The History of the Americans

When last we left Drake and company, it was August 1578, and the fleet had spent a good part of the southern winter in the protected harbor at Port Saint Julian, in today’s Argentina, about a hundred miles north of the entrance to the Strait of Magellan.  That was where Drake was headed, because that was the only way that any European knew of to get into the Pacific Ocean by heading west. In the next seven months, Drake and his crew would make the fastest crossing of the Strait during the fifteenth century, discover Drake's Passage and thereby overturn the received wisdom of Europe's geographers (who believed South America was connected to a southern continent at the South Pole), and by some measures have the most spectacular run of any English pirate or privateer in history. We also learn the origin of the name "penguin," which makes great dinner party conversation. #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 John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake NASA Lunar Eclipse Database

On September 26, 1580, some fisherman not far from shore in the English Channel saw a small ship, riding low in the water, moving cautiously toward Plymouth Sound.  A man aboard the ship hailed the fisherman and asked whether the Queen was alive?  The fisherman replied to Sir Francis Drake that she was, but that a plague – influenza, apparently -- was raging in Plymouth itself.                1018 days after he had set sail from England, Drake had returned with a hold full of treasure and a trove of important information about the world.  Before he could approach Plymouth, however, he had to know whether Elizabeth, who had sent him on a secret mission through the Strait of Magellan to the west coast of North America, was still queen, or whether a successor, who might well have been Catholic and an ally of Spain, now reigned. This is part 1 of the story of the second circumnavigation of the globe, and the extraordinary things that happened along the way. In today's episode, Drake discovers a cure for scurvy 180 years before a Scottish doctor in the Royal Navy learned that citrus fruits did the job, and his sailors make the coolest souvenirs in history, at least that we know of. And that's the very least of it, for Drake sets the stage for the English settlement of North America. #VastEarlyAmerica https://subscribebyemail.com/thehistoryoftheamericans.com/?feed=podcast References for this episode Samuel Bawlf, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580 John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake Scurvy Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Email: thehistoryoftheamericans@gmail.com

This episode is the second of our series on Sir Francis Drake.  Last week, we revisited the catastrophic battle of San Juan d’Ulua in the harbor near Vera Cruz, Mexico between the English trader, smuggler, and slaver John Hawkins and arriving ships of the Spanish treasure fleet. Francis Drake, still with no “sir” at the front of his name, had limped back to England in one of the two surviving ships, arriving in January 1569.  He fumed at the duplicity of the Viceroy of Mexico, who had breached a guarantee of safe conduct he had given the English. Drake vowed to wage war against the Spanish and vex Philip of Spain from one end of his realm to another. This episode looks at Drake's voyages to the Caribbean in 1570, 1571, and again in 1572-73. These expeditions, which kicked off the era of English piracy in the Caribbean, made Drake a rich man, sorely vexed Philip, and made Drake famous at home and infamous among the Spanish. They would also earn Drake the wealth, credibility, and social status necessary to get the backing and authorization he would need to explore the west coast of the Americas and circumnavigate the globe from 1577-80. #VastEarlyAmerica https://subscribebyemail.com/thehistoryoftheamericans.com/?feed=podcast References for this episode Samuel Bawlf, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580 John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake

This episode introduces Sir Francis Drake, and describes the moment when he declared a personal war on Philip II of Spain, a war that would change everything. Sir Francis Drake was essential to the history of the Americans. The father of English sea power, Drake and a small group of English West Country seamen cleared the way for the English settlement of North America. Drake almost single-handedly provoked the Spanish into war with England and then twice beat the Spanish navy, once by ambushing a good part of it in port in 1587 and then doing more than any other English commander to beat the famous Spanish Armada the next year.  Had that war gone the other way, England might never have become a global naval power and thereby an empire, the English language might never have become the lingua franca of commerce around the world, and English settlement in North America would have unfolded very differently, if it had happened at all. #VastEarlyAmerica https://subscribebyemail.com/thehistoryoftheamericans.com/?feed=podcast References for this episode Samuel Bawlf, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580 John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake

Queen Elizabeth I, who came to power at the impossibly young age of 25 in 1558, was of critical importance to the English project in North America, and therefore to the history of the Americans. She would prove to be an extraordinarily adept leader who would fend off enemies to English sovereignty and Protestantism, both at home and abroad, for the next 44 years. In this episode we talk about Elizabeth the person, and William Cecil, her most important advisor for most of her long reign. The two of them, along with John Dee, other intellectuals and courtiers, English merchant adventurers, and the more successful pirates and privateers, invented imperial England, and defended her against enormous geopolitical and religious threats from Europe, particularly Philip II's Spanish empire. Eventually, they underwrote the first English settlements in the lands now making up the United States. #VastEarlyAmerica https://subscribebyemail.com/thehistoryoftheamericans.com/?feed=podcast Reference for this episode Alison Weir, The Life of Elizabeth I

