abstract: This forum showcases a previously uncited set of English letters from 1612, written in Latin. Writing to his son John about the impending return of John’s cousin Henry Spelman to Virginia, Sir Henry Spelman chose to use Latin throughout. Though Spelman’s mastery of Latin was questioned after his death, his competent Latinity is evident not only in this correspondence but also in his antiquarian researches and writings. Sir Henry’s seemingly puzzling use of Latin in writing to his son studying at the Middle Temple is paralleled by John Winthrop’s expectation that his son, John Jr., write him and others in Latin while studying at Trinity College, Dublin. Thus, both the senior Spelman and the senior Winthrop encouraged their student sons to make regular use of the Latin that played so central a role in their educations.
abstract: Nakedness is a common trope in early modern English voyage narratives, signifying the uncivilized state of Indigenous peoples outside Europe. At the same time, a domestic code of civility was elaborated in England with reference to the alleged characteristics of a racial other. The late seventeenth-century Caribbean was a contested space where national, imperial, and Indigenous histories were entangled. Focusing on the Pacific Adventure (1679–82), a private English enterprise that crossed the isthmus of Darién (Panama) and raided Spanish ships and settlements along the Pacific coast, this article examines the buccaneers’ encounters with the Moskito and Kuna peoples, who, it is argued, exercised agency in the development of intercultural partnerships. Drawing on the work of literary scholars and anthropologists as well as historians, this comparative contextual analysis of the published travel narratives of Basil Ringrose, William Dampier, and Lionel Wafer shows how various practices of civility, characterized here as “racialized civility,” “strategic civility,” and “transgressive civility,” produced significant nuances and differences of views about nakedness that have been overlooked.
abstract: In the forty-year history of North America’s one Dutch colony, New Netherland, two men, and only two men, Anthony and Abraham, were known as “Turks.” They were said to hail from the Moroccan port city of Salé. In offering a dual biography of these unique individuals from the seventeenth century, this article examines the place of Islam in early America, the question of whether the two men were related, and some of the divergent ways Islam came to be racialized in early America and the implications of this for later American history. The article aims to suggest ways of analyzing American and Atlantic history that center rather than ignore, as is usually the case, one of the Old World’s most formative geopolitical dynamics—the relationships between Christian Europe and Islam. Ultimately, it explains how race determined the fate of Islam in New Netherland and specifically how it fused to Blackness in the person of Abraham and then later among his descendants.
abstract: This forum showcases a previously uncited set of English family letters from 1612, written in Latin. They mention the wish of Sir Henry Spelman to send his young nephew back to Jamestown on a ship with the governor, Lord De La Warr. This essay considers young Henry’s planned return to America in the context of the continued challenges the Virginia Company faced in resupplying the colony, and the repeated disappointments of English investors. Young Henry’s reluctant return coincided with a relaunch of the company with the Third Charter of 1612 and a vigorous publicity campaign, against the backdrop of fears of a Spanish invasion. The young man’s uncle was typical in seeing Virginia as a useful placement for difficult relatives rather than a great national enterprise.
abstract: This forum showcases a previously uncited set of English family letters from 1612, written in Latin. In them, Sir Henry Spelman, writing from Norfolk, instructs his son John, in London, to put his nephew, also named Henry Spelman, on a ship to Virginia. Young Henry is famous as an interpreter to Powhatan and other Chesapeake Algonquians, and as the author of an invaluable account of Indigenous life in that era. The letters provide an unusual window into how American colonization fit into the private lives of transatlantic individuals and English families. The forum begins with the translated and annotated letters. Four essays follow, focusing on language, translation, and the circulation of ideas; Sir Henry’s financial and political situation in 1612; young Henry and his experiences in England and Virginia; and the workings of the Virginia Company.
