This significant reassessment of Jacobean political culture reveals how colonizing America transformed English civility in early seventeenth-century England. This title is also available as Open Access.

Introduction; 1. Cultivation and the American project; 2. Colony as microcosm: Virginia and the metropolis; 3. Cannibalism and the politics of bloodshed; 4. Tobacco, consumption, and imperial intent; 5. Wit, sociability, and empire; Conclusion.

Lauren Working is Research Associate on the ERC-funded TIDE project (Travel, Transculturality, and Identity in England, 1550-1700) at the University of Oxford. She has held fellowships at the Jamestown archaeological site and the Royal Anthropological Institute, where she continues to develop methodologies and projects that explore indigeneity, colonial legacies, and heritage in English museums.