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Big Chief Elizabeth
How England's Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World
Giles Milton
History
Hodder & Stoughton
0-340-748818 (hc) $29.95
0-340-748826 (tp) $14.99
(1) Giles Milton: History is the perfect journalist's fix.
Novelists are baffling creatures, are they not?
There they sit, amid the incredible storehouse of ready-made plots and characters we call History, and what do they do?
Twist themselves into knots making up new ones! Go figure.
And go figure how rarely journalists like Giles Milton come along, with a book like Big Chief Elizabeth, to do storyteller's justice to history's possibilities.
After all, history is the perfect journalist's fix: It offers the easiest path to a great story, it offers facts and quotes far better than anything you find in current events, and there is no chance any of the principals will call one's editor to complain.
But rare it is nonetheless.
Which is why, until the publication of Milton's latest work, the average person may not have known what a fascinating parcel of rogues and incompetents backed Britain into her historic role on this continent.
And why, to this day, people like the present writer tend to think of the arrival on a virgin Virginia shore as a tale of paradise found. And why we unconsciously tend to think of periods like the late Elizabethan as a sort of 20th century with bad lighting.
And why the picture in our mind's eye of historic figures like Sir Walter Raleigh, and John Smith, and even Pocahontas is of personalities that would be familiar and presentable in the modern world, or in a Disney cartoon, and not as the very unfamiliar, almost alien creatures they were in fact.
Like Milton's last outing, Nathaniel's Nutmeg, Big Chief Elizabeth is written as an adventure story, full of atmosphere, mysteries, narrow escapes, appalling villains, and exotic destinations. The beginning, under the chapter heading, Savages among the Icebergs, gives a perfect idea of what is in store.
"The half-timbered mansion disappeared long ago, and the paved thoroughfare lies buried beneath the dust of centuries. The Great Fire tore the heart out of this corner of Elizabethan London, devouring books, buildings and streets. One of the few things to survive is a small and insignificant-looking map - crinkled, faded, but still bearing the proud mark of its owner . . ."
It is full of colour - about an ill-fated early voyage in which the starving adventurers ate each other, for example.
And about Raleigh's sycophantic flirting with the great Queen, and about the "men of quality" in colonial expeditions who abused and exploited the lesser beings among them, native and European alike, rather than live off the beautiful land themselves as most modern readers would have tried to do.
It is, rightly, more focused on the personalities, politics and life of Elizabethan England than of North America - because that's where almost all the influences on the course of events originated.
Elizabeth I's and later James I's personal relationship with Sir Walter Raleigh played a far greater role in shaping events than acting governor Sir Thomas Dale's relationship with his colonists and Chief Powhatan.
And it is full of quotations from contemporary voices that do much to substitute a true Elizabethan atmosphere for our modern Disney one.
Dale, for example "used his tortured imagination to dream up ever more hideous ways of dispatching dishonest colonists. 'Some he appointed to be hanged, some burned, some broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some to be shot to death; all this extreme and cruel tortures he used and inflicted upon them to terrify the rest."So much for bucolic bliss.
Big Chief Elizabeth is not a great book, mind you. For all its fascinating research and vivid presentation of characters, it has a slightly superficial feel - although in fairness, it also has much less overt pandering to a parochial American audience than Nathaniel's Nutmeg. That book (also a terrific read) makes the U.S. acquisition of New York City the ultimate reason that the story of the spice trade is of modern interest.
Big Chief Elizabeth offers neither the great novel's insight into the human condition, nor great history's insight into the forces that shape our world. But is is a very good book, and great fun into the bargain.
The cause of History, as well as that of booksellers, would be well served if we had more such stories even half as well told.
— David Evans, The Edmonton Journal
(2) All gone to look for America
Why do Americans speak English (or a variation thereof)? Because of a pack of sixteenth-century Englishmen (and sometimes women) who thought it might be either fun or profitable - or both - to settle this new continent across the Atlantic. The idea had been around since Cabot's voyage in 1497, and it was a London bookseller named John Rastell who declared his intention of establishing a colony in America. (Even then booksellers were looking to expand their market). Sadly, Rastell's venture fell apart in Falmouth harbour in 1517.
