Reviewed by Michael Leroy Oberg | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the WMQ online. About 449 words from this article are provided below; about 576 words remain.

If you are a individual subscriber to the William and Mary Quarterly, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a subscriber to the William and Mary Quarterly, you can:: • subscribe here.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the William and Mary Quarterly (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the William and Mary Quarterly.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

Reviewed by Michael Leroy Oberg | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.1 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonisation, 1500–1625. By Andrew Fitzmaurice. Ideas in Context. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. x, 216, $55.00.) Reviewed by Michael Leroy Oberg , SUNY College at Geneseo
Arguing that humanism, the dominant intellectual force in Renaissance Europe, exerted a profound influence on the early English attempts to establish a foothold on American shores, Andrew Fitzmaurice adds to the large body of scholarly work exploring the intellectual impulses that shaped English colonization in America. In making this case, Fitzmaurice has attempted to revise a number of long-held assumptions about early English colonization. The Elizabethan and Jacobean colonial projects, he argues, were not motivated primarily by desires for trade, plunder, and settlement or for the conquest of native peoples and their lands. Rather, humanists saw their colonial projects as "a means for the citizen to employ his virtue in the pursuit of the active life" (p. 20). Promoters sought honor and glory and "consistently argued that expedience, and profit, should be subordinated to honour and the common good" (p. 57). Colonization would rest on a solid foundation of virtue. Accordingly, Fitzmaurice argues that historians should not view the Virginia Company of London primarily as a commercial enterprise. The company attracted the support of many leading English humanists. Colonization, to them, would result in the "foundation of a new commonwealth" (pp. 71–72), where virtuous colonists would set aside their acquisitive desires and promote general welfare. In this sense, Fitzmaurice argues, the Virginia Company "walked in the footsteps of the Italian republics" (p. 101).	1
These colonial promoters were anxious imperialists. Fearful of the dangers idleness and luxury could pose for their new American commonwealths, Elizabethan and Jacobean humanists embraced a civic tradition hostile to commerce. Conquest, the resulting possession of native lands, and the harvesting of New World riches could produce idleness and a desire for luxury that easily could distract colonists from virtuous public service.	2
Only with the adoption of a humanism inspired by Tacitus and Machiavelli, Fitzmaurice asserts, could Jacobean colonial promoters set aside their concerns regarding the justice and consequences of possessing American lands. Finding examples of this Tacitean/Machiavellian strain of humanism in Shakespeare's The Tempest and in the writings of Captain John Smith, Fitzmaurice believes that humanists began to find "reasons of state" and "expediency" sufficient to justify American colonies. Both Shakespeare and Smith "adopted a Machiavellian critique of the prevailing Ciceronian model of colonisation supported by the Virginia Company" (p. 168). They believed that subjects must "adopt the behavior of dissimulation, deceit, flattery, and trickery because this was the only means of survival in a corrupt world" (p. 171).	. . .

There are about 576 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.