Elizabeth I (Civ6)/Civilopedia

Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) gains a bit more fame today than she had in her own time. She constructed the foundations for the British Empire to come, but in her day, this was a desperate patchwork of privateers and spies amidst a world order dominated by other hostile powers.
Tudor England epitomizes the Early Modern period in history. Here, we have the foundations of much of the present-day world system beginning to be put into place – the origins of finance, insurance, and investment in the halls of the British East India Company, the Reformation, and the foundation blocks of absolute monarchy as well as democratic parliamentarianism. All of these formed during the Elizabethan period, under one of the greatest monarchs in English – or world – history.
The world in the 1500s epitomized a previous world order. Spanish and Portuguese empires were at their peak but burning through even the extraordinary wealth that they gleaned from their colonies in what were wars that largely concerned royal succession – hardly interesting to most common folk. Ming and Mughal empires were at their peak, a status that would eventually breed complacency in the face of the coming storm of colonial conquest. England was a rainy, muddy rock at the edge of the world. One did not expect an empire from them.
Queen Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and his second, ill-fated wife, Anne Boleyn. With Boleyn’s death and the annulment of her marriage, Elizabeth became illegitimate – hardly an auspicious start. Things got even worse when the Catholic Mary came to the throne, and Elizabeth’s Protestant leanings proved too much of a liability. The young queen-to-be was imprisoned. But Mary was ill, and upon her death, Elizabeth took a precarious seat on the throne in 1558.
Elizabeth’s early reign was its most uncertain. After twelve years on the throne and showing no signs of returning to the Catholic fold, the Pope declared her excommunication, and plots against her life and her rule proliferated. In this, Elizabeth developed defenses: an increased naval presence, a secret police centered around the spy Francis Walsingham, and a constant flirtation with marrying a Catholic monarch. But threats are not always so subtle. After decades of harassment by English privateers and a rebellion of Dutch Protestants against Spanish rule, England went to war against Spain in 1585. Spain sent its famed armada against English shores – no small menace, as the 1580s was the height of the Spanish Empire.
The defeat of the armada was to mark the beginnings of England’s “wooden wall” and its naval superiority for centuries to come. There was no one great Battle of Salamis (in the Greco-Persian wars) to mark the victory, rather a series of harassing raids against Spanish ships, a daring use of oil-soaked fireboats, and a fortunate storm all contributed to the Spanish losses.
At home, Elizabeth knew her position was tenuous. She had already inflamed tensions with Catholic powers, and as such, she downplayed any overt Protestant symbolism, even going so far as to expel the Puritans (who would later end up in the English colonies in North America). Further, she refused marriage contracts – whether by personal inclination or out of a fear of being too politically indebted to her husband being a source of historical speculation. She was thus dubbed “the Virgin Queen” – this is why her settlement in North America became known as “Virginia.”
In one place, however, she showed little caution. The Irish population was strongly Catholic and resented English rule. Elizabeth promoted granting land and titles to loyal English subordinates and burned out all the land which defied her there.
Her rule later in life could not match her early years. With her important courtiers gone, Elizabeth’s reign began to be chipped away from within by political and social climbers who sought powerful trade monopolies. These monopolies would prove influential, if at times detrimental, to subjects both within England and abroad. Indeed, here is the beginning of the great trading companies in England. While Elizabeth never saw the establishment of Virginia, it was not for lack of trying – the doomed Roanoke colony was established under her reign.
Elizabethan literary life remains with us today, most notably in the persons of Shakespeare and Marlowe, which sparked an efflorescence of English arts and culture.
Elizabeth died in 1603 after 44 years on the throne. The England that she laid the foundations for did not, however, and was set to dominate the world stage in the centuries to come.