Giles Milton, author of the critically acclaimed Nathaniel's Nutmeg, has turned his eye to English settlement in America. As his new book reveals, it was several decades before the English looked westward again with more than fish or plunder on their mind. The story is a remarkable one, with a cast of characters that includes Sir Walter Ralegh, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Richard Grenville, Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, Richard Hakluyt, the Earl of Essex, Sir Humfrey Gilbert, and a couple of interesting monarchs in Elizabeth I and James I. If Hollywood isn't already casting the movie, they're dopier than I thought.
Sir Humfrey Gilbert was a man who sought adventure, although his queen had observed him to be "of not good hap". Good hap or ill, he did own a map, and he had the reliable testimony of one Davy Ingrams. Ingrams was an English sailor who, after a misadventure with the Spanish, had walked from the Gulf of Mexico to Nova Scotia (take that, Bill Bryson), so was presumably a credible source of information about the geography and human residents of America. Gilbert was determined to go, and he got the idea of selling estates in America to investors. In eight months he succeeded in selling 8,500,000 acres. His half-brother, Walter Ralegh - who was doing well at court - became both an investor and a participant.
Gilbert has thought of just about everything that might be needed on the voyage, including morris dancers to entertain the company, but he hadn't decided on a route. Fortunately one of his five ships came upon two French vessels and performed a bit of piracy, which at least provided a good stock of wine.
The story of the settlement of Virginia (named for the unsullied monarch) is one of acts of alternating courage and stupidity coupled with intermittent moments of outright piracy. The success of the venture was always going to hinge on the settlers' ability to coexist with the natives of the region, and it was only Pocahontas's famed intervention to save the life of John Smith (and her subsequent marriage to John Rolfe, whatever that Peggy Lee song may say) that led to a lasting peace.
Repeated attempts at colonization inevitably led to colonists being left behind in the New World, either voluntarily or not. Searches for these missing persons continually proved unsuccessful, though there were enough reports from the Indians of fair-skinned people they had encountered to suggest that at least some of these hardy folk had survived. And indeed some survived for more than twenty years, in some cases apparently inter-marrying with the locals. And all the while Ralegh, languishing in the Tower of London for treason, concocted plans to return to America.
Big Chief Elizabeth is a ripping yarn, filled with passion, violence, international relations, and even a dash of romance. These were lively times, inhabited by larger-than-life people who wound up creating the most powerful nation on earth. They have a lot to answer for.
— Nicholas Pashley, University of Toronto Bookstore Review
(3) Moviegoers who were enraptured by Hollywood's recent spate of films featuring Elizabeth I will enjoy the latest absorbing history book from British writer Milton, whose 1999 triumph, Nathaniel's Nutmeg, received much acclaim.
Sir Humfrey Gilbert was an eccentric English explorer with his eye on America who convinced the queen to grant him leave to establish a colony there, but he was never successful. After his death, Sir Walter Raleigh, a court favorite, was charged with exploring the New World - an appointment fraught with failures and successes. Raleigh established the first British colony on Roanoke (two decades before the settlement in Jamestown), but by the time badly needed supplies arrived from England in 1591, all the colonists had unaccountably vanished. That event has inspired many theories, but Milton argues persuasively that they were killed by the avenging chief Powhatan, father of Pocahontas. Nevertheless, Raleigh played a huge role in Britain's long-standing claim to America, not only by bringing settlers to lay claim to the new land but also by introducing tobacco to Elizabeth's court and turning "smoke into gold".
Although Milton's historical revelations are few and he has a penchant for dramatic prose ("the paved thoroughfare lies buried beneath the dust of centuries"), he offers another entertaining read. History Book Club selection.
Forecast: Nathaniel's Nutmeg was given a starred review by PW. The paperback edition recently appeared briefly on the Independent Bestseller list, and independents should be able to sell this one well, too, based on its fascinating tale closer to home and on Milton's growing reputation.
— Publishers Weekly
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