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Tudor explorers: everything you wanted to know
00:51:23
Jerry Brotton guides us through the turbulent waters of Tudor exploration
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Gerry Broughton
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. By the time the Tudors took to the waves, much of the world was already mapped out by Europeans. So what was left for Tudor explorers to uncover? And should we even call them explorers at all? In this Everything youg Wanted to Know episode, historian Gerry Broughton tackles these thorny questions as well as delving into the murky motivations of some of the greatest names of the age. And unpicking England's complex relationship with Spain, Gerry spoke to Kev Lottchen.
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Kev Lottchen
We're talking about Tudor era explorers today, and I wonder if we could start by having kind of situate us not just when we are, but also where. Which kind of countries are sending explorers out into the world and where do they hope they're going.
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Walmart Representative
It's a good question, because one of the problems here is to use the word explorers, because, yes, the Tudors are moving outwards from England, but we should remember that even by the 1490s, when really this story starts so actually under Henry VII, the first great, what we might call Tudor explorer, is neither a Tudor nor is he an explorer. He's John Cabot, who's actually an Italian, he's Venetian, who comes to work as a kind of hired gun, hired sailors, it were for Henry vii. But the fact is that really, even from that early on, the Tudors know that the world is expanding in terms of European terms. The Portuguese and the Spanish. We've had Columbus, who's got to the Americas in 1492, the Portuguese have got round the Cape of good hope in 1488, Da Gama's got to India by 1497. So actually we're filling in the gaps, but there's not a lot left really to explore. The world as we understand it now is vaguely in its shape. There's a sense of India, there's a sense of China, there's a sense even of sub Saharan Africa. So what the Tudors are doing is really trying to play catch up, especially with the Spanish and the Portuguese and we should add the Ottoman Islamic Empire, because that's part of this story. So they're always trying to really be big players on the European scene. And it's important to remember this. When we think about Tudor exploration and we talk a lot about Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, they are absolutely Johnny come latelys, they are following in the footsteps usually of the Spanish. And it's not that they're discovering new places, there's a little bit of that. But even at this point, even by the early 16th century, that isn't really what's at stake. It is about travel, it is about trade, it is about empire and politics. So it's really important to remember that. And that just intensifies as we go through the 16th century, and particularly under Elizabeth, with a whole new raft of travelers. So even this word explorers, we should just be a little bit careful about. But in broad, we could say that what the Tudors are doing is they're going westwards, they're looking to get into the Americas. And that is a story about colonization and the language they use of plantation. And is that word literally you're planting things. The idea is you plant a colony, they're also then going broadly eastwards. And that tells a different story because that's actually about trade, exchange, and accommodation. It is not about colonization really, it's about dealing with much bigger, much more powerful, much more sophisticated empires than the Tudors are. So again, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Ottomans, even the Mughal empire and even the Chinese and the Tudors know that they are little fish in a very big pond when they go eastwards. The story that we're going to tell here will really end, I think quite rightly, in 1600 when the English East India Company set up. And that is a story which starts to go eastwards and starts to say we want to start establishing what we might start to call colonies. And the language becomes about building an empire. But that's much later and really at the end of our story.
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Kev Lottchen
That's such an excellent summary. And also I hadn't really internalized the map drawing, exploration having already happened in that sense. Would the likes of Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh have considered themselves explorers, do you think? Or do you think they'd mindset already moved on to this other aims?
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Walmart Representative
I think that they have moved on. I think that word discovery and also that other word that you've used, exploration, is really a much later term. It is being thrown around in this period. I think they're already aware that that gives them a sort of veneer, more authority. They are pretty much privateers, which is a posh way of saying pirates and that word privateer is that they are doing their work privately. The Crown, that is the government and the King or queen are not backing them, but they are quietly. And that's why this word privateer comes up, that they're engaging officially in private expeditions, but again, usually it's about taking on the Spanish hit and run missions, is about slavery, we'll talk about that in West Africa. So they're using that language but nobody says, I am going out to explore an area on the map that nobody knows about. That map has already been pretty much sketched out roughly by about 1500, 1510.
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Kev Lottchen
So a question we had in from Tracy CA was about what motivated Tudor explorers. I mean, when the map is drawn, what is taking people out to sea?
