Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: 

Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 80 

 

 

Early Modern utopian islands: restoring a damaged Garden.  
 

 

Sotirios Triantafyllos 

Independent scholar 

sotri87@hotmail.com 

 

 

 
Copyright© 2021  Sotirios Triantafyllos. This text may be archived 

and redistributed both in electronic form and in hard copy, 

provided that the author and journal are properly cited and no fee 

is charged, in accordance with our Creative Commons Licence. 

 

 

 

Abstract: Interest in islands grew rapidly during the Early Modern period as many explorers, 

merchants, monarchs and political commentators perceived islands as earthly paradises or magical 

loci of extreme riches. This paper presents an alternative strand of the period's ‘islomania’, where the 

newly discovered islands were imagined as loci of wilderness: empty lands that human ingenuity and 

hard work could be ‘improved’ into a utopia. Triumphal narratives of conquering nature were based 

on the newfound optimism inspired by fifteenth century humanism and the tenets of Early Modern 

natural philosophy. However, processes of ‘improvement’ cannot be thought of as apolitical or 

dislocated as they are often embedded in the colonialist narratives of the time. By examining a series 

of imaginary ‘utopian’ islands of the Early Modern period, including Utopia, New Atlantis, The Isle 

of Pines and the island of Robinson Crusoe, this paper dismantles binary conceptions of Early Modern 

mythical islands as paradise/hell, utopia/dystopia to a more nuanced understanding of how these 

writers utilised and depicted ‘utopia’ to reflect political, religious and social mores of the time.  

 

 

Keywords: utopia, island, Robinsonade, Eden, Crusoe, Thomas More 

 

 

Throughout history utopianism has been expressed as the desire for an ideal world in various forms 

and visions (Sargent, 1993: 3). In the European utopian tradition one privileged spatiality served as 

locus, that of the island. The ancient Egyptians left one of the oldest surviving descriptions of a 

paradisiacal island in The tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor (Ratter, 2018: 63; Carey, 1999: 1-8). Dating 

from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom (2000-1700 BCE), the story tells of a sailor who, while travelling 

from the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt was shipwrecked on a Red Sea island filled with food and 

drink and inhabited by a talking serpent (Parkinson, 1997: 89-101). This short text establishes the 

basic features of early utopian narratives: an island as locus and a miraculous natural environment of 

plenty with accompanying mystical elements. Such elements were found repeatedly in Classical and 

Roman descriptions of paradise islands such as the Fortunate Islands or Circe’s island in The Odyssey 

(800-700 BCE) (Hulme and Youngs, 2002: 2). But it was the Judeo-Christian belief in the Garden of 

Eden that established the idea of an earthly paradise that survived the Fall and could be still found as 

part of this world. It became customary during the Middle Ages for Eden to be perceived as an island 

or an inaccessible landlocked garden located in the eastern extremities of the world and as such, it 

mailto:sotri87@hotmail.com


Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: 

Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 81 

was depicted in the mappae mundi of the period (Gillis, 2003: 22-5). Hence, this association of the 

islands with paradise was enriched during the Middle Ages due to the influence of Christianity and 

the incorporation of a series of biblical traditions and hagiographic folk tales.  

 

A representative example of this island paradise trope is eighth-century hagiographic text, Navigatio 

sancti Brendani abbatis. This work narrates the travels of St Brendan in the Irish sea and the North 

Atlantic. Its plot revolves around a monastic quest to find an island paradise in the Atlantic Ocean. 

Following the centuries-old conventions about paradisiacal island representation, the anonymous 

author describes it as adorned with rich flora, tamed fauna and trees that bore strange, delicious fruits. 

Moreover, faithful to the medieval milieu of mixing fantasy and reality the Voyage of St Brendan 

echoes real locations filtered through religious imagery and the early Christian anchoritic tradition, 

like the island of Hell, whose volcanic environment is reminiscent of Iceland (Italiano, 2012: 8-14). 

Nevertheless, geographical realism in the Voyage is inconsequential; what is really important for the 

monastic environment that produced it was to incorporate the Northwest Atlantic archipelago in the 

medieval Christianised geos and topos of the ecumene (Mackley, 2008: 142-4; Berque, 2004: 385-

7). Similarly, the medieval legend of Cockaigne depicts a place of eternal carnal satisfaction and 

idleness defined by its comestible physical environment and architecture (Pleji, 2001: 245-7).  This 

form of utopia proved extremely popular among the lower classes and was retold through drinking 

songs and folk tales for those who sought to escape from the harsh reality of their everyday existence 

to a blissful dream world (Beauchamp, 1981: 345-62). 

 

Ancient cultures had myths about nature and humanity’s gradual deterioration through humankind’s 

corruption, for example the Hesiodic myth of the lost Golden Age (Burton, 2016: 1-16). Yet, the most 

influential tale of this kind is again found in Genesis 3: 1-24, which narrates the Fall and the resulting 

expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Among their punishments for sinning against 

God was the loss of their immortality and innocence but also the end of their dominion over the 

Garden. Humanity had ‘to labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life’ (Genesis 3:17). 

