Editor-in-Chief Atul Singh and FOI Senior Partner Glenn Carle, a retired CIA officer who now advises companies, governments and organizations on geopolitical risk, examine how the Mayflower continues to shape American identity more than four centuries after it crossed the Atlantic. They move beyond the familiar story of the Pilgrims to explore the role of national mythology, the forces that brought English settlers to North America and the internal contradictions that have defined the United States from its earliest days. Can a nation preserve a shared identity while confronting the darker aspects of its own history?

Why nations need founding myths

Atul and Glenn begin by asking why societies need shared stories about their origins. Every successful nation depends on a broadly accepted cultural mythology, Glenn says, that gives people a common sense of identity and purpose. Such narratives inevitably simplify history and exclude certain voices, yet they help challengers to the culture define themselves.

For generations, the traditional American story centered on English settlers arriving in what they viewed as an empty wilderness prepared by Providence for a chosen people. Atul explains that this belief rested in part on the European legal doctrine of terra nullius, which held that land not cultivated or owned according to European standards could be treated as effectively unoccupied. Native peoples, whose societies followed different traditions, were therefore denied the same political standing as European settlers.

The speakers argue that this founding narrative is increasingly contested today. Rather than accepting simple celebrations or outright condemnations of the past, they seek to understand why the story emerged in the first place and why it proved so influential.

The Mayflower was the product of a changing world

Atul and Glenn treat the Mayflower as one of many sweeping global transformations, not an isolated American event. Atul traces the European voyages of exploration to the search for Asian trade routes after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople disrupted commercial networks. The resulting expansion reshaped Europe and even societies as distant as China and India through new flows of silver, goods and agricultural products.

Religion proved equally important. Atul outlines the Protestant Reformation that followed Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, describing how religious conflict transformed European politics for more than a century. In England, King Henry VIII’s break with Rome created the Church of England, yet some Protestants believed the reforms had not gone far enough. These Puritans sought to purify Christianity of what they regarded as lingering Catholic practices and eventually faced persecution.

Glenn explains that many first fled to the Netherlands before deciding to seek a new life across the Atlantic. Their voyage was not solely a search for religious freedom. Entrepreneurs financed the expedition as a commercial venture, expecting settlers to produce valuable resources while eventually earning land of their own after years of indentured labor. The Mayflower therefore emerged from an intersection of faith, commerce and empire rather than following a single motive.

Government by consent grows from uncertainty

Glenn illustrates the complexity of early English colonization through the story of his ancestor Stephen Hopkins, whose earlier voyage aboard the Sea Venture ended in a shipwreck on Bermuda. Hopkins challenged the governor’s authority by arguing that the colony’s legal charter no longer applied outside Virginia, an act of mutiny that nearly cost him his life.

When Hopkins later joined the Mayflower expedition, the settlers encountered a similar constitutional dilemma after landing outside the territory covered by their charter. Roughly half the passengers were religious Puritans while the remainder were adventurers simply seeking better opportunities. Faced with uncertainty and wary of internal division, the settlers drafted the Mayflower Compact to establish a framework of self-government before coming ashore.

This agreement became one of the earliest expressions of government by consent in English North America. Although written to maintain order, the compact also reflected broader Protestant ideas about individual responsibility, questioning authority and limiting arbitrary power. Atul and Glenn suggest that these principles later found expression in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

Liberty and exclusion grow side by side

The ideals associated with the Mayflower developed alongside violence and exclusion. Before the settlers arrived, epidemics introduced from Europe had devastated indigenous communities across much of the New England coastline, leaving abandoned villages and cultivated farmland. The surviving tribes often viewed the newcomers as potential allies against rival peoples.

This initial cooperation eventually gave way to conflict. Atul points to the Pequot War (1636–1638) and later King Philip’s War (1675–1678) as examples of extraordinary brutality, while noting that many settlers regarded Native peoples as enemies beyond the boundaries of their moral community. Glenn acknowledges the destructive consequences of these wars but contends that they arose from escalating competition, fear and failures of leadership rather than from a predetermined policy of extermination.

A complicated inheritance

The discussion concludes by considering how these early experiences continue to influence American society. Glenn argues that the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) tradition established enduring assumptions about individual rights, skepticism toward authority and civic organization that extend well beyond the descendants of the original settlers. Successive generations of immigrants entered institutions already shaped by those WASP cultural norms.

Simultaneously, Atul and Glenn recognize that the nation’s founding story remains incomplete unless it also acknowledges dispossession, conquest and competing historical memories. America’s origins are more nuanced than strict celebration or condemnation. Instead, they present an inheritance filled with both achievements and contradictions. Understanding that complexity, they say, forms a stronger foundation for national identity than either mythmaking or historical erasure alone.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]