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Sir John Hawkins: Queen Elizabeth's Slave Trader.

Article Excerpt
Harry Kelsey. Sir John Hawkins: Queen Elizabeth's Slave Trader. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. 2003. Pp. xiv, 402. ISBN 0-300-09663-1.

Hawkins is one of the better documented Elizabethans. Unlike Drake he came of an established merchant family, and for nearly twenty years he held an important office under the Crown. His will survives, a fair amount of correspondence, official and otherwise, and even some published work, more or less from his own pen. He also cut a swath through the Spanish New World, leaving a variety of indirect testimony to his activities in the archives of the Indies. There is, consequently, plenty for the biographer to get his teeth into, and the result is a well balanced portrait of a man whose life nevertheless continues to harbor many mysteries and contradictions.

John Hawkins's career divides, although not very cleanly, into three periods. He was born in late 1532 or early 1533, the younger son of William Hawkins of Plymouth and his wife Joan (nee Trelawney). His elder brother was named for his father, and the family was well established and...

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