Biblical explanation of humanity’s loss of dominion over nature influenced medieval perception of 

nature as a menacing and chaotic wilderness. A view that was summarised in Dante’s description of 

nature as an immensa sylva, a ‘vast wilderness’ (Freccero, 2003: 71; Perfetti, 2000: 187). Humanity 

stood helpless in front of this wilderness, which was replete with raw power. Dante and his 

contemporaries voiced an ‘adversarial attitude towards nature’ (Herlihy, 1980: 116). Nevertheless, 

despite being deeply ingrained in medieval Christian doctrine and the period’s cultural milieu, these 

negative attitudes towards nature could be revised, as happened during the High Medieval period 

(1000-1300 CE). This was a period where large forest clearings and trade expansion led to more 

optimistic views of humanity’s potential to shape nature. Nonetheless, this optimism was shaken by 

the ecological and demographic collapse of the fourteenth century that led to a revival of 

eschatological thinking and the negative view of nature as a menacing and irreparable wilderness 

(LaFreniere, 2008: 98). 

 

It was not until the Early Modern (EM) period that attitudes towards nature started to shift again and 

an optimistic outlook began to re-emerge (Thomas, 1984: 15). Influenced by the Christian humanist 

desire to combine the Christian call to tame the wilderness with genuine care for the benefit of the 

public weal together with the natural philosophers’ intent to understand nature (ibid: 16-20); this new 

attitude was summarised by Francis Bacon’s call in his Sylva Sylvarum to understand and tame nature 

(Bacon, 1627). The effort to understand nature did not mean that views of far-away lands as full of 

miracles and with strange properties were eclipsed. In the age of exploration when European 

expansion and colonialism generated an unprecedented interest in the newly discovered lands and 

their people, images of Edenic lands with sweet fruits and fertile soil became extremely popular. 



Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: 

Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 82 

Nevertheless, promoting the paradisiacal qualities of a far-away land to make it an attractive location 

for colonisation was not new. Archaic Greek myths concerning the fertility of Magna Grecia or 

Greenland’s naming by Eric the Red are similar acts of promotion designed to attract settlers 

(Morakis, 2011: 460-492; Baldacchino, 2012: 55). 

 

Hence, it is no surprise that the ‘island’ remained the dominant literary topos for any vision of a better 

world during the EM period. Moreover, this was a rational choice considering the island was a much 

more easily regulated space compared to any mainland one. As a spatial symbol and a dream, the 

‘empty’ island could offer a fresh start to the European settlers, similar to the one that Gonzalo dreams 

of establishing in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611). A society where ‘all things in common nature 

should produce without sweat or endeavour’ and where ‘treason, felony, Sword, pike, knife, gun, or 

need for any engine’ had no place (Shakespeare, 2008, 2.1: 22). The reality was quite different. Unlike 

Gonzalo’s unpopulated island the ‘new lands’ that the EM explorers added to the atlases of the period 

were populated by cultures that the European colonisers were quick to destroy, enslave or dismiss, 

closer to Prospero’s island and the fate of its true owner Caliban. Nevertheless, EM utopia searched 

for an island that had not to be Edenic but empty. An island on which a completely new society based 

on different values and ideals could be built at a distance from the old, corrupted world.  

 

 

From Paradise to Utopia: re-articulating the island 
 

 

As previously discussed, European utopian tradition had a typified space, the island. Before the EM 

period these were miraculous places that were untouched by the Fall; lands that due to their perfection 

could not be improved further by humankind (Freitag, 2013: 121). This changes during the EM period 

due to the growing interest in the idea of ‘improvement’. This term entered general discourse from 

the early sixteenth century (Slack, 2015: 1-8, 253), when European society began to believe that 

humanity possessed the ability to influence its environment and therefore its destiny. This new 

outlook also re-energised the locus of the island, transforming it from the static setting of paradise to 

a dynamic and malleable space suitable for experimentation. Gonzalo’s utopia in the second act of 

The Tempest encapsulates perfectly the EM view of the island, as a suitable space for the most extreme 

type of experimentation in the pursuit of alleviating society’s ills.  

 

It was the same ‘emptiness’ and seemingly endless possibilities that More chose to utilise in order to 

articulate his vision of the best possible society in Utopia (1516). The influence of European 

explorations on the creation of Utopia is evident in the premise of the work itself which narrates an 

expedition starting in America under the leadership of Raphael Hythloday. Hythloday serves as the 

narrator of the story where after a long, difficult journey the crew discover the island of Utopia and 

its society. Utopus, the founder of this state is described as a foreign general who destroyed the 

previous corrupt civilisation to build a better society upon its ruins. In addition, More accompanied 

the publication of his work with an alphabet of the utopian language and a map of the island, just as 

travellers and cosmographers did in their accounts of the New World in an effort to reinforce its 

plausibility and appearance as a real travel narrative (More, 2016: 9-11, 127). He went to great lengths 

to ensure that the ideal society he described would be perceived as a real topos, built by humans, 

visited by humans and inhabited by humans, and not as a spiritual, symbolic vision of a perfect world 

like St. Augustine’s City of God or Bartolomeo Del Bene’s later City of Truth (1609) (see Stimac, 

2020).  

