A Golden World: How the Americas Transformed Tudor and Stuart England

A glittering new history of how the Americas transformed the Tudors and Stuarts that provides a fresh understanding the cultural exchange between the “Old” and “New” worlds.

From rumors of lost Amazonian cities of gold to the silver running through the mountains of Bolivia, hopes for dazzling wealth fueled the imperial fantasies of the Tudors and Stuarts. Stories of treasure ships and the feats of privateers from Francis Drake to Walter Raleigh have become entrenched in myth and legend—but what did Elizabethans actually know about Venezuela, or the Chesapeake? How did Indigenous people and ther knowledge enter the art, fashion, and literature of Shakespeare’s time—and at what cost?

From tobacco leaves strewn in playhouses on the Thames to a bejeweled ‘Indian hat’ carried on the back of a wandering peddler in the English countryside, A Golden World uses tangible history and artefacts to illuminate the unexpected ways that the Americas and its people became a visible and material presence in English culture in the first era of colonization.

Showcasing Indigenous perspectives through texts and materials created by Native writers, elders, and artists, and bringing Aztec jaguars, blue-green Colombian emeralds, and feathered garments knotted by Indigenous hands in conversation with love poetry, baroque portraits, and plays about shipwrecks, this award-winning historian presents an altogether new history of the ‘golden age’ of the Tudors and Stuarts, shedding light on the craft and labor of those in the Americas who contributed to the English Renaissance as we know it, and investigating what this means for heritage today.

While England’s fascination with eastern powers has been more readily acknowledged, A Golden World focuses on how Atlantic colonization provides a distinct and crucial part of this cultural history. From sight and sound to touch and taste in the ‘golden age’ of Shakespeare, Lauren Working gives new insight into the dynamics of power and desire for lands and resources in the Americas and how it changed the course of history.

Lauren Working is Lecturer in Early Modern Studies at the University of York. Her  academic book, The Making of an Imperial Polity jointly won the Royal Historical Society’s Whitfield Prize in 2021. She has given talks and seminars at museums on both sides of the Atlantic, from the Yale Center for British Art to the V&A. Her work on fashion and colonialism was recognised by BBC Radio 3 when she was selected as a New Generation Thinker in 2021. Working was born in Geneva and raised in Santa Barbara and Seattle. She lives in England.