England's Internal Colonies: Class, Capital, and the Literature of Early Modern English Colonialism

In this study, Mark Netzloff argues that the practices of English colonialism were initially formulated in relation to the realm's own "internal colonies," the displaced classes and colonized regions of early modern England, Scotland, and Ireland. Examining English colonialism as a site of ongoing class conflict, Netzloff explores the effects of capital formation on the status of marginal communities (pirates, vagrants, gypsies, cottagers) and peripheral regions (the Anglo-Scottish Borders, Ulster). Analyzing texts by Shakespeare, Jonson, Heywood, and Speed alongside material practices, Netzloff addresses the destabilizing consequences of internal colonialism as well as the possibilities of agency and resistance enabled by this history.