A Protestant or Catholic Atlantic World? Confessional Divisions and the Writing of Natural History

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Canny
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
American Population ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
The West ◽  
Scientific Investigations ◽  
Native Populations ◽  
French And English

Some competition was associated with all European voyages of discovery, whether considered in an intellectual or a nautical sense, but the character of the competition became confessional as the contest between states over resources to be exploited gave way to disputation between denominations over how souls might best be saved. This happened when, in the late sixteenth century, Protestant publicists began to disparage the colonial endeavours that the Spanish and Portuguese authorities had been engaged upon for more than a century, and when they resolved to start the colonial process all over again, with a view to making the Atlantic World a Protestant rather than a Catholic space. This was to be achieved both by releasing what remained of the Native American population in Central and South America from Spanish tyranny, and by establishing Protestant colonies to evangelise the native populations in extensive areas of America to which the Iberians had no more than titular claims. A comparison between French and English colonial undertakings in the West Indies, and between the literatures associated with these endeavours over the course of the seventeenth century, establishes that these Protestant ambitions proved as elusive in practice as they had been myopic in theory. The conclusion seeks to explain why colonial efforts in which Catholic religious orders were involved proved more capable of linking scientific investigations with missionary concerns than was possible in colonies that were self consciously Protestant.

scholarly journals The Timeless African and the Versatile Indian in Seventeenth-Century Travelogues

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-44
Author(s):  
Michel Duquet
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
American Indian ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Tropical Environment ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
Native Populations ◽  
French And English ◽  
North American Indian

Abstract The seventeenth century saw the early stages of significant trading on the west coast of Africa as well as the establishment of permanent settlements in North America by Dutch, French and English explorers, merchants, colonists and missionaries in a period marked by the imperial contest that had been set in motion on the heels of the discovery of America in 1492. The travelers who wrote about their voyages overseas described at length the natives they encountered on the two continents. The images of the North American Indian and of the African that emerged from these travel accounts were essentially the same whether they be of Dutch, French or English origin. The main characteristic in the descriptions of African native populations was its permanent condemnation while representations of the Indian were imbued with sentiments ranging from compassion, censure and admiration. The root causes for this dichotomy were the inhospitable and deadly (to Europeans) tropical environment of Africa’s West Coast and the growing knowledge of local societies that Europeans acquired in North America. The analysis of the contrasting images of natives on both sides of the Atlantic and the context within which they were produced are the focus of the paper.

Red Atlantic

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan Rindfleisch
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
North America ◽  
Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The West ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
Merchant Networks

The Red Atlantic is a concept by scholars in Native American history and Native American and Indigenous studies (NAIS) to address one of the perennial issues facing the study of the Atlantic world: the exclusion of the Indigenous Peoples of North America. In many years of existence, Atlantic world studies has focused on the movement of peoples (immigrants, slaves), goods (trade, food, diseases, etc.), and empires across the Atlantic Ocean, but rarely do such works engage with how Indigenous Americans contributed to, negotiated, and at times dictated transatlantic movements and connections. Instead, Indigenous Americans remain obstacles of empire, faceless suppliers of transatlantic goods like deerskins, peripheral figures who occupied the fringes of the Atlantic world, or proverbial boogeymen to transatlantic migrants (i.e., invaders) who settled in North America. However, as scholars of the Red Atlantic have articulated, our understandings of the Atlantic world—whether about merchant networks in New England and the West Indies or Spanish missions in Mesoamerica and Florida—are limited and altogether incomplete if Indigenous Peoples are relegated to the margins of the Atlantic world. In fact, there is much that scholars can learn from the Red Atlantic. For instance, groups like the Wabanaki were maritime people, like their European and African counterparts, as their everyday lives and cultures revolved around interactions with the Atlantic Ocean, such as enfolding European merchant networks into their own economies or turning to piracy to combat imperial expansion in their territories. Meanwhile, scholars of the Red Atlantic have brought to life the Indian slave trade in 17th- and 18th-century New France, between French and Algonquian peoples who carved out a traffic in human beings that connected Canada to France, the West Indies, and Africa, before the wholesale importation of African peoples. Indigenous American languages and local knowledge also shaped how European natural scientists came to understand foreign places, flora, and fauna, as Europeans proved dependent on Native knowledge systems to gain a better understanding of the world around them. In so many instances like these, the Red Atlantic demonstrates how to broaden interpretations of the Atlantic world paradigm and how to provide a more inclusive, holistic understanding of history. What follows is a sample of some of the most important works that have spurred or contributed to the Red Atlantic and concludes with those that have most recently nuanced, complicated, or redirected Atlantic world studies.

