H eather M artel . Deadly Virtue

Sixteenth-century colonial enterprises continue to occupy a marginal place in the historiography and teaching surveys of early America. Heather Martel’s Deadly Virtue: Fort Caroline and the Early Protestant Roots of American Whiteness is a welcome addition to the literature on the failed French Huguenot attempt to settle Florida in the early 1560s and some of the transnational consequences of the violent destruction of the colony by the Spanish in 1565. Martel’s work brings refreshing insights to this historical episode through a staunch focus on sexuality, gender, and identity, and a commitment to unraveling the long-term roots of Protestant settler-colonialism and the ultimate rise of a racialized and cis-patriarchal society in English North America. As the book’s subtitle suggests, the significance of the French disaster in Florida primarily resides, for Martel, in its role as a cautionary tale that contributed to the solidification of a definition of Protestant “virtue” that ought...

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