Dan Snow's History Hit - The Early Years of the British Empire

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

The British weren't always imperial global players with an empire of viceroys, redcoats and industrialised trade systems. The early years of the British Empire were actually pretty chaotic; for the English in the 17th century, it was a period of exploration, rugged individuals, private companies, pirates, misadventure and failure.Dan is joined by David Veevers, historian of Early Modern History at the University of Bangor, to explore those tumultuous early years, how the English moved into new lands, the challenges they faced, how they interacted, cooperated with, attempted to subjugate and were resisted by the indigenous peoples they found. David's book is called The Great Defiance: How the World Took on the British EmpireProduced by James Hickmann and edited by Teän Stewart-Murray.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW - sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. When I think about the British Empire, inevitably, I think about just that, the British Empire, the one that follows the Acts of Union in the early 18th century. An empire carved out by government-funded British military expeditions, carried in mighty Royal Navy armadas to places like Quebec and Canada, and later on places like, well, Southern Africa, East Africa, South Asia, Australasia, all that kind of stuff. But all leading up to the British Empire establishing itself as the largest empire in history in the late 19th, early 20th centuries. But the story that I know much less about is the early British Empire, in fact the early English Empire. How the English copied the Spanish and the Portuguese took advantage of new shipbuilding

technology, new navigational techniques to explore the Atlantic world and beyond the sea routes to Asia. This is an empire not of red-coated infantrymen, of Royal Navy admirals, of government viceroys, but an empire of rugged individuals, of joint enterprises, private companies, investors, of dreamers, of ruffians, of traders, of pirates. And it's an imperial story with plenty of setbacks along the way. The person I'm very lucky to be talking to today is David Vivas. David Vivas is a lecturer in early modern history at the University of Bangor, and he's just written a book called The Great Defiance, How the World Took On the British Empire. And he very kindly gave me a crash course in the first century or two of English imperialism.

Enjoy. T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. Enjoy. David, great to have you on the podcast. Thanks for inviting me. Big fan, so it's a real pleasure to be here. Well, it's such an interesting story, and I really want to start at the beginning. I think lots of us think about British Empire. First of all, we think British Empire. We don't think English Empire, which I think is important. And we tend to think of it as redcoats.

We tend to think of it as, through we tend to think of it as through the lens of kind of more modern bits of history whether it's the film Zulu or or even the great global struggle 20th century you've painted you've done a lot of work in showing the early English empire like how would you characterize it and how is that how is it surprising to people that aren't that familiar with it so this is the thing for me is that we do we we you know and some of the great history books that are coming out just the past year or two, they're kicking off from the Victorian period onwards. And of course, that's the apex. That's the big expansionist period

where they're gobbling up entire continents. But you've got this earlier 250, quarter of a millennium history of the English striking out across the Atlantic, into the Mediterranean, down the West Coast of Africa, into the Indian Ocean, even into the Pacific by the end of this period. And that's such a long history. And I think the best way to kind of contrast it

with the period that people are more familiar with through not just scholarship, but popular culture, and that this is, I would say, a far more complex, messier period in which the English are striking out with colonial and imperialist ambitions to an extent to monopolize trade and to you know occupy territory and to exploit labor but they are not at the top of the hierarchy like they will be in the later 18th and 19th centuries they're not the great

power that we associate Britain with in the kind of later early modern and the modern period so it for me that just makes it such a far more fascinating story when the English are trying to dominate they're trying to get on top of the hierarchy but they don't have the muscle they don't have the knowledge they don't have the expertise yet to do it and well what's so interesting is they don't have the financial revolution or the industrial revolution right so so, a lot of the later battles that we associate, or even Nelson's Navy, when there was a real qualitative difference between, well, Britain and even its European enemies,

a lot of the battles and struggles that you described, which shamefully I was very unfamiliar with, it was like the drama here, right? There is an epic nature to these struggles, and it could have gone either way. I mean, this is Englishmen fighting, whether it's in Ireland or elsewhere in the world, on a pretty level playing field compared to what came later. Yeah, it is. If you think about Ireland, which by the 19th century has just been reduced

to this kind of impoverished, exploited, although it's a kingdom now, really in every sense of colony, actually, rewind 300 years before and some of the armies of the irish lords rival the english army if you think about someone like hugh o'neill who's the lord of ulster you know he assembles an eight to nine thousand strong army that even more than the english have imported kind of like musket you know shot on pike tactics the english are still trailing behind in the in the late 16th century and uh huey neil you know revolutionizes the logistics of warfare he's creating ammunition dumps and supply stores along you know well trod routes and he's creating a network of logistical support on a scale that leave the you know in in the source of the english are writing

you know my god this guy's got it together he's he rivals queen elizabeth's revenues he you know we've got nothing like this on the ground in elizabeth's revenues he you know we've got nothing like this on the ground in ireland and so if you if you take it line in the 19th century then in the late 16th century these like seem like entirely different places and i think that you're absolutely right it's not just a level playing field in some respects it's you know the power balance is tilted against the english so in some weird ways they in some of these places they're kind of the underdog even though they have rather nefarious ambitions of course so it's nice to take a great maritime military power like Britain and then place them in the weaker spot and to see how they scrap

around how they try and get the benefit of other people. Set the scene for me David it's it's let's say it's 1500 we've got some interesting developments haven't we so Henry VIII still gallivanting around France, desperately hoping to live up to his Plantagenet ancestors, but that kind of gets shut off pretty quick. At the same time as that, the Atlantic world becomes apparent. People are realising that there is this gigantic, at least two continents as a route to Asia that way,

possibly a source of unimaginable wealth, new dominions. How does that inspire the English? Does that change? Because what you show in your book is that the English have been trying to conquer Wales earlier in the medieval period, then Ireland. There's always been conquest going on within the archipelago. How does it extend beyond that? I think that these, and this is an important part of the story that we often ignore,

but they're riding on the coattails of other Europeans mostly. And so the story of European Empire doesn't start with the English. It starts with the Portuguese, the Spanish, and then the Dutch and the English kind of come in there. So what I find really interesting is when they're looking to, you've got somewhere like Portugal in the 14th century. It's kind of impoverished, it's a very small population, doesn't have many aspirations. And yet when they strike out down the West Coast of Africa, when they go across the Atlantic to what we know as

Brazil, and when they're importing spices and when they're using enslaved labor on plantations in the Atlantic, within a generation or two, they've become one of the foremost commercial and military powers in Europe. And so England, sort of poor little drab, impoverished England, perched on the rather kind of rainy northwest edge of the continent, are looking at Spain. They're looking at Spain, of course, a warmly agrarian, you know, very mountainous and not particularly fertile regions.

And they've transformed themselves into these powerhouses. So England eyes them up and quite literally, you know, reads Portuguese and Spanish accounts of the Americas of the Caribbean. They're reading Portuguese accounts of China and Japan.

And that you can see the drool on the pages of salivating at the idea. And so they're, you know, they're inspired and jealous of their european rivals who are who are coming back with these fabulous stories and the fabulous wealth of these people and also accounts of the people they meet that are typically in the kind of colonial context the kind of other these people was and they're really fascinated that he counts because on the one page it's like they're kind of they're marveling at these civilizations and cultures and

on the other then they're reducing them to kind of barbarians and they're differing them to kind of justify what they're doing there and the english sort of take these accounts and they uh you know they're inspired by that and this it really begins in henry's reign but really comes into its own in elizabeth the first reign where you get sort of a generation of of ministers officials navigators merchants who begin to eye up their wider global horizons in a way that hadn't existed before sort of a generation of ministers, officials, navigators, merchants, who begin to eye up their wider global horizons in a way that hadn't existed before. And so that really is the beginning, I would point it there, in the kind of mid-16th century. But this is not Henry VIII leading a royal army to France, is it?

So what is the form that this imperial drive is taking? Is it outsourced to freelancers what how's that work there's a really fabulous experimental period in the first sort of 50 years in the late tudor period where i mean i mean really actually going back a lot further so if you take a place like ireland which was kind of absolutely lashed by anglo-norman lords for about three or four hundred years from the 12th century all the way through to about the wars of the roses where the english presence kind of collapses because of the turbulence at home and these are essentially autonomous lords going out and carving out their own kind of baronial uh tomato kind of baluics in in ireland and in places like when they lodge ventures to

newfoundland to the great you know the outer banks in the North Atlantic. You know, at one point it wasn't sugar or tobacco. It was cod. It was fish that was the most valuable commodity that the early English Empire floated on. That's a little bit of a pun there. And so the kind of value of these is not being done by the crown. The crown sponsors these expeditions and they encourage them, but it's being done by private merchants it's being done by companies of investors so you've got the muscovy company which is a corporation of investors that come together to pull their resources they've got a charter from the crown

but they're essentially their own autonomous thing and so the outsourcing of empires in a way reflects the weakness of the english state we think of the tudor period especially the period of henry there's been one of the centralization of royal power the flexing of muscles overseas in places like france but actually england just doesn't have the resources to project itself really further than the north of france or or uh eastern ireland and so it has to rely on private capital and private initiative and so what's in it and what does that mean therefore that it's so it's profit so these're saying to a person, right, you can go and try and establish a settlement here, a trading post, a fish drying station. And the crown gets a little cut, does it?

Or do they stick the English flag in the soil? But then all the risk is carried and all the profit goes to these private individuals. Yeah. And that's why the crown is so enthusiastic about outsourcing empire, because it's the burden that they're sharing now, but also the risk which is spread out. If Henry or Elizabeth launches their own expedition and ends in disaster, which these things often do, there's a massive hit to Crown finances and international prestige. But if a private company of merchants going to Russia, for example, or the Indian Ocean, and there's hundreds of investors, then the loss of some ships can be kind of more equally amongst them and they can't go and deal with the heathens in the Ottoman Empire. They can't be seen to be doing trade deals with Islamic sultans in the Indian Ocean.

But companies can, private individuals can. So they also assume a diplomatic role. And, you know, the first voyage to the Indian Ocean in 1601, yes, they're there to trade spices and to capture Portuguese carats. But they're also delivering letters from Elizabeth to the sultans of Indonesia, what we'd call the islands today. And so they have a backdoor kind of deal

to make on Elizabeth's behalf. I mean, it becomes easier after 1571 when Elizabeth is excommunicated and the first thing she sort of says is, ah, right, now I can do deals with these heathens. But still it's not, the optics are bad. So if you outsource that you outsource a whole kind of range of corporate financial and commercial interest that someone

as a monarch can't really be seen to be doing and a good example of that is in the mediterranean with james the first and england is suffering from relentless attacks by the corsair states of north africa who europeans uh you know decree that they're pirates, essentially. But these aren't pirates. They're piratical states in that they prey on international shipping for their revenue. But they're regencies. They're, you know, they're statelets from the Ottoman Empire.

But James cannot do a deal with them. He says, I absolutely will not do a deal with these pirates. So they leave it to the Levant Company that go out and do deals. And they establish a consul and they're doing trading and so outsourcing empire has tremendous amount of benefits and it's new it's really new to this late 16th century onward spirit does that also though mean that london doesn't have much control of what goes on is it quite anarchic on the imperial frontier i think that's a complicated one i think yes to an extent it it does but you unfortunately we have to think about these companies as being part of a very

tight-knit city community these are aldermen these are mayors these are merchants these are ministers and aristocrats they're all based really in london not exclusively but if we think about the east india company its name is you know the the governor merchants of London trading to the East Indies, the Muscovy Company. All of these companies originate from the capital. But then London itself does often have a direct role to play in colonialism. So with the conquest of Ulster, for example, at the end of the 16th, early 17th century, London itself as a corporation establishes plantations in Ireland. And one of those is Derry, which is renamed London D ireland and one of those is dairy which is renamed london dairy and built as one of the key centers of english power in in what today is northern

ireland so the city does have a diet role to play but ultimately that much of the capital and the expertise drawn from these companies are from also from london so the city is in a way not the only uh source of of these kind of overseas expeditions but are still one of the primary kind of engines of colonialism in this period and then perhaps i should say whitehall you know in terms of the official a lot of these individuals just change hats and walk into council meetings with the queen or the king do they so although we might say oh the government weren't really in control what's on, a lot of the individuals would have sort of been in the government, as it were, been in government circles. Of course, because a lot of this, especially in the 17th century, still relies on patronage and about access to court.

And if you think about the launch of something like the Royal African Company later in the 17th century, the Crown is also a direct investor in these companies as they are in the east india company the heads of state the monarchs are also governors and managers of these companies so obviously the duke of york for the royal afghan company he manages he's the governor of the company he has his initials branded on the backs of enslaved people from west africa and you know for the various charters of the East India Company which are periodically renewed the crowd asserts its control over these companies so you've got to give us this amount and we renew your privileges for another 30 years so it's a very I mean there's a there is a debate amongst historians about this a lot of them see this as there's a disassociation these

companies are autonomous but they still rely on the crown its patronage its support and and yes some of these companies are really vehicles of the crown its patronage its support and and yes some of these companies are really vehicles of the crown's aspirations overseas and that reverse relationship they're also benefiting massively you mentioned ulster and londonderry there i'm so struck by how in britain's push to the west it begins really begins in ireland doesn't it and you've mentioned these norman lords and and they're building up their sort of carving out ballywicks in Ireland from the 12th century or whatever it is onwards. But there's a real effort to kind of conquer Ireland. And it feels like that's an effort that, well, does it need to take place before Britain can extend itself into the Atlantic world? Or is

it just a coincidental timing? I think had England had its way, yes, it would have been done first. But the great thing about the example of Ireland is that the Irish are not going to go, they're not laying down quietly and allowing themselves to be subjugated. So well beyond England's control, the conquest of Ireland rolls all the way into the 17th century. So because of that, we do have to look at what's going on in Ireland. Although it's the first country caught on the crosshairs of English colonialism, that conquest goes on for well over a century. So it's happening at the same time as expeditions are being launched to the North American coast in places like what we would call the Carolina Sounds today, with the first colony being established in Virginia at

Jamestown. These are happening at the very moment, for example, Hugh O'Neill, the Lord of Ulster, has been defeated and has fled Ireland for refuge in places like Spain, France and Italy. So they're kind of concurrent. And the English are, these aren't separate expeditions. The same people are often involved. So a lot of the people that, you know, exploit Ireland and found plantations use that wealth to then go and colonise, for example, the North Atlantic. I mean, we talk about the reconquist, you know, the Spanish, the Castilian Spanish effort to drive the Muslims out of the Iberian Peninsula. And that then leads somehow straight into this next period of Spanish global imperialism. Is there a sort of vibe? Is there an energy there? I'm always slightly sceptical skeptical myself of this but it's hard when you see it's hard not to to think that there's a general vibe there's a general kind of

kind of ambition that's grit england and i think that if you just take kind of one year like 1600 then the english are now in the indian ocean they're in the levant they're in the ottoman empire they're in russia they're in the north atlantic you know they're praying around the Caribbean, praying on Spanish ship, and they're active everywhere. And it's not just London, it's various cities that are involved, and it's people are benefiting in various ways for increased trade, increased kind of maritime presence for England, which means more mariners, more ships, shipbuilding industries, importing timber from... And so there is a transformation at the end, I would say, well, really from the transformation at the end i would say well really from the mid to the end of the 16th century that grips england and these overseas horizons

which they're opening up i think are saturating english society at every level and you know virginia is a really good example because you know virginia the investment the virginia company need to establish their colonies um require going beyond the city of london i mean some of the investment needed to get these expeditions off the London. I mean, some of the investment needed to get these expeditions off the ground. In the first 30 years of the East India Company, they need three million pounds, which is just an insane amount of money for the time.

And so the net's cast wider and they have to essentially attract investment from the rest of England, from Europe as well. And I read something the other day I thought was fabulous is that Switzerland was one of the main investors in the South Sea Company, Britain's slave trading company in the South Atlantic and so they're casting these nets wide and they need to attract but in England itself they're particularly good at marketing these expeditions and the way that they will benefit society and I think this

tells us a lot about this fever that's gripped the english and that it's it's not just at the top levels at court it's it's throughout society and one of the arguments the virginia company makes is that this will alleviate poverty in england by first of all dumping poor people in america in the colonies and they can benefit from a new life but then alleviating the strain that places on people in england itself and it's an argument for avoiding famine in england in the 1590s it's an argument for avoiding famine in England. In the 1590s, there's food shortages, and there's a kind of specter of famine is hanging over England. And it's also about getting rid of crime.

It's about taking criminals. We see this later in the 18th century with Australia, but at the turn of the 17th century, they're making sophisticated arguments about, let's take the criminal, dunk them in the colonies, and we'll solve all our problems. So, in a way, colonialism is presented to the English public as this answer

to all of their problems. This is utopia. And if we can achieve it, we're going to achieve, you know, the pinnacle of our own society. You're listening to Dan Snow's History and talking about the first English Empire. More after this. greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, kings and popes who were

rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Were there any voices at that stage who went, what about the people who already live there? There are not a lot of voices that do. They begin to happen. They sort of emerge when the sort of colonial conquest is in full swing. And they're not, they're really truly sympathetic voices. So there may be domestic rumblings at a hideous massacre in the Caribbean of the indigenous Kalinago people.

And people, you know, even if this chap ambushes about 90 Kalinago people, invites them onto the deck of his frigate for a celebration they come on board and this officer uh slaughters them to uh men women and children and this kind of sends shockwaves mostly because english hegemony in this part of the caribbean had already been achieved so it's seen as unnecessary had this been in that period of expansion and conquest it may not have even had a look in but even charles ii he who establishes the royal african company and whose brother brands his initials on enslaved people he he's he's this is hideous this massacre and he has the chap responsible for it hauled back to london thrown in the tower he's he's let off ultimately but so there are descending voices but those descending voices are often at the forefront of colonialism anyway. And so there are certain aspects that they find hard to swallow, but generally they are also facilitating.

And the same in Ireland as well. There's been engineered famines against Irish civilians and the massacre of Irish people. And one of the old Lord Deputies of Ireland from the 1550s and 60s is like, you know, this new generation of English colonists over here are just so grisly. It's no longer just Irish soldiers. It's also civilians. And so it's, yes, there are dissenting voices, disapproving, but they're still within the wider context of yay colonialism, because it was just the excitement of these vast new lands, the money that could be made, the success. As you say, looking at the gigantic empires carved out by Spain and mean, it must have felt like Providence had just poured fortune upon the Western Europeans at this point. I think so. I think there's a kind of European shared culture about colonialism,

partly because of the proliferation of early accounts by the Portuguese and the Spanish, which are still being used 100 years later by the English as they wade into these kind of new regions of their expansion, which also give them massive misconceptions about the people and the politics going on there, which they are from fall afoul of. But I mean, I think partly it's very sophisticated marketing by these various individuals and companies involved that are desperate for investment and for settlers as well. But I think there are limits to that excitement. I think that this idea of frontiers, and I think you see that in the struggles that some of these big companies

have in attracting settlers as well. And it's about, if you think about the more modern 19th, 30th, 20th century state programs to get people to settle in the prairies in Canada or in the West, in America, there have to be an incentive. And they do struggle. The Virginia Company struggles massively. They really struggle inland with the conquest of munster in southwest island after two uh the grizzly and bloody wars they the massive kind of trocadour campaign and the english public they come and settle we need fiery protestant colonists to you know make a godly society but they only ever attract sort of four to five thousand people and those people some of them return home they're like no this is this

is everywhere's been burned you know this is a wasteland you've reduced it to some kind of hellish landscape and and they rarely do those plantations flourish only by the 18th century british plantations and island kind of profitable or flourishing and so you see the same in in places like Virginia they have to rely really on indentured contracts to get people over to do the jobs of the colony and and so very few of them go willingly at first and when they do it becomes a flood once the colony is established in places like Virginia Jam Jamestown. But a lot of it is relying on deported Irish people, eventually enslaved African labour. But the indentured contracts, which many of them are done under duress,

is not slavery. Indentured people have legal rights. They eventually achieve freedom and things, but it's still very harsh and conditions are terrible. And most of these are poor English people or Irish people. And so, yes yes there's a enthusiasm there's almost a frenzy but it's not entirely that kind of um it has a trickle down entirely there's still some weariness about these new frontiers mostly because a lot of the news

they get from them are of defeats and of violence and resistance and why would you you know move from bourbon z over to the frontier in virginia where there's a war raging with people you've learned are terrible and hideous. Right, well, that's the point, David, because given the later hegemonic, gigantic nature of the British Empire, the largest empire the world's ever seen, it stumbles onto the world stage, right? Even in comparison to its contemporaries, the Iberian Empires.

