?Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire? Review: The Enlightened Adventurer Sir Walter Ralegh was a swashbuckling pirate, poet, colonizer and courtier who founded a doomed settlement on the North Carolina coast and named a swath of territory ?Virginia? in honor of his royal patron. By Fergus Bordewich, 11/8/19, Wall St. Journal
If Americans know of Sir Walter Ralegh today, it is as the founder of the ?Lost Colony? of Roanoke, which disappeared without a trace a few years after it was established on the North Carolina coast. Some, perhaps, associate him with his quixotic quest for the golden city of ?El Dorado? in the South American jungle. But such wispy associations fail to do justice to the colonial visionary, swashbuckling pirate, poet, courtier and alleged traitor whom Alan Gallay has vividly conjured in ?Walter Ralegh : Architect of Empire,? a richly researched and engagingly written biography.
Gallant and sophisticated as he was, Ralegh?Mr. Gallay, a professor of history at Texas Christian University, prefers the spelling that Sir Walter used in later life, instead of ?Raleigh??had been born a commoner into a family of long-faded prestige. He owed much of his success to the favor of Queen Elizabeth, with whom he maintained a long though probably not sexual relationship. She granted him a cornucopia of titles, estates and commercial monopolies, as well as the sole patent to plant settlers in America, where he bestowed the name ?Virginia? on part of the mid-Atlantic coast in honor of his royal patron, the ?Virgin Queen.? Working on the crown?s behalf, he led privateering expeditions against the Spanish. Most significantly, in Mr. Gallay?s judgment, he played a pre-eminent role in the English colonization of Ireland, where he ?set in motion the building of an English Empire.?
WALTER RALEGH: ARCHITECT OF EMPIRE By Alan Gallay Basic, 560 pages, $40
Today we tend to see the empire through the lens of the late 19th century, when great swaths of the world were ruled from London and British armies dominated distant lands. In the 1580s, all that lay far in the future. Although England had nominally ruled Ireland for some 400 years, the royal writ remained shaky across much of the often rebellious island.
Ralegh, Mr. Gallay says, saw colonization not just as a commercial enterprise but also, surprisingly, as a spiritual one that would create ?a better world for both the colonizer and the colonized.? Of course, he also stood to become rich by extending the crown?s control in Ireland. Elizabeth assigned him some 150,000 acres, mainly in County Cork, where he distributed parcels to his retainers and leased allotment to settlers as part of what was called the ?Munster Plantation?: Vast tracts of land confiscated from actual and alleged rebels against the crown were to be brought under English law, developed commercially and peopled with English Protestants, who would demonstrate ?civilized? values to the ?wild? Irish. It was assumed that the English would grow more wealthy and the Irish more English. Over time, Mr. Gallay notes, the anglicization of Ireland would serve as a template for the colonization of North America, where, he says, the English attempted ?to implement the same policies.?
Mr. Gallay considers Ralegh?s assimilationist approach to empire enlightened for its time, in contrast to the Spanish practice of violent conquest and enslavement. In Ireland, Ralegh maintained friendly relations with the local Catholics, and in the Americas he urged fair treatment for the native peoples. The Indians are ?as free by nature as any Christian,? Ralegh wrote in connection with his proposed colonization of Guiana during his hunt for El Dorado. He declared that ?no Christians may lawfully invade with hostility any heathenish people . . . to kill, spoile, & conquer them? and stipulated that any Englishman who tried to rape a native woman would be punished by death.
Ralegh, Mr. Gallay writes, ?had no interest in changing America?s Native peoples.? His unusual tolerance for religious and cultural diversity lay in his devotion to the philosophy of Hermeticism, to which Mr. Gallay devotes considerable attention. Hermeticism, which enjoyed a vogue among intellectuals of the time, emphasized the second coming of Christ and common ties among all Christians. But it also held that all matter was infused by the divine and honored the sacredness in all ?holy things,? including those of non-Christians. According to Mr. Gallay, ?Hermeticists believed that in America they had the opportunity to discover secrets of the universe?of God?s Creation?that could lead humanity to greater physical and spiritual well-being.?
As one might expect, English colonization was rather less utopian in practice. In the Americas, friendship with the natives lasted as long as it served English interests. And in Ireland colonial rule was often harsh, with Irish tenants pushed off their land and the use of the Irish language discouraged. While Mr. Gallay strives commendably to see the colonial experiment in America from the Indian point of view, he tells us frustratingly little about how the Irish felt about their coerced assimilation. This lacuna is all the more puzzling in a book that reaches so effectively beyond simple biography in its effort to plumb the character of an age.
Compared with Ireland, Roanoke was a sideshow. Soon after receiving his royal patent, Ralegh sent out an expedition, and in 1585 a settlement was established north of Cape Hatteras. The native tribes were at first friendly, and a second contingent of settlers was sent out, but relations with the Indians soon deteriorated. Relief ships failed to arrive. Conflict arose, probably over food, and violence erupted. When at last a ship arrived from England in 1590, the colony was gone. Mr. Gallay speculates, as others have done, that the survivors managed to relocate north to somewhere near Chesapeake Bay, where they eventually died off or intermarried with Native Americans.
By the time the Jamestown colony was successfully established in Virginia in 1607, Ralegh would be a prisoner in the Tower of London. After Elizabeth?s death in 1603, his patronage mostly evaporated and his relations with the new king, James I, proved rocky. On the basis of what was almost certainly false evidence, enemies at court accused Ralegh of participating in a bizarre plot to kidnap the new monarch. ?Ralegh?s personality, his larger-than-life persona, and his Hermeticism and lack of orthodoxy all combined to make him the perfect candidate for sacrifice,? writes Mr. Gallay.
Charged with treason, Ralegh was imprisoned in the Tower, though his prestige ensured that he would enjoy various amenities and while jailed he wrote much excellent poetry. Somehow he managed to convince the king that, if he were paroled and allowed to mount another voyage to the Americas, he could find El Dorado and make James the wealthiest man on earth. In the event, the expedition was a fiasco. Knowing that he faced a grim fate, Ralegh honorably returned to England, where the treason charge was restored and he was condemned to death.
On Oct. 29, 1618, after years of delay, Ralegh went to the block. He was 66 years old. His luck had finally run out, though not his panache. On the scaffold he coolly asked to test the executioner?s ax to determine if it had a good edge. Smiling, he said: ?This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physitian for all Diseases.? The moment testifies to the ineffable grace in crisis of the man who Mr. Gallay terms ?England?s most famous knight,? a colossus who bestrode his age.
?Mr. Bordewich?s most recent book is ?The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government.?