This open access book explores the role of religion in England's overseas companies and the formation of English governmental identity abroad in the seventeenth century. Drawing on research into the Virginia, East India, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New England and Levant Companies, it offers a comparative global assessment of the inextricable links between the formation of English overseas government and various models of religious governance across England's emerging colonial empire. While these approaches to governance varied from company to company, each sought to regulate the behaviour of their personnel, as well as the numerous communities and faiths which fell within their jurisdiction. This book provides a crucial reassessment of the seventeenth-century foundations of British imperial governance.

About the Author
Haig Z. Smith is a Research Associate on the ERC-funded TIDE project (Travel, Transculturality and Identity in Early Modern England, 1550-1700) at the University of Oxford, UK. He has previously published on a number of topics relating to religion and English overseas expansion in the early modern period.


Book Information
ISBN 9783030701338
Author Haig Z. Smith
Format Paperback
Page Count 292
Imprint Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Publisher Springer Nature Switzerland AG