"Drawing on recent trends in both Atlantic and center-periphery literature, this book examines the relationship between the English crown--monarch, privy council, and ancillary bodies--and its Atlantic colonies under the early Stuart monarchs, James I and Charles I, circa 1603-1642. In doing so, it engages directly with a very large body of existing scholarship, and offers a new understanding of this relationships by demonstrating how the English central government became involved in the affairs of its Atlantic peripheries in the first few decades of these activities, and the extent to which this involvement helped to define and determine subsequent imperial relations"--