Christian Zavardino

I study the intersection of religion and empire in the early modern English Atlantic world. I am particularly interested in the ways in which the strength of Protestantism as an ideological undercurrent in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English colonies in the Americas contributed to the emergence of imperial rivalries with Catholic European powers, to officials' treatment of nonconformists and ethnic minorities within the colonies, and to evangelization efforts. My research also examines the relationship among these dissenters themselves and how the Crown managed religious diversity in its overseas territories.