Empire (10th of 90) -- El Dorado and the Real Treasures

There is an illusion that the empire was created by adventurers who sailed in search of freedom and profits. There is much to say for this view. However, just as 21st century investors are wary of sales brochures, so late 16th century Elizabethans were properly cautious. The people of those widely separated centuries had one thing in common: they wanted to believe the brochure. Often the reports that returned from new lands were accurate, but they were also embellisheds. "This Sceptred Isle: Empire" is a narrative history of the British Empire from Ireland in the 12th century to the independence of India in the 20th, told in 90 programmes written by historian Christopher Lee and narrated by actor Juliet Stevenson. (You will be able to listen again online to up to five most recent episodes of "Empire".)

Investors were reading of lands they could only imagine. There were no inspection flights. So when, for example, Ralph Lane was sent to draw the New World, his was one of the few impressions those in London would use to make up their financial minds about financing voyages.

Ralph Lane wrote of "…the goodliest oil under the cope of heaven so abounding with sweet trees that bring sundry and rich and pleasant gums, grapes of such greatness, yet wild, as France, Spain nor Italy have no greater, so many sorts of Apothecary drugs, such several kinds of flax and one kind of silk, the same gathered of grass as common there as grass is here… If Virginia had but horses in some reasonable proportion I dare assure myself being inhabited with English no realm in Christendom were comparable to it…"

Even allowing for natural caution and no mention of gold, we can see why the forerunner of the classic time-share brochure attracted business. Some of what Lane said was true. It was what he left out that was to lead to disappointment. Here also is a reminder that just because a document is old and has survived, it does not mean it is an accurate report. Yet Virginia continued to attract and many of its settlers did find a new Eden. Some of them, the slaves especially, did not.