England was quite late to the North American party, yet ultimately established the most enduring and therefore consequential settlements.  An overview of England of the 1500s, economically, politically, and geopolitically, is useful, even essential, to understanding how English North America unfolded. By 1572, England was firmly in Protestant hands, had its own ambitions for overseas expansion, and was increasingly working to constrain Spanish power without starting a war it would probably lose. Elizabeth I was on the throne and had been for 13 years, and she had surrounded herself with a group of advisors who were very much concerned with extending English power into the world at large.  The question is, how did England get to that point?  This week’s episode, titled “England in the 1500s and the Rise of the Merchant Adventurers,” rolls us back in time to get to that very question.  #VastEarlyAmerica https://subscribebyemail.com/thehistoryoftheamericans.com/?feed=podcast References for this episode John Butman and Simon Targett, New World, Inc.: The Story of the British Empire’s Most Successful Start-Up Samuel Bawlf, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580

The year is 1566. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés has founded St. Augustine and ejected the French from Florida. In this episode, we are going to look at the next Spanish moves in the region, all of which were designed to secure Spain’s treasure fleets and interdict French and English incursions into North America. These include Pedro Menendez’s exploration of Florida proper, which we will only touch upon, the expeditions of Juan Pardo into the Carolinas and Tennessee from 1566 to 1568, and the catastrophic failure of a Jesuit mission to the entrance of the Chesapeake Bay, not far from the future site of Jamestown.  None of these succeeded, but they provoked England’s anxiety and fueled her ambitions, which in turn catalyzed Francis Drake’s almost unbelievable mission of 1577 to 1580, Walter Raleigh’s failed colony at Roanoke Island on the Outer Banks in 1587, and even the settlement at Jamestown in 1607.  It all ties together! #VastEarlyAmerica https://subscribebyemail.com/thehistoryoftheamericans.com/?feed=podcast References for this episode Gonzalo Solís de Merás (Author), David Arbesú (Translator), Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Conquest of Florida: A New Manuscript Anna Brickhouse, The Unsettlement of America: Translation, Interpretation, and the Story of Don Luis de Velasco Chester B. DePratter, Charles M. Hudson and Marvin T. Smith, "The Route of Juan Pardo's Explorations in the Interior Southeast, 1566-1568" Charlotte M. Gradie, "Spanish Jesuits in Virginia: The Mission That Failed"

This episode is a “sidebar,” in this case way, way, way, off the timeline. The title of the episode is also the title of a speech given by Woodrow Wilson on July 4, 1907.  The occasion was the Jamestown Exposition in Norfolk, Virginia that year, staged to recognize the 300th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown Colony. Wilson's text in fact travels a long way from its title. The speech is actually about adopting the principles of the Declaration, as Wilson defines them, to regulating a new development, the multinational corporation. The speech is also a window into American politics just over half way between the signing of the Declaration and the present day, when we were fundamentally reconsidering the role of the federal government in our economic and civil lives. You will also see that more than a decade before the Russian Revolution even progressive American politicians were worried about socialism. https://subscribebyemail.com/thehistoryoftheamericans.com/?feed=podcast References and other resources for this episode Woodrow Wilson, "The Author and Signers of the Declaration of Independence" Woodrow Wilson (Wikipedia) Progressive Era (Wikipedia)

The title of today’s episode is Pedro Menendez, the Founding of St. Augustine and the Slaughter of the Huguenots:  The Other Side of the Story.  If you listened to last week’s episode, which involved the slaughter of hundreds of unarmed French people at the hands of the Spanish, you are probably thinking “wait, how could there be another side to that story?”  That would be a fair question.  In this episode, we take a look at a recently unearthed Spanish account of those ugly days in September 1565, layered like a fine lasagna with commentary and perhaps a little snark! #VastEarlyAmerica https://subscribebyemail.com/thehistoryoftheamericans.com/?feed=podcast Reference for this episode Gonzalo Solís de Merás (Author), David Arbesú (Translator), Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Conquest of Florida: A New Manuscript

This episode looks at the first Protestant attempt to settle the lands now encompassed by the United States, the French expeditions to Parris Island, South Carolina, and the coast near Jacksonville, Florida. Philip II of Spain was determined to secure the Atlantic coast of La Florida to prevent privateers lurking there from attacking his treasure fleets, and to stop the Protestants from spreading their apostasy in the New World, so he sent an expedition to massacre them. Along the way we consider the very earliest glimmer of republican government, at least in the European intellectual tradition, in the New World. #VastEarlyAmerica https://subscribebyemail.com/thehistoryoftheamericans.com/?feed=podcast Selected references for this episode Lucy L. Wenhold, "Translation of Manrique de Rojas' Report on French Settlement in Florida, 1564" Charles E. Bennett, "Fort Caroline, Cradle of American Freedom," The Florida Historical Quarterly, July 1956. T. Frederick Davis, "Fort Caroline," The Florida Historical Society Quarterly, October 1933. Theodor de Bry, Images of North America Charlesfort-Santa Elena Site (Wikipedia)