Love and Fear in the Making of England's Atlantic Empire

abstract:Roman political history and imperial practice offered persuasion or violent coercion as alternative paradigms for imposing dominion over new territories and establishing new settlements in them. Both were used by the early modern English as guides for conquest and the imposition of effective imperial rule over peoples they considered barbarous, first in colonizing new territories in Ireland and then, with their Irish experience in the Tudor age as a model, in colonial Virginia. In each instance, "civilizing" the indigenous populations was treated not as an end in itself, but as a means to bring them under effective rule, with coercion eventually winning the day.