. Instead, we consider the larger consequences of Columbus's "Great Enterprise," and various counterfactuals -- "what if" moments that might have made it all go quite differently. Along the way we say some challenging things that will irritate almost everybody, but we know you are only listening because of your resolutely open minds! Selected references for this episode Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, 30th Anniversary Edition Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas” Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650

It is July 1585. Sir Richard Grenville, in command of the first English expedition of colonization to reach the territory that is now the United States, has arrived at the Outer Banks of North Carolina with five ships, only two of which were part of his original fleet.  The flagship Tiger has run aground, and in the course of refloating her a large part of the expedition’s supplies had been lost. Thomas Cavendish commands the Elizabeth, which made it to a pre-planned rendezvous on the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico.  They have two small Spanish ships captured in the Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, and a new pinnace for shallow water exploration, built from scratch. Unbeknownst to Grenville and Cavendish, there are thirty Englishmen wandering around the barrier islands not far to the north, unceremoniously dumped there by George Raymond, captain of the Red Lion, who had blown off the colony to privateer between Newfoundland and the Azores. They also didn’t know, yet, that the Roebuck and the Dorothy, thought lost since a storm off the coast of Portugal, had found their own way and were anchored offshore not far to the north waiting for Grenville and Cavendish to show up.  And, finally, the most important thing they didn’t know was that the re-supply ships, under the command of Amias Preston and Bernard Drake -- no relation to Francis -- had been ordered by Elizabeth I to sail for Newfoundland instead of North Carolina, so that they could harass the economically important Spanish cod-fishing operation. Now it was time to pay a visit to the chief of the Secotans, Wingina, whose portrait by John White is the featured image for this episode. Selected references for this episode James Horn, A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606

Sir Walter Ralegh's first attempt to settle the Outer Banks of North Carolina -- the first Roanoke colony, under the command of Sir Richard Grenville -- got off to a rough start. A storm off Portugal had scattered the fleet, and only Grenville's Tiger and Thomas Cavendish's Elizabeth made it to the agreed interim rendezvous on the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico. Grenville and Cavendish replenished the fleet with Spanish prizes, and eventually got to Cape Hatteras only to lose most of the colony's supplies when the Tiger ran aground trying to enter Pamlico Sound. We also discuss the "Black Legend" debate, the revisionist view that anti-Spanish propaganda by English and Dutch Protestants unfairly influenced much of the image of the Spanish empire, and how two things can be true at once. The featured image for this episode is Sir Richard Grenville at age 29. Selected references for this episode James Horn, A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606 Black Legend (Spain) Alan Sherman, "Good Advice"

In the spring of 1584, Sir Walter Ralegh (the spelling he used), now the chief organizer and promoter of English settlement in North America, dispatched two ships to the Outer Banks of North Carolina on a mission of reconnaissance. They explored Hattaras Island and Roanoke Island, and the area between Pamlico Sound in the south and the mouth of the Chesapeake in the north. They brought home to England two Indians, Manteo and Wanchese, who would go on to speak English and would have a huge impact on the two subsequent attempts to settle English people in the area. #VastEarlyAmerica Website: The History of the Americans https://subscribebyemail.com/thehistoryoftheamericans.com/?feed=podcast Selected references for this episode James Horn, A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606

In this episode we discuss the planning for the first English colonization of North America in the context of England's strategy to resist Spanish hegemony and Protestantism's defense against Catholicism. We look at the key figures who advocated for, invested in, and led the first English settlement efforts, which include the two failed expeditions and tragic ending of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, which set up his younger half-brother, Sir Walter Ralegh, to take over the project. #VastEarlyAmerica Website: The History of the Americans https://subscribebyemail.com/thehistoryoftheamericans.com/?feed=podcast Selected references for this episode James Horn, A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke John Butman and Simon Targett, New World, Inc.: The Story of the British Empire’s Most Successful Start-Up David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606

In this episode we chase Francis Drake and the Golden Hind from the equator, just off the west coast of South America, all the way around the world and back to England. Along the way Drake claims the northwest coast of North America for England, naming it "Novo Albion," cuts a trade deal with Babu, the Sultan of the Moluccas, and makes it back to England in the most remarkable feat of sailing in the sixteenth century. Drake becomes one of England's richest men, is knighted by Elizabeth and becomes one of her closest advisors, and finds himself in the middle of a changed geopolitical landscape. Tensions with Spain have risen considerably, and Drake is in the middle of it. #VastEarlyAmerica Website: The History of the Americans https://subscribebyemail.com/thehistoryoftheamericans.com/?feed=podcast References for this episode Samuel Bawlf, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580 Melissa Darby, Thunder Go North: The Hunt for Sir Francis Drake's Fair & Good Bay Miranda Kaufmann, Black Tudors: The Untold Story John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake