The Evolution of England's First Encounters

In the late 16th century, England was yet to become Great Britain, the colossal colonial power ruling the seas and the place from which curious and fortune-seeking citizens spread themselves around the world to document its contents and exploit its richness.

The beginning of the first colony for the English came late compared to Spain and Portugal. Finally, in 1588, after many failed attempts and numerous journeys of discovery, mathematician and scientist (as it was known at the time) Thomas Harriot visited the North American coast and authored “A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia,” in which he describes nearly every detail of potential interest to the establishment of English colonies, somehow avoiding any detailed physical description of the native Indians he encountered. Under the heading “Of the nature and manners of the people,” Harriot does discuss the Indian’s clothes, houses, farms, cultural practices, and also adding “In respect of us they are a people poore, and for want of skill and judgment in the knowledge of use of things” (25).

Harriot finds the natives wanting “in respect of” the English, but he never holds them to be any less human than Europeans or other civilized peoples. In fact, he thinks that they will be compliant to English goals of establishing plantations, finally making some headway in the New World when Spain and other nations were already stuffing their monarchical coffers with gold and silver. Harriot, to borrow a phrase from our modern empire system, sought a “kinder and gentler” exploitation of the New World and its human inhabitants that would shame England’s rivals and bring honor home.

Fast-forward to 1845, with Charles Darwin’s “The Voyage of the Beagle,” and one can see how both science and fortune seeking had changed the relationship between the English and the New World inhabitants. England was now Great Britain, flexing its dominance of the seas with brute force, and foraying to still more distant and remote locations to inspect the fauna and peoples with a scientific rigor Harriot could not imagine nor comprehend. Landing in Tierra Del Fuego, Darwin, unlike Harriot, writes detailed descriptions of the people he encounters, and finds no need to curtail his biting judgments of appearance and habits. The English no longer needed to sell the virtues of colonization and the ease with which it could be accomplished.