I mean, one example that I've learned from you is in 1610, the Virginia Company had to just literally abandon Jamestown. It was like, okay, we have actually been defeated, and they're all on that ship, and they happen to meet a relief ship coming the other way, turned around and reoccupied Jamestown. But that was, you know, the indigenous opposition won. That was it. Yeah, I think that's a really good example but that's not an exception that tends to be the rule in uh certainly for the late 16th and most of the 17th century and a great example of this is the caribbean now when you think about the caribbean you think about european rivalry for control of the sugar islands and that's a story that goes right from the 17th all

the way through to the 18th century with you know the various wars between britain and france for global hegemony and especially during the nepotism but you know the various wars between britain and france for global hegemony and especially during the nepotism but actually for the first hundred years the the key rival in the caribbean for the english and the french were not one another but were actually the indigenous kalinago people and from the 1620s when the english attempted to colonize the caribbean really takes 40 years 40 years they spend colonising and abandoning islands so that after almost two generations, they're really in control of a handful of islands

in the very north, you know, Antigua and St Kitts, or La Imiga, as its indigenous name would be, and Barbados in the south, which is only really protected because it's about 100 miles away from the rest of the island chain and it's in relative isolation. The indigenous Kalanagin people are highly mobile they've spent a

century resisting the spanish and create this very responsive very deadly kind of defensive system where the the communities the caribbean are autonomous of one another they're tied together through kin and through mobility but they're essentially separate islands but they're able to come together in a coalition and strike within a matter of days, even if it's 100 miles away further up the Caribbean island chain. And the English just cannot deal with this kind of mobility. A great example is Antigua, which we say is one of the key English islands. But it was settled in the 1630s. But for the next two decades, it's essentially reduced to a calenago raiding site there are these

sort of about a thousand colonists that cling on to the leeward side the western coast but twice a year there is kind of biannual raids where the calenago swoop on the english settlements plunder them take away captives liberate enslaved african people and the english at one point they write to london they say we have been reduced to tributaries of the calenago and i just thought that was such a spectacular reverse of the usual relationship between english colonists and indigenous people that we're used to the english feel themselves they are the victim they are paying tribute to the calenago and they're about sort of yeah there are maybe a dozen islands that the english have to abandon and then recolonise 30 or 40 years later.

So actually, by the 1660s, they partitioned the Lesser Antilles, the Eastern Caribbean, with the Kalanago people. And I just think it's almost half a century of colonisation and they've got really little to show for it. Well, and you talk about being tributaries. Your work in the Chesapeake area, Virginia, the Carolinas, at times you find yourself thinking if the indigenous people there had really wanted to or made the decision quick enough, they could easily have driven the colonists back into the sea. make up their mind whether to try and work with these newcomers or to exterminate them and and the english are dependent on them for that sort of learning what crops to plant and learning how to survive winters and things like that and the problem is when i when i read those accounts i know that people who who recently read the book are sort of like yelling at me you know

what's wrong with these people just get rid of the english the moment they turn up is that well that's a little bit you know uh we're kind of looking back with what we know that sort of uh hindsight and of course we know, that sort of hindsight. And of course, we know these people, most of these people are going to be wiped out and their cultures will cease to exist. But at the time, and I think that says something about the European mentality, about meeting people overseas and indigenous mentalities, that indigenous people always tried first to extend hospitality. And I think the Powhatans, the Algonquin of North America, a really good example is when they meet the English, it isn't how do we necessarily subjugate these people. Although there's an element of that.

Wahoon Sunaka, the paramount chief of the Powhatan. The Powhatan chief is the kind of principal imperial power in North America. It's about 15,000 people, 30 tribes. And it's kind of gained the kind of hegemony over the kind of tidewater regions up to the falls. And it's a big military power. But the first thing they do is try and establish trading relationships with the English they welcome the English in they support them like you said they teach them how to sow crops in the Indian fashion and you know they're weaving mats for their kind of very basic homes in Jamestown and there's a kind of reciprocity there's an exchange

well Hunzenaka wants to vassalize them he wants to bring them in as a tribe that he will rule, but there's no attempt to necessarily use violence against the English and to colonise them or to subjugate them. Whereas the English, almost immediately, their weakness means they do have to rely on the Powhatans, but the moment they don't have to, there's an attempt to subjugate them, to dominate them, to crown Wahun Sanaka as a vassal of king james i and there's a ceremony where john smith and then the governor of jamestown they've got these fake props from london it's a fake crown and a fake scepter and they go to waunsanaka and they give him the scepter and they try and crown him as an english vassal but the guy won't lower his head and said that

they basically put their knee on his back and try and force him down to kind of waist level so they can crown him, but he won't have any sort of... If James I is a king, he says, I am also a king and this is my land. And I just think that that just shows you that the English are always this mentality of needing to subordinate and subjugate so that the English can achieve some kind of dominance in the power

relationship. You don't always get that. You do sometimes, but that the Kalinago, their first response to the English is to invite them onto islands to, you know, refuel ships and to reprovision them and to maintain relationships. It's only once the English show signs of wanting to acquire some kind of territory that the Kalinago strike. So I think that, yeah, you're absolutely right. And I think that says a lot about the European mindset and indigenous mindset at the time. And the other thing is that in history, just the present isn't inevitable, right?

