New World, Inc How England's Merchants Founded America and Launched the British Empire

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, ' one of the world's first joint-stock companies. 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 -- woolen 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 the merchants headed east, and dreamed of Cathay -- China, with its silks and exotic luxuries. Eventually, they turned west, and so began a 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. Trade and business drove English interest in establishing colonies, and determined what happened once their ships reached the New World.--Publisher's description.