 



Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: 

Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 83 

More was equally cautious to not present his island of Utopia as a piece of paradise that had survived 

the Fall. He aimed to present a society that could serve as a tangible paradigm for imitation by his 

contemporaries and such an edenic space had no value for his vision. More’s understanding of nature 

was filtered through the lens of Christianity; it was something corrupted and hostile. More was 

adamant about his island’s condition, it was neither fertile nor welcoming to human habitation. More 

named the main river of the island with the Greek name Anydros, which meant without water, and 

had Hythloday commenting on the need to protect the houses in Utopia from the strong winds (More, 

2016: 47-9). A land with a dried-up river and sweeping winds is hardly edenic. Still, this infertile and 

volatile land was appropriate for More’s aim, namely to present a society that solely by humankind’s 

effort could repair the Garden of Eden. Hence, the core belief of Utopia was that humanity had the 

power to improve itself and its surroundings. A belief that was among the basic tenets of Christian 

humanism being espoused not only by More but also by other important humanists such as Erasmus 

and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (Parrish, 2010: 589-605). Homo Sapiens was a wonderful 

creature, second only to God according to Pico, who had not just the ability and intellect to work this 

garden, restore and nourish it back to its prelapsarian state but the obligation to do it (Pellegrini, 2002: 

801-828). More, who had translated Pico’s biography from Latin into English, shared this belief 

(Lehmberg, 1956: 61-74). 

 

More was less interested in the location of his island than in its topography, which can be seen in the 

distraction caused by a servant’s entrance when Hythloday describes the exact location of the island 

of Utopia, resulting in the directions being unheard (More, 2016: 27).  Hythloday proceeds to explain 

that Utopia used to be known as Abraxa until a foreign army led by Utopus conquered it (ibid: 44). 

Yet, contrary to every previous historical exemplar Utopus, instead of ruling his subjects as a tyrant, 

decides to unify conquerors and conquered into a new people. This goal was destined to shape every 

aspect of Utopia from its political and social system to its religion. In particular, Utopus in wishing 

to avoid a similar fate to the one he had brought upon the Abraxians, decided to separate his state’s 

lands from the rest of the continent by digging a fifteen mile-long channel. Hence, More’s Utopia 

was not simply an island but an artificial one. Utopia’s shape resembled a crescent with an opening 

of eleven miles between its two horns creating a large, safe, sheltered bay. A series of forts and the 

small size of the entrance to the bay that was full of treacherous shallows and rocks meant the inland 

sea remained protected from any external incursion (More, 2016: 44-6). Utopia’s artificial insularity 

had multiple purposes. Aside from defence, the separation of Utopia from its neighbours was essential 

for the implementation of the social and political reforms that Utopus wished to enact. By separating 

his society, Utopus reinforced its sense of uniqueness and allowed a new cultural paradigm to be 

developed free of external corrupting influences. Although Utopia’s geography was based on 

enclosure this does not necessarily equate to isolation; gaining entry to Utopia was difficult but not 

impossible. Merchants, travellers and explorers like Hythloday could reach it and Utopia itself 

maintained relationships with its neighbouring countries. In this way Utopia reflects our 

understanding of islands as physically isolated but socially connected places (Hay, 2006).  

 

Furthermore, Hythloday recounts how, by making all the people work equally on the project, Utopus 

succeeded not only to open a channel that transformed Abraxa into an island but also to construct a 

new civic identity for its citizens. Hythloday underlines the fact that the conquered Abraxans worked 

next to the soldiers of Utopus as equals and this shared experience forged them into a new, unified 

people free from past identities and ready to follow a new path (More, 2016: 42)1. Utopia’s human-

made geography, therefore, was a collective undertaking aimed at serving the community. It 

embodied and exemplified the principles of an equal society even in its topography, as a result, all 

the 54 cities of the island followed the same plan, had the same population, offered the same facilities 

and amenities and all were supplied equally by their surrounding countryside (Pohl, 2006).  



Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: 

Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 84 

 

Still, More’s main concern was to describe a land without any miraculous or extraordinary quality. 

This meant that his ideal society had to deal with a series of logistical issues, the most important of 

which was how to feed its population. There lies the heart of More’s vision and the reason for calling 

the EM utopia’s project ‘recreating the Garden’ in this article. The finitude of resources is the greatest 

issue that any small island society has to deal with, and this usually shapes its landscape, settlement 

pattern and economy (Baldacchino, 2006). In Utopia citizens rotate between the cities and countryside 

where they learn agricultural skills. As well as helping to feed the citizens More’s plan aimed for 

something broader, namely, to instil in Utopia’s citizen a new habitus, a new set of habits, skills and 

dispositions (Bourdieu, 1977) that could be utilised in cultivating and thus taming all of Utopia’s 

nature (Rebhorn, 1976: 140-155). The Utopians were constantly reminded of this mission to 

transform the wilderness again into a Garden and were honing their skills even when they dwelt in 

their cities by tending household and district gardens. Utopians were encouraged to compete with 

each other for their garden’s beauty and yield (More, 2016: 46). Therefore, More’s ideal society was 

neither a dream of constant gratification nor a piece of the Lost Eden. It was a society located on an 

island where everyone worked side by side and shared the land’s produce equally. Every resource 

that Utopia had available should be utilised, and the Biblical mission to tame nature and restore the 

prelapsarian Garden of Eden was the only way to do that. Hence, despite the symbolism that was 

invested with by Christianity, the restoration of the Garden was also a practical endeavour and an 

attempt to instil a degree of realism.   

