ABSTRACT
As the Ulster Plantation was taking shape in Ireland, the first permanent English colonies were established in North America. In 1607, the same year O’Neill and O’Donnell fled Ireland, never to return, an expedition funded by the Virginia Company of London established Jamestown. In one of the most unlikely coincidences of early modernity, John Winthrop encounters a “Capt. Kirke” in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Winthrop was on his way to found the city of Boston. Kirke was on his way to Quebec to help his brother hold the fortress he had taken the year before from Samuel de Champlain. The literary character of these two works becomes especially apparent when their abiding concerns military urbanism are brought to the fore. These concerns are easily overlooked even if everywhere present. Champlain had a hand in building two habitations before he laid the groundwork for the great fortress city of Quebec in 1608.
