Harry Kelsey. Sir John Hawkins: Queen Elizabeth's Slave Trader. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. ix + 402 pp. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-300-09663-7.
Reviewed by Robert McJimsey (Department of History, Colorado College)
Published on H-Albion (August, 2003)
The Pirate as Government Servant
The Pirate as Government Servant
In 1610 Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones staged a masque at the court of James I's son Prince Henry. Their production celebrated the deeds of past English monarchs. To characterize Elizabethan greatness Jonson's text chose the erection of the nation's sea borne defense of "wooden walls." Harry Kelsey's biography provides both an appreciation of Sir John Hawkins and an examination of Ben Jonson's claim. On both counts Kelsey finds the achievements of that age attenuated with substantial amounts of ambiguity.
Despite its subtitle Hawkins was considerably more than "Queen Elizabeth Slave Trader." In addition to inaugurating England's slave trade with an expedition in 1562, Hawkins' maritime activities embraced simple piracy upon merchant ships and treasure fleets, bullying his way into informal trading arrangements with Spain's colonial possessions, and organizing strategic operations against Spain before and after the threat of the Armada. Throughout these operations Hawkins displayed a boldness embracing cruelty, diplomacy mixed with chicanery, and a business acumen that brought together the English government, Canary Island merchants, and the occasional high seas liaison with fellow pirates. When things went wrong, as they emphatically did at San Juan Ulloa, Hawkins was adept at damage control, providing carefully screened testimony before the High Court of Admiralty and cashing in on his celebrity by publishing his own account of those proceedings. As would be expected, keeping this variety of interests in harmony proved impossible, and Hawkins often found himself bargaining with the English government to keep pirated booty from complaining Spanish ministers and doing the same turns to keep his own rulers from getting their piece of the action. These activities also figured into English military policy. During the battle against the Armada, the English combatants broke off to quarrel among themselves about the distribution of prizes from a Spanish ship. In the same way, raiding parties against Spain and its possessions combined efforts to reduce the Spanish threat to English domestic and European interests with plunder for the likes of Drake, Hawkins, and Ralegh. What the English state and society gained for these enterprises, in either strategic or financial terms, is unclear.
Viewed through the lens of Hawkins' activities the Elizabethan state appears as a ramshackle affair. When compared with the English navy of one hundred years later in which admirals commanded fleets, fought recognizable massed engagements, commanded the sea lanes in the Channel and Mediterranean, and forced its opponents to resort to the tactics of raiding English commerce, having to rely on the pirate clans of Cornwall and Devon bespoke the reality of a state financially strapped and administratively anemic. Hawkins' stint as Treasurer of the Navy made this point all too apparent. The combination of his practical skills of seamanship, his variety of business dealings, and the patronage of Lord Burghley gave him the opportunity to refit the navy in time to hold off the Armada. Burghley's support was needed because Hawkins faced a constant barrage of charges about his effectiveness and his profiteering. Burghley's investigations cleared him of the former charge. As to the second it was difficult to determine just where a government servant crossed the line and fell into corruption. Everyone in government service was expected to skim from the public coffers. It is also unclear whether Burghley valued Hawkins for his bureaucratic skills, or whether the fact that his knowledge of Hawkins' previous treasonous dealings with the Spanish, in support of Mary Stewart, made Hawkins a serviceable pawn. The author is not clear on these points and it appears that both issues kept Hawkins in a post he consistently chafed against.
By contrast Kelsey's admirably even-handed treatment of Spain's colonial governors, diplomats, and generals depicts hard-working individuals making careful inquiries, filing well-researched reports and showing a healthy skepticism in their dealings with Hawkins. The author's use of Spanish archival materials as well as his citations of Spanish historians does a lot to redress the bias of national history that has clouded many previous treatments of Hawkins and his age. The author's concluding chapter gives the reader a tour through Hawkins' historiography and in the process underlines his own efforts to tell a story based closely on the archival record.
This is not to say that the author views Elizabethan government and policy in a condemnatory light. More often than not his judgments of people and their deeds find them to be characteristic of the times in which the lived. On the whole he prefers to report on the archival record. This approach runs into a dilemma that all biographers face. Because a person worthy of a biography lives a life of varied and important activities, knowing about those activities--piracy, slave trading, bureaucracy, diplomacy, and the high politics of statecraft--can be a daunting task. In the present case Hawkins' role in government policy would benefit from more information on the process of decision-making, and particularly on the roles of the Queen and the Privy Council. For example, Elizabeth's decisions often go unexplained and could therefore be ascribed to motives ranging from the calculated to the quixotic. It is also true that governments continually tried to control the actions of navy men and continually they faced the dilemma either of tying them to "positive orders," or giving commanders broader powers of discretion so they could make on-the-spot decisions via a council of war. This sort of information would be helpful to the unprofessional reader.
The issue of readership also leads to some debatable editorial decisions. This book is well produced with excellent maps and portraits. The notes provide further explanations of points made in the text and offer comparisons among sources, a fine guide to the craft of history. Thus a general readership could be expected to find this book a worthy buy. These virtues are counterbalanced by the use of extensive quotations, sometimes lists, usually given in the original spelling. While this practice may give the appearance of authenticity, it is a drag chain on readability. Nor are these quotes particularly well introduced for the reader. More often than not the quoted passage is explicated after its presentation. Sometimes a passage is allowed to be its own explanation. Although extensively quoted material can have a useful illustrative function, the general reader, intelligent but uninformed, needs more editorial guidance. Introducing extensive quotations with attention to meaning and significance would benefit the presentation.
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Citation:
Robert McJimsey. Review of Kelsey, Harry, Sir John Hawkins: Queen Elizabeth's Slave Trader.
H-Albion, H-Net Reviews.
August, 2003.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=8027
Copyright © 2003 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.