 

 

‘Improvement’ and New Atlantis 
 

 

New Atlantis (written around 1623, published posthumously in 1627), was Frances Bacon’s version 

of utopia; conceived as a demonstration of the positive results that his method of philosophical inquiry 

would have for humanity. Following the conventions of the genre, Bacon introduces us to the island 

of Bensalem, vaguely located in the Pacific Ocean and discovered when a Spanish merchant ship was 

led there by a storm. To help us understand this society, Bacon uses an anonymous Spanish crewman 

as the narrator and audience surrogate in our journey to this strange land. His inquiries about the 

history and institutions of Bensalem are answered initially by the Governor of the House of Strangers, 

the head of Bensalem’s lazaretto. The Governor informs us about the island’s origins and its seclusion 

from the rest of the world. In particular, we learn that the isle of Bensalem is the last living repository 

of pre-cataclysmic knowledge. Soon, another character Joabin, a Jewish merchant, takes the mantle 

of the newcomers’ guide by giving them a tour around Renfusa, the island’s capital, while explaining 

the mores and rituals of its people. Finally, we get to meet the last and most important of our guides 

to New Atlantis, one of the Fathers of the House of Salomon. The Governor characterises Salomon’s 

House as the noblest foundation in the whole world (Bacon and Campanella, 2003: 18). The Governor 

of the House of Strangers describes its mission as being ‘dedicated to the study of the works and 

creatures of God’. But, the Father of the House of Salomon described its mission differently: to unlock 

‘the secret motions of things; and enlarging the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things 

possible’ (ibid: 54).  

 

We learn that Salomon’s House includes artificial mines, hills, caves, pools and wells, all designed 

specifically for conducting experiments. Salomon’s House also erected facilities to house their 

mathematical instruments, high towers for the study and recreation of meteorological phenomena, 

and chambers suitable for experiments on new cures for diseases. In addition, the institution had two 

galleries, one of them housing statues of famous inventors and the other containing designs, 



Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: 

Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 85 

miniatures and examples of inventions. These buildings were accompanied by a park and some 

orchards. The Father underlines that even these had practical purposes. The galleries were dedicated 

to inventors and inventions sought to inspire the members of the college to emulate the individuals 

honoured by them; while even the park and the enclosures were loci of experimentation where the 

rare flora and fauna of the island was dissected and studied (More, 2016: 38-46; Wallace, 2003; 

Cowan, 2011; Peltonen, 1992). Similar to More, Bacon understood this world as corrupted and 

imperfect by the Fall of nature, but while More advocated hard work, frugality and monastic inspired 

common ownership (Séguy, 2014: 284-319), Bacon was more concerned with using ‘applied natural 

philosophy’ to reconquer nature and then restore humankind’s dominion upon it (Whitney, 1989: 

371-390). Bacon’s ideas are seen as a major inspiration for the EM scientific revolution; in his Novum 

Organon, he appealed to humanity to regain its divinely bequeathed right over nature (Bacon, 1855: 

111). Bacon’s choice to direct his works to the faithful was not a rhetorical device or an EM 

convention, but an exemplification of his project’s deeply religious character.  

 

Nothing was or should be wasteful in Bacon’s society. All these experiments had one purpose: to 

make life easier for the citizens of Bensalem, to satisfy their needs and to prolong their lives. The 

Father’s haste to emphasise how every experiment and every scientific enquiry performed in the 

House’s premises has practical applications demonstrates how Bensalemites – and, by inference, 

Bacon – were not supporters of pursuing science for its own sake. Similarly, More’s Utopians 

shunned everything that had no practical application, including gold which, given its malleability, 

was deemed suitable only for chamber pots (More, 2016: 61-2). Hence, even if New Atlantis’s vision 

of a different socio-political paradigm was less radical than the communitarian one of Utopia, it was 

still one of a society that had reached a level of unprecedented knowledge and understanding of nature 

that utilised it with the sole purpose of reinstating humankind’s mastery over it. The mission to 

‘improve’ nature is at the heart of the EM geographical utopia, a mission that was seen as essential 

in a wider effort to ‘improve’ humanity itself. However, ‘improvement’ is not a neutral term. 

Colonialist and imperialist agendas have used processes of ‘improvement’ to erase indigenous and 

minority cultures through acts of violence in order to assert the desired hegemony, usually with a 

Christian morality and a European language, often with long-lasting detrimental effects (see Berquist 

Soule, 2014). In More’s Utopia, the concerns of surplus population meant the establishment of colonies 

on areas where plenty of fallow land could be found. Utopians invited the indigenous population to 

join them; but if these people rejected this invitation by choosing to resist their assimilation, then the 

Utopians waged war against them. For Utopia, leaving land uncultivated was enough of a justification 

to wage war. This view aligns with their mission of restoring nature but also an indication of the 

influence on Utopia by the era’s colonial ambitions that often regarded newly discovered lands, at 

least initially, as being tabulae rasae with vast natural resources, exotic inhabitants and fertile virgin 

lands waiting to be occupied and improved (Evans, 2009: 35-7).  

 

 

The ruinous influence of the Garden   

 

 

By the seventeenth century there was a different, more nuanced perception of newly discovered lands’ 

natural environment and potentialities. Contesting the view that nature was simply a raw material 

waiting to be improved and utilised by a reformed humanity, these instead emphasised the corrupting 

influence that a paradisiacal environment could have on its inhabitants. One such example is Henry 

Neville’s Island of Pines (1668) that represents a unique critique of both the EM utopian and colonial 

projects, while Hammond’s (c1640) A Paradox: Proving the inhabitants of the Island, called 

Madagascar or St Lawrence to be the happiest People in the World cast serious doubts on humanity’s 



Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: 

Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 86 

ability to improve nature. St Lawrence dates this work to approximately 1640 when this name was 

used for Madagascar. The author is thought to be Hammond Walter, a surgeon who spent four months 

on the island of Madagascar working for the East India Company (Wilbur, 1945: 200). These two 

works unfold their critique by focusing on the primitivism of the people that inhabited their respective 

islands. In particular, they simultaneously replicated and subverted the attitude of Utopians with the 

view that the introduction of advanced European techniques could transform them into actual utopias 

while at the same time they questioned the European’s ability to resist the corrupting influence that 

these lands could have on their inhabitants (Stewart-Harawira, 2005: 63; Ashcroft, 2016: 33). 

