Undreamed Shores. England's wasted Empire in America.
London: George G. Harrap & Co, 1974. First Printing of the First UK Edition. A Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. Foss examines England's first abortive attempts at colonizing America, unveiling the true story of devious policy, misplaced idealism, high-flying ambition and greed. The English, acknowledged masters of the seas during the reign of Elizabeth I, did not possess a single square mile of American land by the end of her reign. England's failure in those parts during the sixteenth century is less well known. From the visionary John Cabot, granted a royal patent in 1496 "to discover in any part of the world lands formerly unknown to Christians, to annex, conquer, and occupy them in the king's name", to Sir Walter Raleigh, whose 1584 colony struggled for some brief years and died, hardly any good resulted from a waste of energy and lives. The men who thrust themselves into the work of colonization were men with various and suspicious motives: Thomas Stukeley, rogue and pirate, Humphrey Gilbert, hot-headed idealist, the impractical navigator who had hardly been to sea, and the incalculable Sir Walter Raleigh, the entrepreneur of colonization, to whom Virginia was both a work of patriotism and a stepping stone for his own ambition and greed the sailors, the colonists, the Indians. Item #28135
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