Eutopia of Empire: Francis Bacon’s Short View and the Imperial and Colonial Background to the New Atlantis

Abstract

The present article considers Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis against the backdrop of Bacon’s Short View to be taken of Great Britain and Spain, one of Bacon’s least studied and most imperially audacious and bellicose texts. In the Short View to be taken of Great Britain and Spain, Bacon argues for a naval war and blockade of both the Iberian Peninsula and Spanish colonies in the Americas, advocating the British seizure of the latter. The article argues that the fulfillment of these imperials and colonial proposals is, in Bacon’s view, a prerequisite and presupposition of the action of Bacon’s New Atlantis.