Europe: Early Modern and Modern
interest in sacrificing for what could only be a secondrank, independent nuclear capacity, perhaps conscious
that this would be unacceptable to their European
allies and would uncouple them from a credible American strategie guarantee. Conversely, German reliance
on American nuclear supply, the more likely scenario
in 1958-1960, leads us back in only slightly modified
form to the bipolar model Trachtenberg rejects. The
main point is that the Germans had very little disposable power of their own before 1963; afterward, they
sensibly became the pacesetters of detente. Meanwhile, German power served both sides (neither of
which was fighting the last war) as a convenient fiction,
usefully justifying Western measures in the late 1940s
that were really directed at the Soviets (as the author
shows) and, later, legitimizing Soviet threats to Berlin
that were similarly aimed quite simply at bloc consolidation. German power had little basis in reality.
Trachtenberg's challenge to bipolarity is admirable,
in large measure successful, and could be strengthened
by reference to the many other things that were going
on in Europe and beyond during this period. But there
seems no escape from the impression that the United
States, despite spasmodic posturing as Bonn's overindulgent probation officer, was always the Western
ringmaster and the Soviet Union's main security problem.
That said, it is a pleasure to welcome an elegantly
written book that will stimulate constructive debate
and make us think hard again about basic issues. It is
a model of scrupulous scholarship and by far the most
informative, cogent treatment of its important subject.
It broadens Cold War historiography by bringing Europe more fully into the picture, deepens it by showing
the long forward projection of pre-1939 emotional
impulses, and dignifies it by demonstrating that accurate reconstruction rather than passionate polemic is
the historian's highest calling.
FRASER J. HARBUTT
Emory University
HARRY KELSEY. Sir Francis Drake: The Queen's Pirate.
New Haven: Yale University Press. 1998. Pp. xviii, 566.
$35.00.
There is little to admire in the Francis Drake portrayed here. A violent man who always reacted angrily
to criticism, he was especially inflexible where his own
private wealth was involved. A habitual liar, occasionally a deserting coward, he was a thief on a grand scale
who stole from the Spanish (his first great success in
1571 amounted to about £100,000), from his dead
brother's estate, from his fellow investors, and from his
crews. A contemptable murderer, he participated in
butchering the people of Rathlin Island off the Antrim
coast and orchestrated the execution of one of his own
captains. Cruel to his inferiors, contemptuous of his
fellow captains, he purchased the approval of his social
superiors, whether Spanish or English.
Drake is best remembered first for his raid on the
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273
Pacific coast of Spanish America, where he needlessly
sacrificed the Jives of half his crew. His plan was "to
raid lightly defended Spanish ports and capture Spanish merchant ships" (p. 81), all piratical acts. He
escaped by sailing west and circumnavigating the
globe, the first Englishman to do so, some fifty-five
years after the Pacific had become virtually a Spanish
lake. That he became a hero to his countryman for the
wealth he brought home three years later, perhaps
£650,000, tells us much about Elizabethan England's
isolation and relative weakness. Protected by the delighted queen and her councillors, who personally
shared in the plunder, Drake was knighted, acquired
an estate, and entered Parliament, "aligning himself
with the most influential men" (p. 239) in England.
This remarkable venture and its unexpected success
was followed by a financially disastrous 1585-1586 raid
in the West Indies. There Drake's skill as a sea captain
again was overshadowed by his failures as a naval
commander. He "preferred to sail alone. He was never
comfortable with a large fleet" (p. 39). As a negotiator
for ransom to be extracted from his Spanish captives,
he proved largely a failure. Yet the published account
of his singeing Philip II's beard portrayed him as a
Protestant hero, a gross distortion of the facts but a
myth necessary to Elizabethan propagandists, with
England by then involved in an undeclared war with
Spain. Drake, no longer a mere annoyance to the
Spanish crown, now had become "a major embarassment" (p. 279).
This embarrassment was redoubled by Drake's successful 1587 piratical raids on Cadiz and Sagres.
Undertaken in a period of growing Anglo-Spanish
tension, with England actively aiding the Dutch uprising while Spain prepared to invade England, Drake
was officially disowned by the queen, who nevertheless
accepted his "rich gifts" (p. 304).
His sun began almost at once to set. He played an
insignificant, if controversial, role in confronting the
Armada in the Channel. Appointed to command a
large force in 1589 to attach the remnants of the
Armada as they made for Portuguese and Spanish
ports, Drake returned virtually empty-handed. Not
again employed at sea until 1595, he was given a joint
appointment to command an expedition to Panama.
Drake met an enemy quite different from the one he
had encountered earlier. With well-defended ports,
new ships, and emboldened commanders, the Spanish
readily repelled the English expedition, which ended
disastrously with both Drake and his commander dead
from disease, after seizing a "trifling amount of booty"
(p. 391).
Sprung from Devon farmers, son of a married priest,
raised in part in the Hawkins household of seafaring
cousins, he was introduced to piracy, slave snatching
on the African coast, and slave trading in the West
Indies. Certainly everything you ever might want to
know about this thug-pirate, and a great deal more, is
available in this excessively detailed book. As Harry
Kelsey seems to have difficulty in distinguishing the
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Reviews of Books
important from the mundane, the book is heavy going.