 

This doubt, in both texts, is caused by the difference between the edenic environment of the islands 

and the primitivistic, and sometimes unruly, existence of their societies. On Neville’s Isle of the Pines, 

a society is established by the survivors of a shipwreck. The five castaways are one man and four 

women (three of whom are European and one who is described as a ‘black slave’), who soon produce 

offspring that diverge into different tribes. This society is based upon an agricultural economy, which 

exploits the island’s untouched natural resources via the tools and techniques that the Europeans 

possess. Alternatively, in Madagascar, the described society is an indigenous one. According to 

Hammond, the indigenous people are slothful and sluggish, neither ploughing nor cultivating their 

land but rather living in a state of indolence, basking in the extreme fertility of their island, which 

happily provides everything they need, from nutritious exotic fruits to pasture for their herds 

(Hammond, 1643: 2-8). Hammond’s work is based on the view that skills and science, what 

collectively was called ‘art’ until the seventeenth century, cannot act as a substitute for nature. Hence, 

every technological advance, such as geoponics, planting and transplanting, is inadequate when faced 

with the power of nature. This was a view that clearly denies the idea of remaking the garden through 

art, which was embodied by More’s and Bacon’s utopias, and as a consequence questions the 

European colonisers’ ability to better utilise Madagascar’s lands.  

 

While Pines Island society initially has access to tools salvaged from the shipwreck, and knowledge 

of European science and techniques, its society eventually fails. When the island is re-discovered by 

a Dutch ship, its society has regressed. Politically, it is in turmoil, with the descendants from the union 

of the man and the ‘black slave’ having rebelled against the other three tribes, which considered 

themselves superior. Economically, it is in a similar dire position having failed to improve or maintain 

its agricultural implements. To the visiting Dutch crewmen, the descendants of Pines Island seem 

closer to a primitive indigenous tribe than to advanced European settlers. As a result, the utopian 

character of Isle of Pines can be easily disputed: the initial picture of an edenic island soon transforms 

into an exercise and political critique on the perils of colonialism.  

 

Satirical takes of utopia and the island topos like Neville’s are not unique. Thomas Artus with his 

L'Isle des Hermaphrodites (1605) provided a much more jarring critique to the French monarchy and 

the corruption of the court camouflaged, not very successfully, by the utopian genre’s conventions 

such as the isle setting and the narrator traveller that returns home to inform us about this different 

society (Arthus, 1996: 12-9; Crawford, 2003: 513-42). However, the Isle of Pine’s pessimistic 

depiction of society has nudged various scholars to emphasise its dystopian quality, seeing it 

functioning solely as a critique of contemporary English society. Nonetheless, the scope of Neville’s 

criticism extends beyond the shores of England. The regressed European-in-origin society amazement 

of the knowledge and technology of its Dutch visitors is a condemnation of notions of European racial 

superiority and dreams of a Golden Age revival, a devastating answer to the debate between nature 

versus nurture. Hence both these works seem to express doubts not just about the core project of EM 

utopianism, that of restoring the Garden, but also on humanity’s ability to achieve that. Something 

validated by Hammond’s call to colonise Madagascar that is free from any notion of improving the 



Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: 

Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 87 

island’s nature or utilising science to build a new society. A century of failed colonial enterprises may 

have taught something to these writers. Hammond was an employee of the East India Company and 

Neville was a seasoned parliamentarian. Both men knew the promises and the dangers that the exotic 

islands embodied for the settlers and geographic remoteness could be extremely difficult to overcome 

with the techniques and political paradigms of their era. This was expressed by Neville through a 

condemnation of the folly of utopia and by Hammond with an embracing of colonialism that was 

abandoning the hopes of building a better society for pure conquest and exploitation.  

 

 

Robinsonades and ‘Restoring the Garden’ 
 

 

Yet, these experiences and types of criticism were not popular enough to discredit the belief in 

nature’s improvement that had been established during the EM era. As a result, fifty years after the 

publication of The Isle of Pines, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe appeared in April 1719, and the 

book’s immediate success led the author to produce a sequel called The Farther Adventures of 

Robinson Crusoe, in August 1719. With this work, Defoe created the ultimate tale of humanity’s 

heroic efforts to restore the Garden. Defoe’s hero is a man unable to fit in his own society or to meet 

the expectations of his family for a career in law, having only one wish: to become a sailor and travel 

(Downie, 1983: 74-81; Blaim, 2016: 8-16). Thus, ‘by nature inclined’ to be a sailor and to create a 

fortune, Crusoe is led by these obsessions on numerous adventures (Defoe, 1798: 5-9). It should be 

noted that before Crusoe found himself as a castaway on an island in the mouth of Oronoque, he had 

established himself successfully in Brazil as a plantation owner until, driven by his desire for (more) 

profit, he participates in a slave-trade expedition (ibid: 75, 146-173).  

