Table Of ContentThe Atlantic Imperial
Constitution
The Atlantic Imperial
Constitution
Center and Periphery in the
English Atlantic World
Ken MacMillan
THE ATLANTIC IMPERIAL CONSTITUTION
Copyright © Ken MacMillan, 2011.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-11174-5
All rights reserved.
First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United
States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New
York, NY 10010
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the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan
Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998,
of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above
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ISBN 978-1-349-29406-0 ISBN 978-0-230-33967-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230339675
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
MacMillan, Ken.
The Atlantic imperial constitution : center and periphery in the
English Atlantic world / Ken MacMillan.
p. cm.
1. Constitutional history—Great Britain. 2. Constitutional
history—Great Britain—Colonies. 3. Great Britain—Colonies—
America—Administration—History—17th century. 4. Central-
local government relations—Great Britain—History—17th
century. 5. Central-local government relations—America—
History—17th century. 6. Great Britain—Politics and
government—1603–1649. I. Title.
JN193.M34 2011
325’.341091821–dc22 2011014745
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: November 2011
For
William Paul MacMillan
November 17, 1938– October 24, 2010
Contents
Preface ix
Conventions xiii
Abbreviations xv
Introduction 1
1 The Crown and the Atlantic Charters 11
2 Foreign Affairs: The Example of Spain 31
3 Emigration and the Shaping of the English Atlantic World 59
4 Tobacco and the Economy of Empire 85
5 Petitions and Executive Authority 113
6 Commissions and Committees for Foreign Plantations 143
Conclusion 169
Notes 177
Bibliography 223
Index 241
Preface
This book is, in some respects, a sequel to my last monograph, Sov-
ereignty and Possession in the English New World: The Legal Founda-
tions of Empire, 1576– 1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006). That book considered how the English Crown and certain
metropolitan and colonial agents working on its behalf expressed
legal authority over the English Atlantic colonies. I demonstrated that
using a number of different methods— such as writing promotional
treatises, issuing colonial charters, building fortifications, drawing
maps, and engaging in treaty negotiations— perpetual English sover-
eignty over certain parts of the Atlantic was asserted in ways that were
intelligible to a European audience that was familiar with the Roman
legal language of the ius commune. Drawing on core principles from
this legal language, particularly the twin tenets of animus and corpus,
England managed to gain supranational acquiescence and recognition
for its right to possess those regions over which it could demonstrate
both mental and physical claims. These methods and justifications,
developed under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts, created the legal
foundations of the British Empire and were repeatedly used as Britain
expanded its influence across the globe.
After Sovereignty and Possession appeared, I was asked to contribute
chapters to several collected volumes that investigated various aspects
of the British Atlantic world. I used these opportunities to consider
additional dimensions of central involvement in colonial affairs that
could not be attended to in the earlier book. As my point of depar-
ture, I sought to contextualize the orthodox view that regular, central
oversight in Anglo-A tlantic affairs began virtually ex nihilo in the
Interregnum period with the Navigation Act of 1651 and was not
consistent, coherent, or imperial until at least the mid- Restoration
period. During the process of research and writing, I came to the
conclusion that although central involvement in the Atlantic under
the early Stuart monarchs was limited in comparison to domestic
governance and future imperial oversight, this activity nonetheless
created an incipient Atlantic Imperial Constitution. This constitution
x preface
was consistent with how the English Crown had historically governed
its wider composite monarchy within its internal empire (Scotland,
Ireland, Wales, and surrounding islands) and set precedents for how
the overseas empire was later supervised from the center. That is, the
important, if generally unintrusive, center- periphery relationship that
emerged from the first few decades of these activities formed a consti-
tutional model that helped to determine what later imperial relations
should look like.
The central arguments of the present book have been shaped in sev-
eral essays, though none are reprinted here: “Imperial Constitutions:
Sovereignty and Law in the Atlantic,” in Britain’s Oceanic Empire:
British Expansion into the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, 1550–
1850, edited by Huw V. Bowen, Elizabeth Mancke, and John G.
Reid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); “‘Bound by
Our Regal Office’: Empire, Sovereignty, and the American Colonies
in the Seventeenth Century,” in The American Colonies in the British
Empire, 1607–1 776, edited by Stephen Foster (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2012); and “Centers and Peripheries in English Maps
of America, 1590–1 685,” in Early American Cartographies, edited
by Martin Brückner (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina
Press, 2011). I wish to thank Cambridge University Press for permis-
sion to use a revised version of my article “The Bermuda Company,
the Privy Council, and the Wreck of the San Antonio, 1621– 23,”
Itinerario 34 (2010): 45– 64, in Chapter 2. The production of each
of these essays from draft to publication resulted in comments from
editors and anonymous referees, all of which improved the final
products and, therefore, this book. Discussions with Trevor Burnard,
Stephen Foster, Elizabeth Mancke (who also read the entire manu-
script), John G. Reid, Christopher Tomlins, and several participants
of the British Asia and British Atlantic, 1500– 1820: Two Worlds or
One? symposium held at the University of Sussex in July 2007 have
been helpful. An anonymous reader at Palgrave Macmillan also made
valuable comments.
This study has benefitted from funding provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and teaching
release time provided by the Calgary Institute for the Humanities.
Research was conducted primarily at the National Archives in Kew
(Richmond, Surrey, UK), which, as usual, provided the professional
assistance that is essential for a transatlantic scholar with limited time
available. Thanks to Phil Beard for travel companionship, to his wife
Joanne for letting him out to play, and to Shannon Peever and Ellen
Koning for their valuable services, which enabled me to complete the
preface xi
manuscript. My wife, Luna, has become accustomed to my times away
from home and family and has accepted these absences with her usual
grace. During the time that I was researching and writing this book,
our sons Owen and Lewis were born. They quickly became our privy
councilors, laboring hard when petitions and appeals were put before
them to determine, usually through proclamation, the course of
action that would help strengthen our domestic constitution. Along
the way, they have provided much reprieve from teaching and writing.
This book is dedicated to my father, Bill MacMillan (1938–2 010).
In addition to spending more than forty years as an airman and sol-
dier, dad was a voracious reader and talented amateur historian whose
quickness of mind, even as cancer was slowly claiming his body, was a
model of the inquiring spirit.
Conventions
In early modern England, the year began on Lady Day, March 25.
To avoid confusion, throughout this book the year is taken to begin
on January 1. This work relies heavily on original documentation in
which the spelling of place and personal names is inconsistent. To
ensure consistency, I have adopted either modern usage or the most
common spelling used in the sources. In quotations from primary
materials, spelling and punctuation have been modernized and abbre-
viations silently expanded. The original spelling of early modern book
and tract titles has been retained in the notes to facilitate further ref-
erence. All manuscript references are to the National Archives of the
United Kingdom, unless otherwise noted.
