Walter Ralegh

Architect of Empire

Contributors

By Alan Gallay

Formats and Prices

Price

$21.99

Price

$28.99 CAD

From a Bancroft Prize-winning historian, a biography of the famed poet, courtier, and colonizer, showing how he laid the foundations of the English Empire

Sir Walter Ralegh was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. She showered him with estates and political appointments. He envisioned her becoming empress of a universal empire. She gave him the opportunity to lead the way.

In Walter Ralegh,Alan Gallay shows that, while Ralegh may be best known for founding the failed Roanoke colony, his historical importance vastly exceeds that enterprise. Inspired by the mystical religious philosophy of hermeticism, Ralegh led English attempts to colonize in North America, South America, and Ireland. He believed that the answer to English fears of national decline resided overseas — and that colonialism could be achieved without conquest. Gallay reveals how Ralegh launched the English Empire and an era of colonization that shaped Western history for centuries after his death.

On Sale
Nov 19, 2019
Page Count
576 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9781541645783

Alan Gallay

About the Author

Alan Gallay is the Lyndon B. Johnson chair of United States history at Texas Christian University and the author of several books including The Indian Slave Trade, which won the Bancroft Prize. Gallay lives in Fort Worth, Texas.

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