In The English Empire in America, 1602–1658, L. H. Roper provides an examination of the Virginia colony that is both an in-depth analysis of the early English settlement and an Atlantic study of the development of early English imperial policy. Through a series of chapters examining English, Virginian, and Atlantic contexts of colonization in the early seventeenth century, Roper offers a revision of the “seemingly well-known narrative” (2) of Virginia and the beginnings of the English Empire in America. Roper situates the Virginia colony not as a model example for future English colonial endeavors but as part of a larger pattern of weak central control and private political interests that characterized England and the English Empire for much of the seventeenth century. His revised narrative emphasizes the continuity of English models of political patronage and social status in English colonization projects in the period before the Restoration.

Chapters 1 and 2 lay out the “deep background” (21) of the Virginia settlement. Focused on the sociopolitical changes of the sixteenth century, chapter 1 emphasizes the continuity of medieval patterns of migration and political status in early modern social structures. This is not a new argument to scholars of early modern England, but it provides an important anchor to Roper's examination of the sociopolitical development of English colonization projects. Chapter 2 demonstrates the centrality of medieval structures of landed property and political power through an examination of popular depictions of colonization in the Jacobean era. Anticolonization tracts, according to Roper, did not reject the idea of colonization but rather the social order represented in early colonial adventures. Such works served to instill the sociopolitical norms of English society upon the early English Empire, including the centrality of landed property to political status. These background chapters establish a basic framework for Roper's subsequent analysis of Virginia and the larger subject of the English Empire in America.

In chapters 3 and 4, Roper retraces the well-worn events of Virginia's early settlement period. Roper, however, is not interested in the so-called failure of Virginia Company rule but focuses instead on the political networks that both imperiled and saved the nascent colony on multiple occasions throughout its early history. Roper's study shows the English origins of the political factionalism that plagued Virginia in the early 1610s and concludes that the effective use of political patronage by the Southampton faction between 1611 and 1617 secured leadership and support from England for the colony. This brief period of stability attracted economic and political interests in England, who protected the colony and their own self-interest during the factional infighting of the 1620s that culminated in the “royalization” (89) of the colony in 1624. Viewing Virginia from this perspective, Roper is able to demonstrate the “fundamental continuity” (89)—particularly in terms of personnel—between the Company and Royal periods.

The significance of Roper's tight focus on political networks becomes clear when the author expands his analysis to encompass the competing colonial projects initiated after the royal takeover of Virginia, particularly in Massachusetts Bay, Maryland, and New Albion. The success or failure of colonial ventures in the 1630s and 1640s continued to rely heavily on the effective use of patronage networks to secure political protection, financial support, food supplies, and a steady flow of migrants from the British Isles. Colonial entrepreneurs, such as the Calvert family in Maryland and William Claibourne in Virginia, proved adept at manipulating English political networks to protect their colonial holdings. In this respect, the Virginia colony did not represent a model of future imperial policy but rather should be viewed as part of a colonial world governed by a weak central state, local centers of power, and political patronage that reflected the sociopolitical landscape of early Stuart England. The result, according to Roper, was “the patchwork character of the early English Empire” (96), in which local and private interest took precedent over a state-centered policy of imperial expansion. Even Virginia bore the hallmarks of an imperial policy controlled not by the Stuart government but, as Roper puts it, “through the government” (96). Colonists such as Governor John Harvey of Virginia, who attempted to assert his authority in the name of the king, learned that abstract royal authority meant little in a world dominated by private interest and the cultivation of Atlantic ties of patronage. Power in the New World, like the Old, Roper concludes, stemmed from land, property, and access to political patronage.

As Roper notes, The English Empire in America is a “top-down” study of the development of English America (136). Roper's narrow political focus fills an important gap in our knowledge of English imperial policy in the seventeenth century. The reader, however, is left to wonder what role nonelite groups played in these political developments. Only briefly addressed in Roper's study, groups such as indentured servants, Indians, and African laborers surely contributed to the growth, and therefore the political development, of the colonies as much as political networks in England. Such questions are beyond the scope of this study. The English Empire in America is, nonetheless, a welcome addition to the vast literature on early Virginia and the early English Empire. Roper's illumination of the manipulation, cultivation, and ultimate continuity of elite networks of political patronage on both sides of the Atlantic is crucial to our understanding of the early modern English world whether our focus is Atlantic colonial America or the British Isles.