 

However, the expedition ends in disaster with the ship being sunk by a storm and Crusoe finding 

himself stranded on a desert island. The empty island is the perfect utopian/colonial void, but the 

spectacle of its untamed exotic nature is enough to make Crusoe despair. With no supplies or weapons 

for hunting, Crusoe is convinced that he will starve to death. After finding shelter in a bushy tree for 

the night, he resolves to decide how to die the next day. Luckily, Crusoe wakes the next day to find 

the hull of his former ship and its precious cargo washed ashore by the storm. His will to live is 

restored and with that his desire to appropriate all the island has to offer. Crusoe salvages everything 

useful for his survival and to affirm his authority on the island’s nature, which is ‘barren… inhabited 

only by wild beasts’ (Defoe, 1798: 31). A characteristic demonstration of the power that his tools 

gave him over the island’s nature is his decision to shoot a large bird. The bird proves inedible, but 

the terrified screams of the island’s fauna on hearing the ‘first gun… since the creation of the world’ 

are a symbolic indication of Nature’s subjugation and even the end of this paradise’s innocence 

(Defoe, 1798: 73). 

 

Crusoe is alone. His loneliness, however, soon becomes a secondary aspect of his life, instead he 

focuses on conquering and transforming the island through disciplined and ritualised labour, to 

provide the amenities and way of life he had previously known. The recreation of a familiar and 

comfortable space in a hostile (usually island) environment (Blaim, 2016: 84), has inspired such a 

volume of literary works that the genre has its own category: robinsonades. Nevertheless, Crusoe is 

a Promethean figure, his actions on the island are divided between colonial and utopian desire, and 

indeed, on some level, he embodies the collapse of the borders between these two paradigms. His 

recreation of all the stages of human civilisation from initial cave-dwelling to the present reflects his 

dismantling of this pristine garden of Eden and its substitution by a heavily altered settler utopia 

(Benhayoun, 2006: 58-64). The limits of this individualistic utopia are revealed early on when Crusoe 



Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: 

Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 88 

salvages all the coins that he can find from the ship but muses how they have no value on the deserted 

island.  

 

Even if the island proves to have served repeatedly as a safe haven for pirates and to be visited by 

members of neighbouring tribes, its lands are uncultivated and thus unclaimed. Hence, Defoe’s hero 

re-energises a form of pre-political natural property when he explores the island and discovers a valley 

full of wild trees that, unattended, bear no fruit. He starts seeing himself as king and lord of the island, 

with ‘right of possession’ (Defoe, 1798: 221). Hence, after his rescue, when he establishes a colony 

there, becoming, in the end, a typical coloniser/founder, the island is recognised by all as his personal 

property. As such, robinsonades have been interpreted as being structured around a narrative of self-

discovery and healing, and their protagonist's ordeal as a transformative experience (Castro & 

Muscat, 2020; 255-9). But, Crusoe’s acts on the island and the justifications of his acts resists this 

interpretation. Instead of being transformed, Crusoe is supercharged. His thirst for accumulation 

becomes more insatiable than ever before, even if money loses its value due to the absence of society 

to barter with, everything must become useful and fruitful. It is easy to ignore this attitude as part of 

the survivalist plot of the robinsonades that highlight the ingenuity of their heroes, but recreating the 

lost amenities and comforts is the crux of his actions. His isolation leads him to withdraw to a different 

quixotic task, not to invent a new paradigm of social and political organisation but to plant there an 

already established one. Crusoe dreams to be a king not a lawgiver.  

 

Crusoe is the archetypal figure of emerging bourgeois individualism. Despite suffering loneliness, he 

never wishes to found a new society, he just wishes to establish his authority upon his island and then 

to return to the world. This desire of his to appropriate everything without any communal objective 

underlines the main difference between EM utopianism and colonialism: their opposing views on the 

issue of possession. Of course, the subjugation of nature is at the core of EM utopianism. However, 

Crusoe’s attitude is very different from that seen in More’s or Bacon’s works. With humanity 

regaining what it had lost as a result of the original sin, mastery over nature was the key to a restored 

Garden of Eden. More’s Utopians could not stand the idea of barren and uncultivated land; they 

constantly toiled the fields, achieving self-sufficiency for their community. Bacon’s Bensalemites, 

through other means, sought to accomplish the same goal. Crusoe probably worked harder than most, 

yet he never wished to satisfy anyone else's needs than his own (Blaim, 2016: 176). His only desires 

were to survive and possess. It is in this limited vision where EM utopianism and colonialism diverge. 

In Crusoe’s actions, nature’s appropriation reached its apotheosis (Hymer, 2011: 18-39). By shedding 

the concern for the public good, Crusoe was able to perfect his strategy of improving and 

appropriating nature; but, by doing so, he corrupted the re-built Garden once more. 