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Walmart Representative
I think it is primarily about trade, it is about finance. So from the very beginning, one of the first figures that we might name as a Tudor explorer is called John Cabot. He's this guy who is from Italy. He is very disreputable. He washes up literally in London in the 1490s and he proposes to King Henry VII that he goes westwards into North America and it's really about fishing rights. A lot of this is really prosaic and we think it's all the glamorous search for gold and silver. And yes, there is some of that, but often it's about those sort of ideas. Because, of course, in this period, you know, to monopolize the fishing industry would be huge in the North Atlantic. When cabot goes in 1497, he's mainly interested in the fisheries of Newfoundland in North America. But by the by, he is the first European to reach North America. Distinction between North America and South America and the Caribbean. And what Columbus did in 1492, he is the first European to reach North America since the Vikings. So that is kind of extraordinary. And there is that sense in which this is something very new. But Cabal doesn't write about it. And the Tudors themselves and Henry VII doesn't say, we are great explorers. They go great. We've got an in on the fishing industry. And throughout the later 16th century, they're colonizing, trying to get a foothold in the Americas. And again, that is about engaging, maybe with. Trying to break into the Spanish trade in silver, in other rare goods. But it's very much driven, I think, by commercial financial issues. So there's almost a sort of rejection of the idea to explore just for the sake of it and discover for the sake of it. Because that's dangerous and it impinges on something that I think the question sort of really is asking about, you know, the excitement that we now have about travel. Travel in this period was rubbish. It was horrible. You did not want to go on these kind of voyages. You would probably die. You would certainly come back with probably no teeth, hair, you know, cut to pieces. You didn't want to be doing this. There was no romance involved. Even for the elite who were on board these ships. This was really dangerous, scary stuff.
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Kev Lottchen
We've spoken a bit about John Cabot. We've mentioned a couple of people by name. This is probably a good juncture to go over who are the big figures in this period.
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Walmart Representative
So there are a sort of roll call of Raleigh Drake. Raleigh's an interesting one. Raleigh, Raleigh. I once made a program about him in El Dorado. And his descendants said, we call him Raleigh. And I went, okay, let's call him Raleigh. I'm from the north, so I'd say Walter Raleigh. Anyway, let's call him Rawley. So you have these big figures and we can talk about those. I want to throw in some others. And one, for instance, is a figure called Anthony Jenkinson. And again, he's not really seen as an explorer, but he's a merchant, and he's a merchant selling cloth in the Middle east in aleppo in the 1550s. Now he's a guy who then meets the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent. He then comes home, establishes trading relations with the Ottomans. They think he's so great. All the merchants in London say, right, go back out there. We want you to set up what's called the Muscovy Company, which we associate with Russia. He goes back out, he goes through Moscow, he meets the Tsar, Ivan the Terrible. He then goes down the Volga and he goes southeast. And he ends up in the 1560s, he meets the Shah of Iran. So this is a guy who's met a shah, a tsar and the Sultan by the 1560s. And he writes his travel account and he starts talking about the distinctions between Sunni and Shia theology in the 1560s. So I think he's a kind of extraordinary figure, but he gets just lumped off as a sort of merchant. And I think this guy's amazing, but he's really part of a trading company. But that story is really important because that's connected to trade and travel as well. So Jenkinson is somebody, I'd say, after Cabot is one of the most important Tudor explorers. You've then got other figures like Sir John Hawkins. Hawkins is infamous as a figure who is in. Involved in all kinds of forms of dodgy activity, not least the fact that in 1567, he's involved in slaving voyages in West Africa. And this is, of course, a highly contentious subject. One of the things I say about this is it is important to acknowledge the Tudors were involved in very small scale with the early slave trade, and it wasn't very significant in the sense that they weren't very good at it. That doesn't mean that they didn't want to get into the whole slave industry. But the Portuguese and the Spanish were pretty much monopolizing it. However, Hawkins is exploring West Africa, but he's, again, he's breaking in really to the Portuguese trade. There he is trading slaves into the Caribbean in the late 1560s. His coat of arms actually shows an enslaved figure. I mean, it's pretty. It's pretty horrible stuff. So, again, that is part of the story, very much the dark story about what's going on here and with other figures who were then involved in travel, particularly to the Americas. And also what I might say, over the top, the Northeast and the Northwest Passage, these mad ideas that the Tudors believe that they can go over the top of the world through either the Northwest through sort of Newfoundland or northeast through the Arctic Circle to get to China. So they're trying to break out of the sort of prison, really, of the way in which Spain and Portugal are controlling so much of the trade in the Atlantic and through the Cape of Good Hope. So one character is a guy called Martin Frobisher, and in the 1570s, he's trying to pursue the Northwest Passage to get into the Pacific and China. He lands in Baffin Island. So we're back in the