The Restoration and the Reconstitution of Seventeenth‐Century English Imperial Political Culture

Abstract This article tracks the activities of an array of ‘colonial‐imperialist’ figures to assess the effects of the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 on the character of the English imperial polity. It advances three intertwined arguments that contradict the common view of Charles II and James II as pursuers of ‘absolutism’ bent on securing their control of a growing English Empire. Firstly, it emphasizes that the Restoration did not constitute a benchmark in the history of imperial political culture. Secondly, it shows that the impetus for governmental involvement in overseas affairs continued to derive primarily from those ‘outsiders’ calling on patrons and other ‘higher placed’ connections for extraordinary assistance, whether in the form of legal imprimatur for their activities or the provision of gunpowder and fleets. And thirdly, it argues that the administration of the seventeenth‐century English imperial state remained correspondingly in the hands of these extra‐governmental networks.