 

 

Conclusion 
 

 

The Early Modern utopian works examined in this paper are representations of an era dominated by 

an optimism of what humans could achieve through their toil over nature and given the ideal space, 

such as an island separated from the corrupting influence of the outside world. These works did not 

seek to discover a secret Garden of Eden that had survived, hidden from humanity since the Fall of 

humanity. Instead, the protagonists in each of these stories sought to restore or remake the Garden; 

either as a practical concern for humanity’s material condition or as a more metaphysical quest to 

return to a prelapsarian state of perfection. Firstly, it was thought this could be achieved through 

straightforward cultivation then laterally through a process of ‘improvement’ based on the skills and 

scientific developments of humanity. Yet the harsh realities of establishing a settlement on a distant 



Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: 

Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 89 

island proved that tending the land and a sense of moral superiority was not enough to create a perfect 

society. In fact, time spent on these islands exposed European colonisers as equally fallible to the sins 

they ascribed to indigenous populations: idleness, immorality and cruelty. Furthermore, the process 

of ‘improvement’ itself is not self-evident but embedded in the politics and ambitions of colonialism. 

Therefore, Early Modern utopias sought non-edenic environments to plant the hope of restoring an 

uncorrupted nature but their desire to improve nature failed to materialise anything more than the 

greed of accumulation exemplified by the robinsonade.  

 

 

Endnotes 

 
 

1. More not only used Great Britain as his inspiration for Utopia’s island setting but he was also 
an experienced London administrator who knew the intricacies of a closed ecosystem. More 

was aware of the differences between Britain and its continental neighbours. For example he 

worked on two versions of the unfinished History of King Richard III (1512-9), an English 

one aimed at domestic audiences and a Latin for European audiences. In the Latin version, 

More adds numerous explanations of the unique institutions and customs of England, such as 

the Parliament, to help his audience understand the peculiarities of the land (Logan, 2011: 

172). This makes it apparent that he understood very well the uniqueness of a culture that had 

developed in an insular environment. As for London, the city where More was born and spent 

the majority of his life, its cultural distinctiveness from the rest of the country was not only 

well-known and understood but also frequently likened to that of an island (Jütte, 2014: 204-

12). 

 

 

Bibliography 
 

 

Artus, T (1996) L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, Genève: Droz. 

 

Ashcroft, B (2016) Utopianism in Postcolonial Literatures, London: Routledge. 

 

Bacon, F (1627) Sylva Sylvarum or, a Natural Historie in Ten Centuries, London: Printed by John 

Haviland. 

 

Bacon, F (1855) The Novum organon; or, A true guide to the interpretation of nature, by Francis 

Bacon, lord Verulam, A new translation by the Rev. G.W. Kitchin, England: The University press. 

 

Bacon, F and Campanella, T (2003) The New Atlantis and the City of the Sun: Two Classic Utopias, 

New York: Dover Publications 

 

Baldacchino, G (2006) Managing the hinterland beyond: Two ideal-type strategies of economic 

development for small island territories, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 47(1), 45-60. 

 

Baldacchino, G (2012) ‘The Lure of the island: A spatial analysis of power relations’, Journal of 

marine and island cultures, 1(2): 55-62. 

 



Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: 

Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 90 

Beauchamp, G (1981) ‘The Dream of Cockaigne: some motives for the utopias of escape’, The 

Centennial Review, 25(4): 345-362. 

Benhayoun, J.E (2006) Narration, Navigation, and Colonialism, Brussels: P.I.E-Peter Lang S.A 

Berque, A (2004) ‘Milieu et identité humaine//Milieu and human identity’, Annales de géographie 

113(638): 385-399. 

Berquist Soule, E. (2014) The Bishop’s Utopia: Envisioning Improvement in Colonial Peru. 

Philadelphia: Philadelphia University Press 

Blaim, A (2016) Robinson Crusoe and His Doubles: The English Robinsonade of the Eighteenth 

Century, Frankfurt: Peter Lang. 

Bourdieu, P (1977) Outline of a theory of practice, Cambridge: CUP. 

Burton, D (2016) ‘Utopian Motifs in Early Greek Concepts of the Afterlife’, Antichthon, 50: 1-16. 

Castro de, V.B & Muscat M (2020) ‘Inverted Crusoeism: Deliberately marooning yourself on an 

island’, Shima, 14(1): 252-268. 

Carey, J (1999) The Faber book of utopias, London: Faber. 

Cowan, J.L (2011) ‘Francis Baconʼs and the Alterity of the New World’, Literature and Theology, 

25(4): 407-421. 

Crawford, K.B (2003) ‘Love, Sodomy, and Scandal: Controlling the Sexual Reputation of Henry III’, 

Journal of the history of sexuality, 12(4): 513-542. 

Defoe, D (1798) The life and most surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe, A new edition complete 

in one volume, London: Francis Power & Co. 

Downie, J.A (1983) ‘Defoe, Imperialism, and the Travel Books Reconsidered.’, The Yearbook of 

English Studies, 13: 74-81. 

Evans, K (2009) ‘How Temperance Becomes "Blood Guiltie" in The Faerie Queene’, Studies in 

English Literature, 1500-1900, 49(1): 35-66. 

Freccero, J (2003) ‘Dante’s Prologue Scene’, in R. H. Lansing (ed), Dante: the critical complex, 

London: Routledge: 63-87. 

Freitag, B (2013) Hy Brasil: the metamorphosis of an island: from cartographic error to Celtic 

Elysium, Amsterdam: Rodopi. 

Gillis, J.R (2003) ‘Taking History Offshore: Atlantis islands in European minds, 1400-1800’, in R. 

Edmond and V. Smith (eds), Islands in History and Representation, London: Routledge: 19-31 

Hay, P (2006). A phenomenology of islands. Island Studies Journal, 1(1): 19-42. 

