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"To Fear and to Love Us": Intercultural Violence in the English Atlantic
MELANIE PERREAULT
Salisbury University
| Not surprisingly, when the authors of Mourt's Relation assessed the English relationship with the Indians of Massachusetts in 1621, they emphasized the generally peaceful interactions that had marked the Plymouth colony's first encounters with the native inhabitants. Aside from a few minor skirmishes, the authors claimed, peace generally prevailed. The explanation for such a harmonious relationship was clear to the Christian men and women who rejoiced in the knowledge that "it hath pleased God to possess the Indians with a fear of us, and love unto us." Whereas modern readers might view fear and love as opposite ends of the spectrum of human relationships, in the minds of the English colonists, nurturing Indian fear of the English went hand in hand with promoting love. Rightly understood and applied, fear was a useful tool to reinforce social norms and to maintain a hierarchy that allowed love to flow freely up and down the social ladder. The confidence the English displayed in 1621 was shattered a year later, however, when a violent turn of events in the English colony in Virginia shook the foundations of English identity that had been carefully crafted during the early stages of colonization.1 |
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Violence held a certain fascination for early modern English men and women, just as it does in the contemporary world. Newspapers, court records, and popular entertainment made frequent reference to acts of brutality from drunken brawls to state-sponsored maimings and executions. While these accounts often claimed to offer a moral lesson to their readers, the entertainment value of the reports often trumped any pretensions of virtuous intent. Despite the steady diet of graphic newspaper accounts at home, a significant component of English claims to a unique and superior identity in the Atlantic world rested in their alleged restraint in the use of violence, especially in comparison with their European rivals. No pacifists, the English acknowledged that they, on occasion, used physical force to assert themselves, but carefully distinguished justifiable acts of violence from those they considered to be illegitimate. All violence, the English believed, was situational, and the context of any individual act of violence had to be considered before it could be properly evaluated.2 |
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When English men and women began exploring the Atlantic in significant numbers in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, this effort to categorize violence as just or unjust took on added significance and added complexity. Confronted with peoples and cultures that challenged preconceived English notions of justifiable force, advocates of colonization were forced to alter their rationalization for intercultural violence. Early accounts relied largely on a discourse of class and gender in an effort to place Native Americans in categories where use of physical violence was considered to be not only acceptable, but necessary for the maintenance of social order. After Indians in Virginia and New England displayed a determined resistance to these efforts, however, proponents of colonization turned to the one rhetorical strategy that could both justify increased conflict and reinforce English identity as being distinct from other Europeans. By recasting intercultural violence as a natural component of a hierarchical, yet intimate relationship, English accounts placed otherwise questionable actions into an acceptable framework that did not threaten their carefully constructed image as protectors of dependent Indians. |
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In the sixteenth century, English political discourse redefined love as a "willing acceptance of differentiated responsibility and shared obligation and duty." Henry VIII's proclamations frequently noted the love of monarch for his obedient subjects, but also warned of his willingness to quickly punish any disobedient ones. Queen Elizabeth increasingly incorporated the concept of "love" into English political discourse, broadening her appeal beyond an inner circle of political elite to include commoners. Upon taking the crown in 1603, however, James I sought to distance himself from the commoners, earning much criticism from an English public that had grown accustomed to popular rhetoric that identified love and fear as the hallmarks of an intimate hierarchy of power, of God to people, king to subjects, husband to wife, and parents to children.3 |
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