Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1630Not since 1945 has a general account of the origins of the British Empire been published, as if the demise of the empire freed us from our imperial past and historians from any obligation to digest it. Of course, it has done nothing of the kind, but it does enable the historian today to approach that past in a more critical spirit and to attempt a deeper and more detached analysis than could have been expected a generation ago. The purpose of this