In this stunningly original reinterpretation of the New World, Grandin reveals how the United States …
The establishment of North American settlements added a new, confusing dimension to England’s comparisons with Spain. The references pushed against themselves: The English were and weren’t the Spanish. The Irish were and weren’t Native Americans. Some of the most vicious Irish haters imagined the English flying across the Atlantic on a humanitarian mission saving noble innocent Indians from the Spanish. “The people of America crye out to us,” wrote Richard Hakluyt, an English historian and ceaseless promoter of colonialism, “to come and helpe them.” There was “no doubt” that were the queen to take the “firme of America,” all the “natural people there with all humanitie, curtesie, and freedoms” will place themselves under her authority and “revolte cleane from the Spaniarde.”