ABSTRACT
In addressing the methodological challenge of “tracking” subaltern agency in English discourses of global expansionism as they emerged in the mid-sixteenth century, I focus on aboriginal or native women’s travels—generally dismissed as “mere physical movement”—as inscribed in the historical record of the first official English overseas venture westward for the purpose of trade, colonization, and empire: Martin Frobisher’s voyages from 1576 to 1578 ostensibly in search of a northwest passage to the riches of Asia. 1 While considered failures in terms of their immediate aims of exploration, resource extraction, and settlement, Frobisher’s voyages subsequently were deemed to have established the foundation of a British seaborne empire as articulated by the advisor to the short-lived Cathay Company, John Dee. Dee also advised the Muscovy Company, which had launched a series of voyages over a decade prior in search of a northeast route via Central Asia and Safavid Persia. 2
