The Bermuda assemblage: Toward a posthuman globalization

Taking Bermuda as an exemplary case for European expansion into the Atlantic rim, this essay re-narrates the discovery, mapping, and settlement of that island with attention to nonhuman as well as human forces. Rather than repeating or inverting simplistic, monocausal narratives about triumphant discoverers or evil colonizers, this multipolar and multiagent version of premodern history reframes the history of islands. The resulting narrative combines nonhuman forces such as the Gulf Stream and a summer hurricane in 1609 with the human histories of the Jamestown and Bermuda colonies. It juxtaposes mercantile expansion in the Anglophone Atlantic Rim with chance encounters with coral, ambergris, hogs, and other nonhuman actants in or around Bermuda.