"This engrossing history of adventure and innovation, disclosing the true motive for America’s founding, will appeal to all readers.”―Library Journal, Starred Review
"Butman and Targett argue persuasively that the myth of America's founding narrative, centered on the Pilgrims’ quest for religious freedom, ignores the reality of England’s relationship to the New World in the 16th century...A lively and illuminating revisionist history.”―Kirkus
"Butman and Targett are fluent storytellers with an eye for detail”―Publishers Weekly
"Butman and Targett, through extensive archival work and new analysis and interpretation, present a very different perspective on the creation of the successful New World colonies in this extraordinary account…An eye-opening and thoroughly enjoyable look at the roots of American ambition.”--Booklist
New World Inc—In A Nutshell
Three generations of English merchant adventurers—not the Pilgrims, as we have so long believed—were the earliest founders of America. Profit—not piety—was their primary motive.
Some seventy years before the Mayflower sailed, a small group of English merchants formed “The Mysterie, Company, and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places Unknown”, the world’s first joint stock company. Back then, in the mid-sixteenth century, England was a small and relatively insignificant kingdom on the periphery of Europe and it had begun to face a daunting array of social, commercial, and political problems. Struggling with a single export—woollen cloth—the merchants were forced to seek new markets and trading partners, especially as political discord followed the straitened circumstances in which so many English people found themselves.
At first, they headed East and dreamed of Cathay—China, with its silks and other luxuries. Eventually, they turned West, and so began a whole new chapter in world history. The work of reaching the New World required the very latest in navigational science as well as an extraordinary appetite for risk. As this absorbing history shows, innovation and risk-taking were at the heart of the settlement of America, as was the profit motive. Trade and business drove the founding of America, and determined what happened once English ships reached the New World.