sort of northern North America area. He captures indigenous people, the Inuits, and brings them back. They live and die in London and buried in some of the East London churches. We've got Humphrey Gilbert, another character, who around this time is involved in another trading company called the Cathay Company, and he starts to Write in the 1570s, Humphrey Gilbert starts to write these accounts to Elizabeth, saying, yeah, come on, we've got to get into the American territories. We can really annoy the Spanish, we can terrorize them, we can nick their ships and their wealth, and we can also start getting into all the wealth of the Americas. And he finances voyages in the late 1570s, 1580s, and he goes into North America. Amazing story about him. He hits a storm in 1583 in the Atlantic and he's lost at sea. He's drowned and he's last seen. The claim is reading a copy of Sir Thomas More's Utopia on deck and says that we are as near to heaven by sea as by land. And then he swept away. Amazing story. Walter Raleigh. Raleigh is another figure that, of course, is really important. And Raleigh's interesting because he's mainly known for not sailing on voyages to North America, to an area called Roanoke, which is off the coast of North Carolina, which is really the first sort of inklings of the establishment of a colony which we come to know as Virginia and Raleigh, supporting those voyages in 1584, 1585. But he's not going himself. But what's interesting is that when he does go finally on a voyage of exploration, he sets off in 1595 and he goes in search of El Dorado, the lost city, Lost golden city of. Well, he calls it Guyana, but it's actually Venezuela, and it's a complete disaster. But of course, he comes back and he says, yeah, you know, we've. We've found this whole new country, Guyana. Now, again, he's basically raiding Spanish dominions around there. He lands in Trinidad, he kills a load of Spanish, and then he jumps on from Trinidad, lands in Guyana, Venezuela goes up the Orinoco, doesn't find any gold, doesn't find El Dorado, surprisingly, and comes back, but of course makes a big play of the fact he has. The other great figure, finally I think to mention, is Sir Francis Drake. And we think of Drake because of his circumnavigation of the globe. He spends three years, from 1577 to 1518. He goes round the globe, is the first Englishman and the first European since Magellan to circumnavigate the globe. But like Magellan, it's not really about a form of exploration and discovery. Drake does it because he's sailing westwards. He goes via Cape Horn in South America and then he goes along the west coast of America and then through into the Pacific. But it's basically an elaborate raiding expedition against the Spanish and then when he gets into the Pacific, the Portuguese. It's not done for some great romantic idea of circumnavigating the globe. That's explicitly what it's about. It's an attack on Catholic Spain. And by that period in the 1570s and 1580s, it's really that religious, political, imperial conflict between England and Spain which is driving so much of what we would describe as discovery and exploration.
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Kev Lottchen
Those are fascinating stories. And Walter Riley and Francis Drake, their names are head and shoulders above pretty much everyone else you mentioned. Now, in terms of public knowledge and perception, why do you think that might be?
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Walmart Representative
Do you know why? It's basically about money and class. And as somebody from the north of England who is not elite, you know, I like to make this point that it really is very much about that because it's Sir John Hawkins, it's Sir Martin Frobisher and Walter Raleigh, one of Elizabeth's great favourites. Drake is from a sort of modest background, but they are figures really who are ennobled and unlike some of the merchants, people like Anthony Jenkinson. Jenkinson is what we would I guess now describe as a sort of lower middle class slash working class figure. He's trained, he works in trade, he's a merchant. We don't have any portraits of these kind of figures. People like Gilbert Frobisher and Raleigh are much closer to the elite, literally to the king. Raleigh was so called favorite, she gave him money, she supported all his mad projects in Ireland and the Americas. So I think that that's why you get different figures who have, you know, survived. They're all privateers, they're all glorified pirates, they're all involved also in national security. Most of them, if they survive, are involved in the defense of England around the Armada. So they're all really part of an emerging national naval group. Other people who are more mercantile just get washed out of the story because, again, somebody like Anthony Jenkinson isn't seen explicitly and doesn't talk about himself as an explorer. And Raleigh, of course, has the money to publish books saying the discovery of Guyana. And, you know, it's very much a piece of aggrandizement. It's like being on social media. Now he's using the printing press to announce that. So that's why you get the difference between some of these figures whose stories have survived and others that don't, you know. Another one is somebody I think is amazing, a guy called William Harborne. He's the first English ambassador to the Islamic Ottoman empire in the 1580s. Amazing figure. Sets up trade delegations across the Islamic world and what we now call the Middle East. You know, he's involved in negotiations and spying to create an Anglo Islamic Ottoman alliance against the Spanish. He's traveling to the Holy Land, but again, he's a merchant. And most of his letters just say, well, I've got some silk and I've been trading some currents through Greece. And so we don't valorize him as a great explorer. But I think that that's why some of these figures now and their stories should be told, because it gives you a more complex picture of what it