In the early sixteenth century, a young English sugar trader spent a night at what is now the port of Agadir in Morocco, watching from the tenuous safety of the Portuguese fort as the local tribesmen attacked the "Moors." Having recently departed the familiar environs of London and the Essex marshes, this was to be the first of several encounters Roger Barlow was to have with unfamiliar worlds.
Barlow's family was linked to networks where the exchange of goods and ideas merged, and his contacts in Seville brought him into contact with the navigator, Sebastian Cabot. Merchants and Explorers follows Barlow and Cabot across the Atlantic to South America and back to Spain and Reformation England. Heather Dalton uses their lives as an effective narrative thread to explore the entangled Atlantic world during the first half of the sixteenth century. In doing so, she makes a critical contribution to the fields of both Atlantic and global history.
Although it is generally accepted that the English were not significantly attracted to the Americas until the second half of the sixteenth century, Dalton demonstrates that Barlow, Cabot, and their cohorts had a knowledge of the world and its opportunities that was extraordinary for this period. She reveals how shared knowledge as well as the accumulation of capital in international trading networks prior to 1560 influenced emerging ideas of trade, "discovery," settlement, and race in Britain. In doing so, Dalton not only provides a substantial new body of facts about trade and exploration, she explores the changing character of English commerce and society in the first half of the sixteenth century.
Industry Reviews
Dalton does a masterful job demonstrating the entangled nature of the Atlantic world during the sixteenth century, placing English merchants at the center of Spain's efforts to establish viable trade networks with the New World ... This book issure to inspire additional discussion and study of the entangled nature of the early Atlantic world that defies the borders of empires and nation-states. * Lydia Towns, Terrae Incognitae *
[a] welcome and informative study ... Dalton says the 'aim' of her 'book is to lift Roger Barlow from obscurity'. She has done so admirably and all students of the early history of the Atlantic world will benefit from her labours. * David Harris Sacks, History *
Dalton's scholarship is diverse and rich in archival work. Merchants and Explorers is like a chest of treasures. * Marie Roche,The Sixteenth Century Journal *
Merchants and Explorers is an enormously valuable contribution to our understanding of the Age of Discovery ... by its precise attention to detail and its rigorous mooring in the archives of sixteenth-century England and Spain, Merchants and Explorers is able to offer readers a genuinely original and historically grounded understanding of the emergent European processes of discovery, trade, and empire. * Robert J. Mayhew, Journal of Historical Geography *
This readable book will interest students of Tudor history and general readers ... Recommended. * G. K. Brunelle, CHOICE *
This extensive investigation of Barlow's life is a significant contribution to the history of early English exploration. It will be of interest to scholars of early English expansion and trade, as well as the wider multi-imperial Atlantic world. * Adrian Finucane, Economic History Review *
Merchants and Explorers will help students and specialists of early-modern imperial history to understand the settlement and colonization during the golden age of British expansion into North America by showing that opportunism and risk were central to early explorations. More generally, this book will be of great interest to historians working on the early modern Atlantic as it offers a fundamental contribution to understanding the connected history that linked Iberian and English expansionism into the Atlantic. Furthermore, it also sheds some light on how national approaches to Atlantic history were constructed by focusing on some characters while forgetting others because of reasons that have more to do with the politics of the day than with the real functioning of the networks which shaped the Atlantic. * Jose Miguel Escribano-Paez, European Review of History *
This rich and stimulating book deserves a wide readership. Its insights will be of interest to scholars in a range of fields, and it is much more than the sum of its parts. As a study of connection and connectedness, it needs to be read and enjoyed in its entirety. * Michael Bennett, Parergon *
[a] welcome and informative study ... Dalton says the 'aim' of her 'book is to lift Roger Barlow from obscurity'. She has done so admirably and all students of the early history of the Atlantic world will benefit from her labours. * David Harris Sacks, History *
