Brings together previously dispersed sources to argue for a tradition of Scottish colonial writing before the Union of Parliaments

Offers the first comprehensive study of Scottish colonial literature before 1707
Focus on Scotland contributes to the diversification of studies on the early British Empire
Provides a fresh argument about Atlantic writing contributing to the transformation of utopian literature from a fictional to a reformist genre
Enters debates about Scotland's position in colonial and postcolonial studies through its focus on pre-1707 Atlantic literature

This book focuses on three undertakings at Nova Scotia (1620s), East New Jersey (1680s) and the Isthmus of Panama, then known as Darien (1690s). Analysing works written in the larger context of the Scottish Atlantic, it examines how the Atlantic influenced seventeenth-century Scottish literature and vice versa. The relationship between art and ideology is key to the author's discussion as Sandrock argues early modern writing employed utopianism as a tool for empire-building and as a means of claiming power over the Atlantic.