Heroes of Empire: The British Imperial Protagonist in America, 1596–1764 (review)

Inevitably, nations mask acts of imperial exploitation and appropriation under benevolent justifications. National myths are often culturally generated to recast acts of colonial violence as both sacred and secular crusades to save a distant people—and not to exploit them. In Heroes of Empire: The British Imperial Protagonist in America, 1596–1764, Richard Frohock carefully analyzes how a variety of British writers used imperial discourses to perform such “ideological work” by “refiguring crass acts of appropriation as acts of mercy, justice, lenity, or charity” (14). From the late sixteenth century to the mid-eighteenth century, British colonization in the Americas was repeatedly justified under a shifting array of heroic postures and poses in a stream of travel narratives, poems, plays, and pageants. As Frohock deftly argues, the British imperial hero proved to be particularly adaptable and useful in justifying colonial ventures in the Americas. Whether as a chivalric conqueror, intrepid scientist, or dedicated planter, British colonial protagonists were depicted conducting “heroic work” as they opened up the Americas for exploitation (20).

In his introduction, Frohock states that Heroes of Empire analyzes the literary “evolution of the British imperial hero from Sir Walter Ralegh’s Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana (1596) to James Grainger’s The Sugar Cane (1764).” In tracing this evolution, he identifies several significant variations of the imperial hero—the conqueror, the scientist, the merchant, and the planter, “all of whom authorize appropriation and define heroic imperialist work in competing ways” (20). These different personifications of the “British colonial protagonist” illustrate the ways various writers adapted their texts to fit their contexts and audiences. For example, before identifying early variations, Frohock states that the “British conqueror is not a static figure but rather one that evolves dynamically and is attached to a broad array of rationales for American appropriation” (25). In tracing the textual evolution and reinvention, he analyzes how “the discourse of conquest” was adapted “to suit shifting historical circumstances and ideological needs” (25). Such analysis is a particularly interesting and relevant contribution to discussions of early English colonial studies.

After the helpful introduction, Heroes of Empire is composed of five chapters and an epilogue, each treating a different type of colonial protagonist and offering more specific discussions the type’s variations. In his first chapter Frohock analyzes “the British Conqueror in America,” which begins with Ralegh’s “chilvaric mode” but then moves on to “the Puritan idea of a holy warrior” and finally to John Dennis’s “republican champion” in Liberty Asserted (1704) (25). According to Frohock, all depictions of “conquering colonial protagonists” reveal “the submersion of profit motive behind increasingly inflated characterizations of the conqueror’s generosity and benevolent intent” (25). Much of this “discourse of conquest” is offered as a counterpoint to the Spanish Black Legend of slaughter and savagery. Particularly during the Cromwell years when the Western Design was promoted, writers such as John Phillips called for “a holy English military campaign . . . to avenge Spanish cruelties against Native Americans”: the English would be “God’s ‘Great Instrument, to revenge the blood of that innocent People’” (34). In his depiction of Sir Frances Drake, Sir William Davenant went so far as to rewrite history by denying the profit motive altogether. While attacking a Spanish mule train for plunder, Davenant’s Drake declares that he is primarily interested in honor and English glory. Such masking of colonial exploitation was especially obvious in Dennis’s Liberty Asserted, which portrays “the British colonial protagonist as an embodiment of heroic virtue” (45). While celebrating “English devotion to liberty, Dennis’s play completely eclipses imperialist ambition behind the fictions of benevolent action and intent” (45).

In his chapter on Aphra Behn, Frohock discusses not only her wellknown Oroonoko (1688) but also her less well known Pindaric ode To the Most Illustrious Prince Christopher Duke of Albermarle on his Voyage to his Government in Jamaica (1687) and her play The Widdow...