means to talk about exploration and discovery and also the kind of marginal role of the Tudors in the world at this time. They are not big players, they're desperately trying, but they are literally second division football club trying to get into the Premier League. And it's not working very much, actually, to be honest. It really isn't. You know, the Ottomans are writing to them saying, who are you? What's the name of your queen? Don't know. A lot of this, what I might call outreach, which we sometimes call exploration, to other cultures for plantations, colonies, trade. It's driven by a very specific event, which is the Reformation and the excommunication of Protestant Tudor England from mainland Europe. And if this sounds familiar, I do refer to it often as a theological kind of Brexit. So Elizabeth I is excommunicated in 1570. So from that point on, she's got to really work out new markets, new forms of trade. How do you survive? So a lot of the exploration that we think about, and it's an attempt to basically keep the country economically going, it's not some great plucky English national characteristic to go out and travel the world, you know, and bring civilization to people. Of course, you know, that narrative is being completely unpicked. But it's also important that we remember this is grounded in very, very hard notes. Politics, economics, finance, and the need just to survive.
- [21:07]
Kev Lottchen
You've answered about 12 of my questions in one go. It's absolutely brilliant to recap something. So one of the questions I had in was about the Reformation. So are we saying that the political and religious upheaval in England at this time therefore creates the situation where that necessitates this boom in exploration, inverted commas.
- [21:27]
Walmart Representative
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, Elizabeth comes to the throne in 1558. She's increasingly being marginalized. Officially, she is still part of the Catholic Church because, you know, these things take time to work through. And finally, in 1570, a papal bull is published that formally excommunicates her and says she is a heretic. From that point onwards, the country really is now a rogue Protestant and very much seen. It's very interesting in terms of current debates, you know, about rogue states and terrorism. That is how the country is seen in mainland Catholic Europe. And that's what drives a lot of this, what we call exploration. The other thing that happens is these creation of joint stock companies. So the creation of the Muscovy Company, which is in the 1550s, 1560s, the creation of the Turkey Company, which is trading with the Ottoman Empire, which is in the 1570s. The Barbary Company, which is trading with Morocco in the 1580s. These are all being set up as forms of trading companies where merchants from London are putting their money together, the Queen is quietly supporting them. So we'll give it royal assent, but says it's almost like a John Le Carrier novel. She'll say, listen, if you get caught doing anything bad out there, I'm not responsible, but I'm very happy to support this kind of trade. So it's a new economic initiative which is driven by the theological isolation of Tudor England, which means that you start traveling to Newfoundland, to the Ottoman Empire, to Persia to try and work out are there new markets because you've been cut off from much of the mainland.
- [23:05]
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Kev Lottchen
So England is a rogue state and at this point there's obviously, let's say, friction with Spain. England, Spain don't get along. But I think Portugal is an ally of sorts.
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Walmart Representative
It's complicated. It's an interesting question because it's really again that moment in the 1570s. So what happens in 1578? There's an extraordinary battle in Morocco and we don't realize that the whole geopolitics of this period and England's relationship to Spain and Portugal changes just immediately because there's a battle called the Battle of Alcazar Kabir, which is in northwest Morocco, which is a conflict between different pretenders to the Moroccan throne. A Portuguese King Sebastian I and English Catholic mercenaries who were all fighting this battle in 1578. Everybody dies. It's often called the Battle of the Three Kings. Everybody's wiped out. So all the Moroccan claimants are killed. King Sebastian of Portugal is killed on the battlefield. So Portugal then is left in a completely political vacuum which is filled by Philip II who goes, thank you very much. And he takes over Portugal in 1580. So all of Iberia is controlled by the Habsburg Philip II by 1580 as a result of the Battle of Alcazar Kebir in 1578. As a result, that means that England can no longer play Portugal and Spain off against each other, which They've been doing a bit, but once that happens, happens, you are put on a road to the Armada because Philip II then has a consolidation of all the power, all the money, all the wealth of the Portuguese empire in the Far east, you know, in India, in Goa, all of that wealth and the wealth of the New World of the Americas, which has predominantly been Spanish up until this point. And he can literally then point his guns towards England. So that's really the sort of moment of this, as you were suggesting, this real conflict with Spain, because then Elizabeth is really saying, right, boys, out you go. You've really got to hit the Spanish, particularly in the Caribbean. And that's what all these figures like Drake and Frobisher and Gilbert are doing. They're all zealous Protestants who are saying, we need to be developing a navy which can attack the Spanish. But it's not done around exploration and they know exactly where they're going. It's not about exploration, it's about a conflict which is running right through this whole period and continues even when the Armada doesn't work. In a way, all that does is embolden the English.