1680–1682: Everything Is Difficult

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-39
Author(s):  
Mark Walczynski
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
New France ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
The West ◽  
Illinois Country ◽  
The People

This chapter examines the arrival of French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, at Kaskaskia. Of the Roman Catholic religious orders that labored in New France during the time of La Salle, the Jesuits were the most influential. With the Jesuits now situated as sole representative to King and Cross at Kaskaskia, and by extension the Illinois Country, Claude-Jean Allouez and his Jesuit associates were prepared to do whatever was necessary to keep secular influences away from the lands and the people whose souls the order worked so diligently to save. This included turning the Illinois Indians against La Salle. Without the support of the Illinois, there was little chance that La Salle's enterprise could succeed, because the explorer's royal patent permitted him to trade only in bison hides, and the Illinois were bison hunters. In addition, it appears that Allouez was prepared to turn Native American against Native American. The chapter then considers why the Iroquois attacked the Illinois at Kaskaskia, and what the implications were for La Salle and French policy in the West.

‘Sailing on the same uncertain sea’

2021 ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
Douglas Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The West ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Imperial Rivalry

Although they were small, the islands of the Caribbean were central rather than peripheral to the idea of empire. By the seventeenth century, the islands of the Antillean archipelago were already integral to European imperial rivalry and—as a result—came to shape European notions of what empires were and what they were for. This chapter explores the shifting nature of these islands as they emerged to become imperial powerhouses in the eighteenth century. This transformation was set against the backdrop of the great upheavals of war and revolution. The shifting demography of the West Indies and their economic and strategic importance exposed them particularly to the threats created by the geopolitical maelstrom around them. This chapter argues that their island nature intensified how they were affected by, and responded to, the profound and unprecedented uncertainties of the Age of Revolutions.

The Response to Grace: Seventeenth-Century Sermons and the Idea of Thanksgiving

1975 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald E. McFarland
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The West ◽  
Specific Event ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Gunpowder Plot

The thanksgiving sermons offered from Anglican and Puritan pulpits during the seventeenth century, particularly upon such special occasions as proclaimed by Parliament, often led the preacher to consider an important issue for all Reformation Protestants: the response to grace. Whether the specific event were the anniversary of the Spanish Armada, the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, the defeat of royalist forces at Selby, or the victorious return of the West Indies fleet, the occurrence was interpretable as a special evidence of God's merciful grace. The preacher generally conceived his responsibility to be, first, to remind his congregation of additional mercies, some general in nature (creation, preservation, redemption), and others specific or individual as indicated above. Second, the preacher was to direct his congregation in the manner of its response to these testimonies of grace. Beyond this, the preacher might proceed as he wished. He might fulminate against ingratitude; he might expatiate on the historical or political implications of the event or of past mercies; or he might focus upon the hope for future mercies.

Sustaining Faith

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-233
Author(s):  
Katherine Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Role ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
George Fox ◽  
British State

Abstract This article uses the case study of the small Quaker community on seventeenth-century Antigua, as well as sources from Quakers on Barbados and from Quaker missionaries travelling throughout Britain’s Atlantic empire, to question the role of Quakers as anti-slavery pioneers. Quaker founder George Fox used a paternalistic formulation of hierarchy to contend that enslavement of other human beings was compatible with Quakerism, so long as it was done in a nurturing way—an argument that was especially compelling given the sect’s desperate need in the seventeenth century to establish itself economically or risk its destruction by the post-Restoration British State. By exploring the crucial economic role that the slave-based economies of the West Indies played in establishing the Quakers as a powerful sect in the eighteenth-century North American colonies, this article demonstrates that it was impossible for Quakers to follow through in establishing a nurturing form of slavery, particularly within the brutal context of the West Indian sugar colonies.

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