Envisioning America English Plans for the Colonization of North America

Focusing in on the time in our history when colonizing North America was still very much an uncertainty, Envisioning America uses pamphlets, accounts, and engravings from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to detail the Englishs process of colonization.

Peter C. Mancall is Professor of History and Anthropology at the University of Southern California and the Director of the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute.  He is the author of five books, including Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol In Early America (Cornell, 1995); Hakluyt’s Promise: an Elizabethan’s Obsession for an English America (Yale, 2007); and Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson--a Tale of Mutiny  and Murder in the Arctic (Basic Books, 2009); and the editor of ten books, including Travel Narratives A  from the Age of Discovery (Oxford, 2006) and The Atlantic World and Virginia 1550-1624 (Omohundro Institute/University of North Carolina, 2007).

Foreword
Preface
PART ONE:
Introduction: English Promotion and Settlement of the Americas
Early European Settlements in the Western Hemisphere
Early Influences on English Colonization Efforts
The English Colonization of Ireland
Domestic Influences on Early English Plans for Colonizing North America
The Emergence of English America, 1588–1620
The Expansion of English Colonization, 1620–1640
PART TWO:
The Documents
1. Richard Hakluyt (the elder), Inducements to the Liking of the Voyage Intended towards Virginia in 40. and 42. Degrees, 1585
2. Richard Hakluyt (the younger), Discourse of Western Planting, 1584
3. George Peckham, A True Reporte of the Late Discoveries ...
by . . . Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 1583
4. Thomas Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found
Land of Virginia, 1590
Illustration section: Selections from Theodore de Brys engravings
of John Whites True Pictures and Fashions of the
People in That Parte of America Now Called Virginia, 1585
5. Sir Walter Ralegh, Of the Voyage for Guiana, 1596?
6. George Percy, A Discourse of the Plantation of the Southern Colonie in Virginia, 1606-1607
7. Anonymous, A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colonie in Virginia (Issued by the Virginia Company), 1610
8. John Winthrop, Reasons to Be Considered for Justifying the Undertakers of the Intended Plantation in New England and for Encouraging Such Whose Hearts God Shall Move to Join with Them in It, 1629
9. Ferdinando Gorges, A briefe Relation of the Discovery and Plantation of New England, 1622
10. William Wood, New Englands Prospect, 1634 APPENDIXES
A Chronology of Exploration and Colonization in the Americas (1000-1637)
Questions for Consideration
Selected Bibliography
Index