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Kev Lottchen
And this is where the privateer element comes in, right, where they're going out and they're really attacking the Spanish. You know, they're not doing it for Queen and country, but they are.
- [27:26]
Walmart Representative
Yeah, exactly. So as you say, that's nicely put. They are and they're not. So, yes, it's very much a sense in which they're enriching themselves, they're enriching the state, but officially they're doing private raids on the Spanish. And of course the diplomatic fallout is interesting because everybody knows what's going on as we do, I guess, within many issues about contemporary conflicts today. So the Spanish go, oi, stop it. And Elizabeth goes, not me, it's, you know, it's Drake. And these people, they are tricky, aren't they? I mean, there's literally what goes on and everybody knows and the Spanish are furious. But Elizabeth plays such a canny game here. And it's the same with the joint stock companies. They are enriching the country. All this money starts to come into London and London does boom. But officially they are the city. And the city is different from the Crown. But Elizabeth and all her advisors, Walsingham, Burley, they're all supporting this because they can see that money is coming in. But obviously it's pretty ill gotten gains. Much of it is coming in from attacking the Spanish in the Caribbean or it's coming in from an alliance with the Islamic empire. And of course they are aware that they need to tread very carefully around that because theologically that could be quite tricky. So she's very much a sort of don't ask, don't tell position on both the privateers and the joint stock companies. As the money comes back in. It's a very, very shrewd political game that she plays. Many people admire her in that respect and I'd agree with that because she's so subtle. She's never sort of saying, this is what I require and demand.
- [29:00]
Kev Lottchen
This is probably a good juncture to turn onto how these expeditions actually work. So are they mostly funded by the Crown or does it vary?
- [29:11]
Walmart Representative
Mainly is private. I mean, people will contribute money and often you'll see people like Walsingham Burley, other favorites later on, Essex will support an initiative and they will put up most of the capital for it. The joint stock companies are of course, putting all their money in and the Crown doesn't put any money into that. So the joint stock, as many of you will know, or the listeners will know, some of the concept of it is that everybody can put into it. So you and I can put in a £10,000 to a joint stock company and therefore all that money is collated. You therefore build the ships, you crew it, you send it out with produce and you hope that you come back with a profit on it. If you come back with a profit, you and I will both get a cut that profit. If it's a complete disaster and you lose all your ships and you're wrecked, you're done in, you lose all your money, that's the kind of gamble. So it is really early capitalism, tooth and claw being developed. The privateering missions are very much about. That's done across city merchants and also aristocrats and people who are at court. The Queen will put up money in some respects, usually for her favorites. So like with Raleigh, but again, she's very interesting because at times she'll say, literally, darling, yes, of course, I'll fund you for your little trip to Virginia. Then she goes, oh, I've heard it's very dangerous out there, I'm not funding the next one. And so there's that game that's played around court and that is very different. But going on alongside the joint stock companies and you know, the money, these are startup companies. We think of them really about like contemporary investments, you know that probably the loss rate is going to be around 10% of ships and of crew. So it's scary and you know you start to then realize it. Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice starts with the announcement, you know, that Antonio, the main merchant of Venice, has lost all his ships, he's lost all his money, he's just been wiped out. That is a story that, for the Tudors, would have been very, very prescient, really near the bone. Takes a lot of money to build these ships, to crew them, put them together, outfit them. The returns can be spectacular. And we do know that by the end of the period, there are. Sometimes they come back with hundreds of percent return on profit, and then on other occasions, they're just wiped out. So it's a scary business, but it can bring in a lot of money. But it can also wipe you out.
- [31:30]
Kev Lottchen
I mean, to go back to something you said earlier, you said, travel in this pier is rubbish. And then you kind of went on saying, like, don't come by any teeth, any hair. You know, you're probably missing a limb. I added that one. But what motivates people to go on these trips in the first place? Because it sounds like it is hell on high water in a very literal sense.
