Settler

English usages of the word ‘settler’ are now firmly entrenched within the language of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century imperialism, though the word contained other meanings in an era when English colonial endeavours were just emerging. While ‘settler’ had become an individual commonly associated with England's increasingly global territorial and commercial ambitions by the 1680s, the word previously more generally carried a sense of ‘doing’, of an identity rooted in profession or service. ¹ ‘Settler’ first appears in foreign language manuals published at the end of the sixteenth century. The second generation Italian migrant, John Florio, uses the word in 1598 to describe a hairdresser (acconciatore) as a ‘mender, a setler, an ordrer’. ² Just over a decade later, in A dictionarie of the French and English tongues, Randle Cotgrave described ‘a Ficheur’ as a ‘fixer, fastener, setler, or setter’. ³ The most common domestic use of the word was within religious and political language, identifying an individual or group who had established, settled, or planted varying forms of religions and governments. This meant that early modern English people recognised different individuals and groups as settlers.