Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 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
- IDEAS IN CONTEXT
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 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
- IDEAS IN CONTEXT
Summary
And yet when these insatiably greedy and evil men have divided among themselves goods which would have sufficed for the entire people, how far they remain from the happiness of the Utopian Republic, which has abolished not only money but with it greed!
Thomas More's hostility to greed was characteristic of Renaissance humanism. The distinctive aspect of his discussion of greed in Utopia is that he invented a society free from this vice which he located, twenty-four years after Columbus' first voyage, in the New World. Was More alone in imagining the New World through humanism? Humanism was the dominant intellectual force of Renaissance Europe. In what way did it shape Europe's ‘discovery’ and conquest of the New World? My aim is to explore this question in relation to the English (or, more precisely, anglophone) understanding of America from More's generation, early in the sixteenth century, through to the demise of the Virginia Company in 1625. Humanists were active in New World projects throughout Europe, but it was in England, I shall argue, that the humanist imagination dominated colonising projects. Frequently, prominent English humanists – John Rastell, Thomas Smith, Philip Sidney, Humphrey Gilbert, Walter Ralegh – were at the forefront of colonisation. Many others who were prominent humanists (or patrons of humanists) – Richard Eden, John Florio, Dudley Digges, Henry Wriothesley – were also involved in the projects.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Humanism and AmericaAn Intellectual History of English Colonisation, 1500–1625, pp. 1 - 19Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003