- [31:51]
Walmart Representative
I mean, again, there's a distinction there, isn't there, between literally what we call press gang people? So you'd have people who are literally thrown into that situation. You might also say, is it worth it? You might enrich yourself, so is it worth the risk? And then that's a distinction between the kind of aristocrats, the merchants, the pilots, often who are highly trained people who, again, are taking that on. But they are. They are a little bit more insulated from it. So, for instance, Raleigh, Raleigh only goes to guyana in the 1590s. So we talk about his relationship to Virginia, but he's sending everybody out there. He's not stupid enough to go out there. So there is that absolute distinction. And it's represented on board in terms of where you sleep, you know, what can you take with you? Those are kind of practical questions which are really distinct. There's an absolute distinction. It's a sort of upstairs, downstairs situation. Those hierarchies are still reproduced. So when Raleigh's going out there, he's massively insulated. But when unknown cabin boys are out there, that's a wholly different game. And you are going out there, you're paid, you know, is a job, and that's a risk. My own dad, he ran away from school when he was 15, in the 1930s, 40s, to work on trawlers out of Hull in the North Atlantic. So again, I think it's a similar feeling. How do you end up here? The stories will be so different and so circumstantial, but, yeah, it's more dangerous than we can ever imagine. They often don't really know where they're going and also what you're going to face. Not only storms, not only terrible weather, not only getting completely lost, but not only indigenous communities who might hate you, but then also the Spanish and the Portuguese, who might be even worse if you land up dealing with them. But you can get a sort of sense of the distinction, I think, between the everyday members of those crews. And of course, we don't have much to go on. We don't have their diaries, we don't have their accounts. We might have a crew list, but the representations that we have are mainly from the elite. They're the aristocrats. Even the merchants don't often give us an account of what's happening on board. So we're left with the Raleighs and the Frobishers and the Gilberts and the Hawkins and of course, what do they do? Well, they always give us a version of what they want. They never want to say, this is hell on earth and it's absolutely terrible. They want to say, it's amazing and we discovered this and we claimed it for our glorious king and the local inhabitants loved us.
- [34:18]
Kev Lottchen
And that is what Raleigh did. You said with El Dorado, it's a complete disaster. He comes back, but look at my triumph. Isn't it wonderful? How are these voyages received at home? Well, let's say Raleigh has come back and he's talking about El Dorado. He's a court favorite. So presumably court cares. Does the country care?
- [34:34]
Walmart Representative
I think that is a really interesting question and I think one of the answers is, no, I don't think it does. Or what's important here is to make the distinction between the country and maybe the city and the court. And this is very much about, really, London. Do people in Yorkshire know about this? Very little. I think that this is very much about hitting the city. The money is coming back in, the goods are coming back in, mainly all. I mean, 95% of it coming back in through London. So it's then about the way in which the printing press is very much being used by these travelers, by these explorers, to big themselves up. And it really is that. I mean, there's no doubt those people, when they write their travel narratives, are trying to disseminate and spin a certain version of what they've done. There are spectacular moments where it does have A massive impact, I think, but still not really much beyond London. So in 1592, they capture a big Portuguese carrot called the Madre de Dios and it's got a massive, massive cargo that basically is almost the equivalent of the country's gdp. I mean, it's amazing. And there are accounts of how it just floods the market. So the spices, the wood that's involved, the silver, and it just. It completely transforms London. I can't even think of any contemporary equivalent, really, but that's pretty much exclusively London and a bit of Bristol. For most people. This is still a predominantly agrarian society which is driven by agriculture.
- [36:01]
Kev Lottchen
I feel like in the modern day, there's this kind of sense of particular. Drake and Raleigh. Raleigh contribute more to the national identity than perhaps they ever did at the time when they were alive. Would that be fair to say?
- [36:13]
Walmart Representative
Absolutely. And I think to make it even more complex, I don't think there is a sense of national identity. You know, it's a real problem here because we talk about England. Well, the Tudors, what are they? Well, they're Welsh, to start with. So England and Wales. What about Scotland? Not so much, no, because it's. Well, then there's a sort of separate Stuart King that's running an Ireland. Well, we haven't even talked about Ireland, which is a massive, massive issue, because all these figures that we've talked about so far, most of them really were involved in the absolutely devastating colonization of Ireland in this period.
- [36:48]
Kev Lottchen
Well, let's talk about it now. What should we know about it?
