Tudor Beginnings, 1485–1603

• Main Author: Truxes, Thomas M.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Yale University Press 2021
• Subjects: atlantic cod; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300159882.003.0002

Chapter 1 of The Overseas Trade of British America follows the transformation of Tudor England from an inconsequential late-medieval European kingdom into an early modern maritime power with well-established trading interests along an arc stretching from Russia to Morocco. Change was accelerated by demand abroad for English wool, the widespread enclosure of arable land for grazing sheep, rapid population growth, the English Reformation, and the impact of European–wide inflation on the stability of English life. Fishermen from England’s West Country ports began appearing on the coast of Newfoundland, jostling with the Basque, Spanish, Portuguese, and French competition for a share of the Atlantic cod teeming in those waters. Participation in the Grand Banks fishery contributed to the growth of English maritime capacity. Meanwhile, English seafarers entered the Spanish Caribbean — sometimes as privateers (licensed private ships of war), sometimes as pirates (seaborne thieves). They came to raid, not settle, and challenged Spain’s claims to New World hegemony. Then in 1584, a prescient English geographer, Richard Hakluyt, presented Queen Elizabeth I with a vision of American settlement and commerce that would connect England to the far side of the Great Western Ocean.