"To Fear and to Love Us": Intercultural Violence in the English Atlantic

This article examines the interconnection of notions of fear and love during English exploration and colonization in the Atlantic world in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. English promotional literature argued that the English were uniquely qualified to establish a loving relationship with the native peoples they encountered. Increasing violence, however, presented a significant challenge to that image. By recasting intercultural violence as a natural component of a hierarchical yet intimate relationship, English accounts placed otherwise questionable actions into an acceptable framework that did not threaten their carefully constructed image as protectors of dependent Indians.