- [36:51]
Walmart Representative
What we should know is really the way in which most of the early settlements and plantations in the Americas, particularly in Virginia, the sort of laboratory for doing that is Ireland. So Ireland, of course, for the Elizabethans and the Tudors, particularly the Elizabethans, is seen as a dangerous Catholic bridgehead from which the Spanish can launch an invasion. So Jim Shapiro, who wrote 1599, I thought wonderfully said, you know, Ireland in the late 16th century for the Tudors is like Vietnam for the Americans. It's this place where devastating things are going on. Tudor policy towards Ireland is very much about crushing it as a Catholic power. So Elizabeth increasingly ramps up that from the 1570s because of the fear that a Spanish invasion will come through Ireland. There's also an attempt to really pillage the place. I mean, we do talk about ethnic cleansing, really, for the first time within the policies of Elizabeth. Their description of the Irish is that they're wild, they're savage, their land has to be appropriated, plantations have to be placed there. It's slash, burn, pillage. The armies there are doing absolutely terrible, atrocious things. They really are atrocities. And people like Walter Raleigh has settlements. He has plantations in his own colonies, in his own settlements in southern Ireland. He's involved in massacring local Irish. So they're working out how to colonize to create plantations through Ireland. And it's from there that you learn how to do that in places like Virginia. So there's an absolute consonance between these figures and what they're doing, mainly militarily, but also in terms of colonization in Ireland, which then leads into what happens in the Americas. No question about it whatsoever.
- [38:46]
Kev Lottchen
That is horrific. Thank you for introducing us to that aspect of the period. I would like to move from digressions close to home to maybe digressions further afield. We've talked a little bit about slavery as being part of this world. I'm just curious. You said that the Tudors wanted to be better at it, but they just weren't good enough, essentially compared to Spain and Portugal. So I'm interested first in what held them back, and secondly, whether that was something that was mandated from the court or whether that was more opportunism on the part of the Drakes of the world.
- [39:21]
Walmart Representative
I think the issue of slavery is depressingly opportunistic. I think there's an understanding that the Spanish have established it's the beginning of the Transatlantic slave trade. So they've established those terms, really. It's been going on since the 15 teens, 1520s, so shipping out slaves from West Africa to work in the colonies in the Americas, in the Caribbean, in the silver mines. So that's really ongoing. By the time the English in the 1560s are playing hit and run with the Spanish in West Africa. So people like Hawkins, there is, sadly, a notion that these indigenous communities in the Americas, the theology of the Spanish has already established that these people do not know the word of God. So there's an argument that either they can be enslaved because they're not part of that Christian world, or they should be taught Christianity and in a missionary sort of discourse. And those two things work horribly queasily, hand in hand. So English Protestantism is pretty strategic about jumping into that world. Hawkins, we know, is taking slaves from West Africa over to the Caribbean. But then you're trying to break into a monopolized space of the Spanish slave trade. So that's really why it doesn't work. But we don't have accounts of either the Crown saying, yes, let's break into the slave trade. Nor do we have them saying, this is absolutely despicable. We shouldn't be doing it. So it seems to me that we have to tell a delicate story, that there is no doubt, if Hawkins could have, it seemed to me, he would have expanded that trade. We certainly know that, obviously by the later 17th century. But this is jumping forward a long way. The sort of centrality the English to that slave trade becomes very, very significant. So for the Tudors, it's not really in play. But that's simply because they've been cut out of the trade pretty much in North America, and particularly Central America, with extractive industries like mining, which are driving the slave trade. But of course, we know by the 18th century they very much are.
- [41:34]
Kev Lottchen
Yes, there's quite a shift. And another shift that is probably worth talking about is the picture you've painted is that the Tudors are very much in this era. You know, they're fighting for their place in the world at sea. Is there anything in this period that starts to push what will become Britain eventually to its more dominant standing at sea, or does that all happen later?
