British Maritime Enterprise in the New World: From the Late Fifteenth to the Mid-Eighteenth Century

Description

Bradley (Latin American studies, U. of Newcastle upon Tyne) pulls together the threads of much of his previous work and extends it chronologically and geographically to provide a broad survey of British maritime activities in the New World and beyond from the first Bristol voyages of the 15th century to the beginning of the 19th. He approaches the task geographically, with sections on the West Indies, which includes the Spanish Main of Venezuela and Columbia and the Caribbean shores of Central America; the Atlantic fringes of North America from Florida to the Arctic; and the South Atlantic and South Sea (Pacific) coasts of North and South America from Guiana through the southern straits or around the Horn to the Gulf of Panama and the west coast of North America. His primary concern is with the multiple motives and action patterns of those who commanded and participated in the expanding scope of seaborne ventures to the Americas, and the immediate -- rather than ultimate -- consequences of their intervention. The text is double spaced.