Big Chief Elizabeth: How England's Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Big Chief Elizabeth: How England's Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World Book

The follow up to his bestselling Nathaniel's Nutmeg, Giles Milton's Big Chief Elizabeth is a sprawling, ambitious tale of how the aristocrats and privateers of Elizabethan England reached and colonised the "wild and barbarous shores" of the New World. Milton's story ranges from John Cabot's voyage to America in 1497, to the painful but ultimately successful foundation of the English colony at Jamestown by 1611. However, the main focus of the book is Sir Walter Ralegh's elaborate and tortuous attempts to establish an English settlement in Roanoke, in present-day Carolina, following the first English voyage there in 1584. Scouring contemporary travel accounts of the period, Milton creates a colourful and entertaining account of the greed, confusion and misunderstanding that characterised English relations with the native Americans, and the often violent and tragic conflict that often ensued. Milton has a good eye for a surreal or comical story, such as the colony's first encounter with Big Chief--or Weroanza Wingina, whose exotic title "quickly captured the imagination of the English colonists, and they began referring to their own queen as Weroanza Elizabeth". The Elizabethan cast is also dazzling--the flamboyant and ambitious Walter Ralegh, who provided the money behind the Roanoke ventures, the "sober" ascetic scholar Thomas Hariot, who provided the brains, and hardened adventurers such as Arthur Barlowe and Ralph Lane, who provided the muscle. The myths and stories also come thick and fast, from John Smith and Pocahontas, to the importation of the fashion of "drinking tobacco", but the problem with Big Chief Elizabeth is that it lacks a central driving story. In the end it reads like an entertaining, but rather laboured jog through early Anglo-American history, something that has been done with greater skill and originality by writers such as Charles Nicholl in his fascinating book The Creature in the Map. Those who read Nathaniel's Nutmeg will probably enjoy Big Chief Elizabeth, but with some reservations. --Jerry BrottonRead More

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  • Foyles

    In April 1586, Queen Elizabeth I acquired a new and exotic title. A tribe of North American Indians had made her their weroanza - 'big chief'.The news was received with great joy, both by the Queen and her favourite, Sir Walter Ralegh. His first American expedition had brought back a captive, Manteo, whose tattooed face had enthralled Elizabethan London. Now Manteo was returned to his homeland as Lord and Governor. Ralegh's gamble would result in the first English settlement in the New World, but it would also lead to a riddle whose solution lay hidden in the forests of Virginia.A tale of heroism and mystery, BIG CHIEF ELIZABETH is illuminated by first-hand accounts to reveal a remarkable and long-forgotten story.

  • Blackwell

    Bestselling author of NATHANIEL'S NUTMEG, Giles Milton takes us on another fascinating and extraordinary historical adventure. In April 1586, Queen Elizabeth I acquired a new and exotic title. A tribe of North American Indians had made her their...

  • 0340748826
  • 9780340748824
  • Giles Milton
  • 3 May 2001
  • Sceptre
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 432
  • New Ed
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