Humanism and America
An Intellectual History of English Colonisation, 1500–1625

A major study of the impact of Renaissance humanism upon the English colonization of America.

Andrew Fitzmaurice (Author)

9780521822251, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 February 2003

236 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.52 kg

'… a new and thoroughly historicist view of early English colonization … Fitzmaurice demonstrates that humanism was the primary lens through which the English understood the promises and terms of establishing colonies in the Americas … Humanism and America is an intellectual history of the first order. Its influence on the historiography should be profound and it is especially important within the field of intellectual history because it demonstrates so convincingly the significance of humanism as an intellectual movement that influenced society and politics in England.' Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

Humanism and America provides a major study of the impact of the Renaissance and Renaissance humanism upon the English colonization of America. The analysis is conducted through an interdisciplinary examination of a broad spectrum of writings on colonization, ranging from the works of Thomas More to those of the Virginia Company. Andrew Fitzmaurice shows that English expansion was profoundly neo-classical in inspiration, and he excavates the distinctively humanist tradition that informed some central issues of colonization: the motivations of wealth and profit, honour and glory; the nature of and possibilities for liberty; and the problems of just title, including the dispossession of native Americans. Dr Fitzmaurice presents a colonial tradition which, counter to received wisdom, is often hostile to profit, nervous of dispossession and desirous of liberty. Only in the final chapters does he chart the rise of an aggressive, acquisitive and possessive colonial ideology.

Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. The moral philosophy of Tudor colonisation
3. The moral philosophy of Jacobean colonisation
4. Rhetoric - 'not the words, but the acts'
5. Law and history
6. The Machiavellian argument for colonial possession
7. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], National liberation & independence, post-colonialism [HBTR], Colonialism & imperialism [HBTQ], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], History of the Americas [HBJK]