And so the shape of settlement around the world has as much to do with that resistance. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. with that resistance. the best of friends. Murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. And as it does with the kind of decisions that Walter Raleigh chose to make, you know, I've been guilty in the past thinking, oh, oh you know maybe the British didn't want to advance too far you know what why did the one of the reasons I suppose the English end up with a kind of thin strip of colonies on the eastern flank of the North American seaboard well one of course one issue is geography and demographics and things

weather patterns whereas you know the Spanish end up with the whole of Mexico like a vastly larger place by the way than Mexico is today. Like we haven't really thought enough about the resistance of the people who they found on the beaches, right? I think that you're absolutely right. I think when you unfold those maps of the British Empire, there's 18th, 19th century maps, there's imperial pink splashed here, there, and you think, wow, this empire, you know, what a conqueror, what a boss.

But actually, I think that tells us more about the limitations that indigenous and non-european place in the british empire is that there are these vast swathes of the world that are not imperial pink but not through lack of trying and i think the one thing i've learned about studying the british empire for the past sort of 14 years, is that they never stopped trying unless they were defeated or they just couldn't do it. There was no modesty. There was no moderation in their colonialism. If they could achieve what the Spanish had achieved

or the point they would have. Well, like a good example. I love that example. It's a bit later than the period you've been writing about. But in the early 19th century, great excitement as the British attacked Buenos Aires. And they thought, here we go. Here go here we go lads it's going to be a new canada down in argentina and then the british force was catastrophically defeated but like that's there could have been a big splodge down there but there just wasn't because of local defeats yeah

well the same if later on maybe like afghanistan think about the constant disaster the loss of entire company armies but you know in the period i look at that's happening as well so if we zoom forward to the later 18th century in india we think about the rise of the east india company being the defining historical event of the late 18th century on the indian subcontinent but no the defining geopolitical force was the mahratta empire which emerges from central india kind of explodes swallows up the declining rugal empire and occupies most of the subcontinent. On the margins, you've got Bengal, down south you've got Madras and the Carnatic, they're the British territories. But the British territories kind of skin the rising Maratha power in sort of like a thin arc. And it's the Maratha rulers that dominate the subcontinent, especially North India. And it's not because the British don't try so they launch repeated wars and in the 1770s and 1780s

there's a spectacular seven year war between the East India Company and the Marathas Marathas are just better military powers they know the geography of the subcontinent better they've got a kind of wide coalition of allies willing to fight they're expert diplomats they've got this pioneering

we talk about the financial revolution but it's the mirada empire that pioneers you know the cheap credit and national borrowing and they're kind of in 1765 the mirada empire's annual income is 12 million the same as the british state so this is a power to rival the british empire at the time doesn't have that global reach obviously it's not a maritime power but But within the Indian subcontinent, it repeatedly thrashes the East Indian Company. One absolute spectacular battle in 1782 on the plateau of the Deccan in central India.

This company army takes three or four months to snake up the western gaps onto the tabletop, the plateau in the middle of India. And it gets up to the top and it's overextended its supply lines. It's well away from Bombay on the coast. And the Marathas just step back and let them keep coming and keep coming. And they gradually surround them, an army of 50,000 to 60,000 Marathas, until the British generals, oh no, we better retreat back to our supply lines.

And at that point it's too late and they're cut off. And an army of 12,500 men surrenders is the most humiliating British defeat, probably anywhere in the world, maybe including Yorktown. You're probably going to debate me on that. But I think that it essentially ends British ambitions in Central India for a generation. And so, yes, you can look and say, look at this impressive expansion, but there are massive limitations place and you know if you look at just look at the pacific and east asia

in this bit that you know there is no imperial pink japan shuts its doors to the east india company after a decade of them trying to monopolize trade they join with the dutch to capture chinese ships and the show guard is like no you can't do that in my territorial waters and he expels the Europeans. And places like, you know, Southeast Asia, which does become the preserve of the Dutch, you know, it's not because the Dutch got the fence because the English failed terribly after decades of trade. And so, yeah, there are limits to British ambition, not set by the British, but set by the people they encounter. David, can we just finish by just outlining a little bit of the kind of a few of the reasons why in the end, Britain does experience success, despite all these setbacks. Is there an element

of, you know, definitely disease seems to have helped in the Americas. Gunpowder, without gunpowder, gunpowder weapons loom very large in your work. You know, just that extraordinary advantage of being able to deploy lethal force at range. And then obviously sailing, which I won't bore everyone with. But, you know, there's a kind of maritime revolution, isn't there, in Northwest Europe at this time that just allows small groups of people to go very, very long distances and carry quite a bit of stuff. You're right. There is an element of that. But I think it depends on what level you're looking at this.

