Last week a guest speaker came to UW to discuss the beginnings of the English empire. I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting. Maybe something along the lines of a reiteration of the terrible motives and affects of attempting colonization in foreign lands.
Instead the auditorium was presented with a narrative beginning in the 16th century discussing the attempts made to integrate peaceably with native peoples for the purpose of colonization.
Guest speaker Dr. Alan Gallay was invited to speak at UW as the Cone speaker for this year. Cone lectures happen each year and are made possible by the donation of Susan B. Cone, a history graduate of UW in 1931. Hoping to continue discussions about the humanities in an increasingly technological world she gifted the lecture series to the university.
The topic of Gallay’s lecture began with a discussion of the new world and the race among European countries to be the ones to claim the new territory. Reviewing the treatment of natives in Spanish colonies Gallay emphasized this idea that England wanted to be the opposite of that.
Most of Gallay’s lecture centered around Sir Walter Ralegh and his attempts in the 16th century to establish the first english colonies in the Americas. Ralegh was a strong believer in creating an empire for Queen Elizabeth and thought it would lead to the second coming.
“Colonization was the single largest undertaking in English history in the 16th century,” said Gallay. “They didn’t just fall into it, it was very deliberate.” The motives behind this included searching for resources and religious beliefs.
“Today we focus on the evil of empires but in the beginning it was thought of as a possible Utopia,” said Gallay. Ralegh believed in Hermeticism, which emphasized creationism and piety. In line with these beliefs he hoped to work with natives in creating colonies equating their abundance and way of life with piety.
“He said that the English were not God’s chosen people, that the natives were,” said Gallay.
During the failed endeavors to start an English colony Ralegh enlisted the help of an artist to create an ethnography of the native people they encountered.
“This ethnography was the most important thing to the native american history until the invention of the camera,” said Gallay during the lecture. Moving from the discussion of the colonies Gallay brought up the role of race in the colonies as well.
“Racism wasn’t an ideology yet in the 16th century,” he stated during the lecture. Some audience members brought this point up again during the question portion of the lecture, citing enslavement of native peoples in the colonies.
“Enslavement wasn’t thought of in racialized terms,” said Gallay. “People were enslaved not because of their skin color. If that were the case we wouldn’t have seen things like European slaves and indentured servants in the colonies.”
Some of the information Gallay presented to the audience was part of the narrative that many of us recognize as general history of the colonies in America. Other aspects like the desire to truly know and work with the natives during early colonization that Gallay presented were new to the narrative of colonization.
Not everything we discover about history is going to make sense. It didn’t even occur to me before attending this lecture that there was any other mindset beyond one that was subversive towards natives when European countries began to colonize. Discovering and sharing new narratives in history gives us an opportunity to apply them and look at how they influence events in the past and even today.
Many students seemed disgruntled by Gallay’s statements about the lack of racially motivated slavery in the 16th century. To me it seemed a little incredulous but possible that something we’ve come to analyze and expect in historical timelines was not developed or applied in the same way 500 years ago.
I believe that it is imperative to take every opportunity to educate ourselves about what has happened and what is happening in the world around us. Stepping out of your comfort zone can lead to new discoveries and greater understanding about a variety of things. I encourage people to take every opportunity to learn as much as you can.
