England’s Voyages

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Between 1497 and the Mayflower's voyage to New England in 1620 England had to adjust itself to the implications of the reality of the existence of the Americas. This course will survey the story of England's 'Westward Enterprise' across the Atlantic in this period. It will take the measure of figures like Francis Drake, Walter Ralegh, Martin Frobisher, and Humphrey Gilbert as they raided, reconnoitered, and laid claim to portions of the Americas during the reigns of the Tudor monarchs and finally James VI & I. The course will be suffused in primary source accounts of the various voyages and enterprises endeavored by Englishmen in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.