If you're looking on the local level, particularly to India, particularly to West Africa, sometimes those advantages are negated. We're talking that the Indian Ocean had some of the early modern world's superpowers. These were gunpowder empires. Their spectacular successes are driven by artillery. By the time the English get to Japan, they've already had muskets. Some Portuguese, but they're a bit rubbish. Most of their muskets come from China, manufactured in the Ottoman Empire.

It's the Japanese who are first ones to develop the kind of stand and fire, stand and fire, that sort of rank file that's happening before the English get there. So there's an element of that superiority by the end of the 18th century but i think it takes a long time for the english to be able to balance that power for me the one constant factor is indigenous resistance that doesn't necessarily change and i think what happens is across the 300 years what changes really is the capabilities of the british state because the english state you know 17th century 16th century English state is very weak it's politically religiously divided you know fiscally militarily it can't compete with a lot

of the polities it encounters and it struggles by the 18th century of the acts of union between Scotland and England with the financial revolution the British state is just such a more capable beast it can project its power overseas beyond the British Isles, really for the first time ever. And it's capable. Suddenly the East India Company, for example. The East India Company has its own Minotaur, but it's quite modest. The Royal Navy is only ever, really only first sells to the Indian Ocean

in the 1680s and then again in 1705. Before then, the Royal Navy just was not a factor in Indian Ocean. But what happens after the Acts of Union the East Indicably regularly calls on the Royal Navy and the British Army and suddenly vast armadas are available to it and it can use those to oust the French and to take on the local

Mughal governors and powers that it encounters. So there's an application of British force that just has been absent in the 17th and 16th centuries. So there's an application of British force that just has been absent in the 17th and 16th centuries. So there is an aspect of that which I don't think is the defining factor. The other one is this accumulative. This is gradually

across these 200 years, gradually the English and then later British have swallowed up a lot of territory. It takes time. The conquest of the Caribbean takes 100 years but at the end of that, by the turn of the 18th century, the profits of the sugar trade, the command they have in trafficking enslaved people, the maritime expansion because of that trade, this is given by the 18th century, this is a foremost imperial power. The colonization

of North America and the need in trade in Asian goods over the colonization of the north of north america and the need in trade in asian goods over the dutch finally at the early 18th century this is all this has community to enable britain to deploy concentrated force across the world in a way that it hadn't before so so i think that there's that aspect but there's also because of the removing some of those indigenous players from the board through eventually conquering that means that britain is able you know it's established it's consolidated as an authority especially in the atlantic and it's it's freed up its resources and its power to concentrate on places like africa and and asia increasingly and i don't want to lean too much into that first british empire of trade and settlement and second british empire conquest because it's as we know

it's conquest has been happening the whole time but there is an element that britain is able to and get to grips with india and africa in a way it hadn't before so i think a lot of this is a story of the british state and that's a little bit of our old whiggish narrative but but you do see a quantum transformation the power of the british state uh in terms of its maritime and military and financial power and so i think that that's the kind of important transformation. But that doesn't mean that defines the end of this period. Even at the end of the 18th century, the twilight of the early modern world, there are still non-European powers emerging that can take on the Britain,

West Africa, the Kingdom of Dahomey, and the Maratha Empire in places like India. So it's not still, it's not a story of hegemony. And even into the 19th century, of course, you know, an empire which the sun never set. As you know, there's spectacular defeats in Afghanistan, in, you know, in southern Africa, in, you know, in the Pacific. And I think that this is not just an

early modern story. It may be more prominent in the early modern period, but even into the height of imperialism, indigenous and non-European people were still more than capable of giving the British a bloody nose. David, that was a tour de force thank you very much coming the pod what's your book called buddy the great defiance how the world took on the british empire go get everyone thank you david thank you very much dan cheers you