Immense resources were mobilized in the service of English ambition to take possession of the North American mainland. None was more important than people. Richard Hakluyt the elder – lawyer of the Middle Temple, Member of Parliament, confidant of statesmen, and propagandist for colonizing – said it first and best. To “keepe” the country, it had to be “planted” – occupied and rendered productive. But planting required people. It was an imperative, hence, that the country be “man[ned].”

The elder Hakluyt gave the existing inhabitants but a sidelong glance. The ultimate objective being lasting territorial possession rather than mere gain through a bilateral commerce, he held the indigenous population largely irrelevant to the colonizer’s purposes – “of small consideration” other than as an obstacle to be negotiated. Manning meant migration, the introduction of alien populations into North America as new inhabitants clearly within the colonizer’s jurisdiction, to be marshaled to serve the colonizer’s ends: first, as a manageable labor force to produce commodities for European buyers; second, and more generally, as a physical presence, human facts on the ground to establish occupancy. Approximately 800,000 people (60 percent European, 40 percent African) crossed the Atlantic during the two centuries that followed the first intrusions of the 1580s – nearly 200,000 during the seventeenth century, more than 600,000 during the eighteenth. Manning made the colonizer’s claim to dominion materially manifest.