Its problem is the absence of a suitable historical
setting. Although Kelsey provides an excellent study of
Drake and his connections, he denies us the crucial
evidence to establish Drake's role in Elizabethan
history. He provides no assessment of Anglo-Spanish
relations to establish the relative position of England
and Spain. Nor does he discuss the first vestiges of
English colonialism and commercial interest in the
East, which are crucial to understanding Drake's role.
To learn all this, we must turn to such works as the late
R. B. Wernham's Before the Armada: The Growth of
English Foreign Policy, 1485-1588 (1966), After the
Armada: Elizabethan England and the Struggle for
Western Europe, 1588-1595 (1984), and The Return of
the Armada: The Last Years of the Elizabethan War
against Spain, 1595-1603 (1994), studies not included
in Kelsey's bibliography. Likewise we learn nothing
useful about England's ambitions in Ireland, although
the details of Drake's involvement there in 1575 are
provided. Far fewer insignificant details about Drake's
adventures and more analysis of the historical setting
would have greatly increased our debt to this biographer.
JULIAN GWYN
University of Ottawa
THEODORE K. RABB. Jacobean Gentleman: Sir Edwin
Sandys, 1561-1629. Princeton: Princeton University
Press. 1998. Pp. xii, 412. $55.00.
This excellent political biography may possibly establish some kind of record, since the author explains that
he began work on it some forty years ago. Of course,
while it has been maturing, Theodore K. Rabb has
made notable contributions in other fields, particularly
in European history. He has also seen a considerable
number of Stuart revisionisms come and go. His own
preferred option is for a modified and modernized
S. R. Gardiner, shorn of his whiggish and teleological
tendencies but still placing Parliament firmly in a
major role. Rabb is especially reluctant to endorse the
view that lees early Stuart politics as essentially the
contest of aristocratic patrons, each with his following
of obedient members of the House of Commons. The
book's title is not, perhaps, completely explicit. Rabb
presents Edwin Sandys as an archetypal specimen of
the Jacobean gentry. Son of an archbishop of York,
born in Worcestershire but settling in Kent, he built up
for himself in eight Parliaments between 1589 and
1626 a remarkable reputation as a trusted guide and
adviser to the Commons: the ultimate committee man.
He owed this not to any great originality of mind nor
to transcendent rhetorical skills but to sober application, patient attendance, and the ability to marshal and
present arguments in a lucid and orderly fashion.
Sandys was invaluable at reminding members who had
just come in or who had dozed off of the salient
features of the issue. The crown, irritated by his
stubbornness, made no real use of his talents or of his
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW influence over the Commons, although he seems, in
retrospect, to have had the makings of a very useful
man of business. Of great vision he had little, save for
colonial expansion and emigration and for the rights
and privileges of the House of Commons. Consequently he spent almost all his time in opposition and
in 1621 suffered a brief period of imprisonment to
quiet him. Sandys viewed James I's proposal for a
union of England and Scotland with grave suspicion,
and he delivered a powerful and much-quoted speech
against it. He opposed monopolies with great vigor,
took a prominent part in the abortive negotiations for
the Great Contract, and helped to pull down Lionel
Cranfield. Later in life, he took an active part in the
languishing affairs of the first East India Company,
and he invested heavily both in time and money in the
Virginia Company, of which he was treasurer between
1619 and 1624, when that enterprise was in great
difficulty. But Rabb cannot accept the old view of
Sandys as a beacon of colonial liberty, concurring with
the description of him as a well-intended landed
gentleman out of his depth. Even in Parliament,
Sandys was a tactician rather than a strategist, more at
home advising on procedure than on policy. The
absence of personal papers means that we have only
glimpses of his private and family life, and one wonders how he amused himself during the long intervals
between Parliaments. Perhaps his four wives and fourteen children kept him occupied. He comes across as a
solemn, hard-working, cautious, rather conservative
lawyer, which is probably why his parliamentary colleagues found him so convincing.
JOHN CANNON
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Islam in Britain, 1558-1685. New York:
Cambridge University Press. 1998. Pp. xi, 226. $59.95.
NABIL MATAR.
Islam represented a formidable force on the world
stage in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The
Muslim empires reached their greatest territorial extent, often at the expense of Christian powers, toward
the end of the seventeenth century. The devout Aurangzeb (1658-1707) brought the Mogul Empire to its
apogee, Barbary pirates posed a continual threat in the
Mediterranean and beyond, and the concerted forces
of Western Christendom only halted the Ottoman
advance onto European soil at the Beige of Vienna in
1683. It is hardly surprising that the English devoted a
good deal of thought to the confrontation of these two
religions and civilizations. Nabil Matar's book examines English attitudes toward Islam and Muslims as
expressed in a wide variety of published writings from
the mid-sixteenth to the late seventeenth centuries. In
fact, Islam in British Thought would have been a more
descriptive title for the book, as it focuses on literary
reactions to Islam rather than on its modest presence
in Britain during these years.
The first two chapters of the book address the
treatment in English published works of the phenom-
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