Hammond, W (c1640) A Paradox: Proving the inhabitants of the Island, called Madagascar or St 

Lawrence to be the happiest People in the World, London: Nathaniel Butter. 



Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: 

Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 91 

Herlihy, D (1980) ‘Attitudes toward the environment in medieval society,’ in L.J. Bilsky (ed), 

Historical Ecology: Essays on Environment and social change, Washington, NY: Kennikat, 100-116. 

Hulme, P and Youngs, T (2002) ‘Introduction’, in P. Hulme and T. Youngs (eds), The Cambridge 

Companion to Travel Writing, Cambridge: CUP: 1-14. 

Hymer, S (2011) Robinson Crusoe and the secret of primitive accumulation. (Reprise)(Essay), 

Monthly Review, 63(4): 18-39. 

Italiano, F (2012) ‘Translating geographies: The Navigatio Sancti Brendani and its Venetian 

translation’, Translation studies, 5(1): 1-16. 

Jütte, D (2014) ‘Entering a city: On a lost early modern practice’, Urban History, 41(2): 204-227. 

LaFreniere, G. F (2008) The decline of nature: environmental history and the western worldview, 

London: Academica Press. 

Lehmberg, S.E (1956) ‘Sir Thomas More's Life of Pico della Mirandola’, Studies in the Renaissance, 

3: 61-74. 

Logan, G.M (2011) ‘More on tyranny: The History of King Richard III’, in G.M Logan (ed) The 

Cambridge Companion to Thomas More, Cambridge: CUP: 168-90. 

Lucchitti, I M (2013) ‘The Blasket Islands and the literary imagination’, Shima: the international 

journal of research into island cultures, 7 (1): 1-10. 

Mackley, J S (2008) The legend of St. Brendan: a comparative study of the Latin and Anglo-Norman 

versions, Leiden: Boston. 

Morakis, A (2011) ‘Thucidides and the Character of the Greek Colonisation in Sicily’, The Classical 

Quarterly, 61(2): 460-492. 

More, T [1517] (2016) Utopia, ed. G. M. Logan, Cambridge: CUP. 

Neville, H (1668) The Isle of Pines, Frankfurt: Outlook 

Parkinson, R.B (1998) The Tale of Sinuhe and other ancient Egyptian poems, 1940-1640 BC, Oxford: 

OUP. 

Parrish, J M (2010) ‘Education, Erasmian humanism and More's Utopia’, Oxford review of education, 

36(5): 589-605. 

Pellegrini, A (2002) ‘Liberià e dignità dell'uomo in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: con particolare 

riferimento alla “Oratio de Hominis Dignitate”’, Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, 58(4): 801-828. 

Peltonen, M (1992) ‘Politics and science: Francis Bacon and the true greatness of states’, The 

Historical Journal, 35(2): 279–305. 

Perfetti, S (2000) Aristotle’s Zoology and its Renaissance Commentators, 1501-1601, Leuven: 

Leuven University Press. 



Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: 

Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 92 

Pleij, H (2001) Dreaming of Cockaigne: medieval fantasies of the perfect life, New York: Columbia 

University Press. 

Pohl, N (2006) Women, space, and utopia, 1600-1800, Aldershot: Ashgate. 

Ratter, B.M.W (2018) Geography of small islands: outposts of globalisation, Cham: Springer. 

Rebhorn, W.A (1976) ‘Thomas More's Enclosed Garden: Utopia and Renaissance Humanism’, 

English Literary Renaissance, 6(2): 140-155. 

Sargent, L.T (1994) ‘The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited’, Utopian Studies, 5(1): 1-37. 

Séguy, J (2014) ‘A Sociology of Imagined Societies: Monasticism and Utopia’, in I. Jonveaux, E. 

Pace and S. Palmisano (eds), Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion: Sociology and 

Monasticism, between Innovation and Tradition, vol. 5, Leiden: Brill: 284-319. 

Shakespeare, W (2008) The Complete Works, London: RSC. 

Slack, P (2014) The Invention of Improvement: Information and Material Progress in Seventeenth-

Century England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Stewart-Harawira, M (2005) The new imperial order: indigenous responses to globalization, London: 

Zed Books. 

Stimac, J (2020) “The City of Truth”: A Closer Look at Bartolomeo Del Bene’s Civitas veri sive 

morum [online] available at: https://www.prphbooks.com/blog/del-bene-civitas-veri last accessed 20 

March 2020 

Thomas, K (1984) Man and the natural world: changing attitudes in England, 1500-1800, 

Harmondsworth: Penguin. 

Wallace, A.F.C (1982) The social context of innovation: bureaucrats, families, and heroes in the 

early Industrial Revolution, as foreseen in Bacon's New Atlantis, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton 

University Press. 

Whitney, C (1989) ‘Francis Bacon's Instauratio: Dominion of and over Humanity’, Journal of the 

History of Ideas, 50(3): 371-390. 

Wilbur, M E (1945) The East India Company and the British Empire in the Far East, New York: 

R.R. Smith. 

 

 

Sotirios Triantafyllos holds a Dphil in History from the University of Oxford on the subject of early 

modern intellectual history. He has published articles in academic journals and websites on subjects 

such as early modern utopianism, Cli-Fi, biodystopia, and intellectual history. His book Topos in 

Utopia: The Social and Cultural Conception of Space in Early Modern Utopias is due to be published 

in 2021. 

https://www.prphbooks.com/blog/del-bene-civitas-veri