Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 400 pages
- Published by: Oxford University Press, USA July 15, 2008
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0195335546
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0195335545
-
Book Dimensions:
9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
- Weighs: 1.6 pounds
Product Review
"Alison Games's fascinating and deeply researched new book makes clear that the English were cosmopolitan globetrotters before they became xenophobic imperialists. By presenting English colonization of the Americas as only one part, and not even a very representative part, of a world in motion, The Web of Empire is engagingly--and convincingly--subversive."--Joyce E. Chaplin,
Harvard University
"Alison Games's terrific study of English 'cosmopolitans' recasts the origins of the British Empire. In a marvelous work of historical detection, she shows how English travelers to the Mediterranean, India, Japan, and Madagascar shaped the emerging imperial system. Readers will be delighted by the stories she tells of sexual alliances, dissemblers, and unlikely travelers who helped to establish the connections that fueled the rise of English colonies in North America, the West Indies, and Ireland. The book is a triumph that deserves a wide audience."- Peter C. Mancall, author of Hakluyt's Promise: An Elizabethan's Obsession for an English America
"With this remarkably wide-ranging book, Alison Games demonstrates that early English overseas ambitions and initiatives extended far further and were far more intertwined than we have hitherto appreciated. Her fresh and vivid study traces the circulation of traders, soldiers, governors, colonists, clergymen, and others around the globe, transferring their skills, strategies, and sensibilities across distant and disparate lands. This important work will substantially reshape our understanding of the origins of the British Empire."--Dane Kennedy, George Washington University
Product Description
In 1560, England was a weak kingdom on the margins of Europe. A century later, it was on its way to becoming a powerful empire, beginning to impose its will on people around the globe. In this sweeping account, Alison Games explores this century in which England's global stature was transformed.
In their first forays outside of western Europe, the English learned to rely on accommodation and innovation rather than force. They transported this style around the world, always adapting to local opportunities and constraints. Drawing on the fascinating life stories of cosmopolitans who traveled, traded, preached, governed, and colonized all around the world, Games uncovers the knowledge and expectations that people transported to new enterprises and the elements that led ventures to thrive or fail. She links trading posts and colonies, soldier and ministers, merchants and diplomats, English and Scots, devastating failures and improbably successes. She follows her subjects to Japan, North America, Madagascar, Ireland, Tangier, Istanbul, and other destinations.
A comparative imperial study and expansive world history, The Web of Empire makes a lasting argument about the formative years of the English empire.
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