- [42:01]
Walmart Representative
It's, interestingly, a very immediately post Tudor moment. And I do think it's interesting because there is the development of a sense of a national navy, which is important, and that's very much been a reaction to what's gone on in relations to particularly Spain. So it's not somehow that we are innately a seafaring nation, although, you know, there is a sense in which England, Wales and Scotland, those polities, create an island, so there is the emergence of a navy, and other societies know that that's quite significant. The Moroccan dynasty is keen to ally with England against Spain around 1600, saying, we have lots of gold, you have a great navy, we both hate the Spanish, let's fight together. I mean, that is absolutely what's going on in a very formal alliance between England and Morocco. But by 1603, when Elizabeth dies, there is a realization that there's been all this trade, east and west, and this is really in the record. So it's quite clear, because when we talk about relationships with Europe, it's now become so fraught. James I, who is James VI of Scotland, comes to the throne in 1603, and he says, we've got to get back into Europe economically. This is killing us. And they sign the Treaty of London with the Spanish in 1604. And that, it seems to me, is an absolutely pivotal moment, because what that does is say we have now quite a significant navy, we have quite established trading Relations and early settlements and colonies in the new world of the Americas. We're now back in Europe. Let's go. The East India Company is formed in 1600. The Virginia Company is formed just a few years later, which James again signs off on. So you've now got these two great big joint stock companies in the Americas and moving towards India. The East India company really, by 1620, that I think, has put everything in place for what we then come to think of subsequently as the development of an empire. But again, we need to remember that all that language, it's not even there in the 18th century. Yes. The trade is. So the preeminence of the East India Company. Absolutely. In the 18th century, the development of slavery throughout the Atlantic and colonies and settlements in the Americas. Absolutely. But it's really only a 19th century moment. That rhetoric, what we would call, you know, the discourse of empire, really becomes so powerful. Britain is only again, a political idea that James the First develops because he's Scottish and he goes, I'm now King of England, so we can't keep saying England, Scotland. We've got to have this new idea. It's all there in the political correspondence. And James, one of his first statements to Parliament is, he says, I've got this great new idea which is called Britain. In all of Shakespeare's works before 1603, he talks about England. Everything after that, he talks about Britain. So that's when you start to get the idea of a concept of Britain. And what follows on from that is the idea of Britain and its empire. A British Empire.
- [45:12]
Kev Lottchen
Empire that's taken us very neatly to the end of this period, perhaps as a way of rounding off our conversations. I wonder if I could ask you, are there any misconceptions that still exist either about tulip explorers themselves or the period that you think we should try and dispel?
- [45:29]
Walmart Representative
I think there are two big ones. The one is this idea that there is a story of exploration and discovery. I don't think there is. I think that all of these figures that we've talked about, although they use the language and the rest rhetoric of exploration and discovery, they know that they're not going out there to discover. Drake is not saying, I would like to circumnavigate the globe because I think it would be a marvelous thing to do and we will discover new places. Absolutely not. He's like, we need to attack the Spanish. So I'm going westwards first and then I'll see how far I get. So I think we have to really rethink that whole concept. I think we also have to dispel the idea that Tudor England was a big player in this period. It wasn't. It was a small. You look at the maps, it's a small, insignificant dot in the top Western left hand corner. The big power players are Spain, Portugal, China, the Ottoman Empire. It's everything to the east. And they're desperately trying to say, look, hello, it's me queer here. And they are really small players in this world. So we're looking at through the wrong end of the telescope and of course we're post that moment of British imperial power. So we like to look back and say, oh, this is where it all started. That is not how it looked in 1570 or 1580 or even 1590. I think the final thing is also the alliances and the connections that are going on in this period. We need to remember that the most powerful alliances that the English had, the Tudor English had, was with Islamic powers in Morocco, in North Africa, in Istanbul, with the Ottoman Empire, formal political, commercial trading alliances, and with the Safavid Persian Empire in modern day Iran. That's what was driving so much of the trade and the what we would call the kind of expansion and the connection with wider cultures. So I think those misconceptions about the power of England, about the way in which it was somehow this kind of plucky, powerful Protestant nation sort of forging its own way. Not at all. I think we have to really rewrite that story and we're going to rewrite it in the basis that I think now we also have a multicultural sense of England. That story about Tudor England as exclusively white, Christian, insular. It's not the story that the records tell us and the archives tell, not even in London, but in the archives in Bristol. We're seeing more Muslim figures in London, and of course we are, because of that trade and that exchange. It's a multicultural hub. It's a nonsense to imagine anything else. And that is as much a story that we need to tell about 1580 as it is about 2024. And that's the way in which we should probably start to unpick the story about Tudor exploration and discovery to tell just a much richer story. It's much more interesting than a bunch of ginger bearded men going to the Americas. It's far more interesting than that.
- [48:27]
Gerry Broughton
That was Gerry Broughton, professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London. I spoke to gerry for our 1500th episode to take a whistle stop tour around the world in 1500 AD. And you can find a link to that episode in the description of this one. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.