Important Keywords:

• Puritans: A group of religious dissidents who came to the New World so they would have a location to establish a “purer” church than the one that existed in England.

• Separatists: A religious group that also opposed the Church of England; this group first went to Holland, and then some went on to the Americas.

• Indentured servants: Individuals who exchanged compulsory service for free passage to the American colonies.

Key Timeline

• 1534–1535: French adventurers explore the St. Lawrence River

• 1607: The English settle in Jamestown

• 1619: Virginia establishes House of Burgesses (first colonial legislature)

• 1620: Plymouth colony founded

• 1629: Massachusetts Bay Colony founded

• 1634: Maryland colony founded

• 1636: Roger Williams expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony and settles in Providence, Rhode Island; Connecticut founded by John Hooker

• 1642: City of Montreal founded by the French

New France

• Jacques Cartier explored St. Lawrence River in the 1530s — what is now known as Canada (New France).

• Samuel de Champlain colonized Canada in the 1600s.

  • Champlain, the "Father of New France," founded Quebec in 1608.

• Canada never attracted many French colonists.

  • Most Ancient Régime French did not want to live in a wilderness with sometimes hostile Native Americans in the winter.

  • The king forbade Protestant Huguenots from moving to New France.

  • Although farming communities developed along the St. Lawrence River, Catholic missionaries, fur traders, and soldiers dominated New France.

• Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet discovered the upper Mississippi River.

  • Robert La Salle built forts along the Mississippi River and Great Lakes to claim the Mississippi River Valley for France.

• French and Native Americans got along better than the English and Dutch.

  • French farmers didn't need much land, avoiding land disputes with Native Americans.

  • The French wanted to convert Native Americans to Christianity and trade furs.

  • French traders and explorers married Native Americans and followed their customs.

  • Native American culture was often studied by self-sacrificing Jesuit missionaries.

    • As a result, the Jesuit missions were great successes.

  • Jesuits outperformed Franciscans in Spanish North America due to Spanish forced labor laws.

  • With the notable exception of the Iroquois Confederacy, most Native American tribes allied with the French in their wars with the British in the 17th and 18th centuries.

• In 1609, Henry Hudson explored the Hudson River.

  • He established the first Dutch trading posts in Manhattan and Albany.

    • Here the Dutch bartered for beaver pelts.

• In 1625, Manhattan became New Amsterdam.

  • The Dutch prospered in the fur trade, but New Netherland never attracted many settlers and was surrounded by hostile Native American tribes.

  • The Dutch colony fell to England's Royal Navy.

• In 1664, New York was born when New Amsterdam surrendered to an English fleet.

English Interest in America

• The Church of England became the state church of England during the 16th-century English Reformation.

  • The Church of England maintained a Catholic episcopal structure and liturgical practices despite rejecting the Pope's spiritual authority and some Roman Catholic doctrines.

• English Puritans, who followed Calvin's more radical Protestantism, hated the Church of England's Catholic tendencies.

  • Under Elizabeth I’s reign, Puritans could worship as they pleased.

  • After James I became king, the government started persecuting Puritans.

  • By the 1620s and 1630s, many Puritans fled to America.

• The Separatists were Calvinists who rejected the Church of England.

  • One group of Separatists moved to the Netherlands hoping for religious freedom but became disillusioned as their children blended in with their Dutch neighbors.

Jamestown

• In 1606, King James I granted the London Company a charter to colonize North America.

  • This joint-stock company's investors hoped to profit from New World natural resources.

• In 1607, Jamestown was founded by a London Company expedition.

  • Jamestown was swampy and unhealthy, and disease and the adventurers' distaste for agriculture caused the Starving Time, which killed almost two-thirds of the population.

  • The struggling colony was only saved by Captain John Smith's leadership.

• Relations with the nearby Native American Powhatan Confederacy were difficult.

  • At one point, Smith was captured by the Powhatans and later claimed that he had been saved from execution by Pocahontas, the daughter of the chief.

  • Smith traded with the Powhatans, sustaining Jamestown.

  • Pocahontas later married John Rolfe, one of the ablest English settlers.

  • Rolfe's systematization of tobacco cultivation shaped Virginia's history.

  • The colony prospered from tobacco, a lucrative cash crop.

• Virginia tobacco plantations initially employed indentured servants.

  • In 1619, a passing Dutch ship paid for a load of supplies with 19 African slaves.

  • Baptized slaves were indentured servants and freed after a period of service.

  • More Africans were brought to English America, and Southern colonies relied on slavery.

Massachusetts

• The London Company granted a charter to the Separatists who were unhappy in the Netherlands.

• In 1620, a group of Separatists, led by William Bradford, set sail on the Mayflower — the Pilgrims.

• After a stormy voyage, the Pilgrims made landfall at Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

  • Before landing at Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrim men drafted and signed the Mayflower Compact, which established a representative government for the new colony.

  • The Pilgrims faced many hardships and deaths due to their late arrival and unfamiliarity with their new environment.

  • Samoset and Squanto helped the Pilgrims' Plymouth colony become self-sufficient.

  • In 1691, Plymouth was merged into the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

• John Winthrop called America a "city upon a hill" where they hoped to build a godly commonwealth.

• In 1629, a large, well-financed, and well-organized expedition sailed to Massachusetts.

  • They suffered no “starving times” and soon were joined by thousands more settlers.

• By 1640, over 20,000 people had moved to Massachusetts, a thriving colony with many chartered towns like Boston and Salem.

  • Besides farming, settlers did lumbering, shipbuilding, and fishing.

• Most colonists were Puritans, and only freemen who belonged to a Puritan congregation could vote.

  • The elected legislature was called the General Court.

  • In 1629, John Winthrop became governor for 20 years.

• Anne Hutchinson challenged most of the colony's ministers' teaching authority by believing she and others could receive direct revelations from the Holy Spirit.

  • This unorthodox position attracted the attention of Governor Winthrop

  • After a trial, Hutchinson and her family moved to Rhode Island.

• Roger Williams was expelled from Massachusetts for criticizing religion.

  • He settled in Rhode Island, a theologically freer colony.

• Thomas Hooker and John Davenport founded settlements that became Connecticut.

New Southern Colonies

• In 1632, King Charles I granted the Calverts a charter to found Maryland.

  • The Calverts hoped Maryland would shelter persecuted English Catholics.

  • Maryland became a place where Catholics could worship in peace.

• In the 1660s, King Charles II gave Carolina, which later split into North and South Carolina, to a group of wealthy people.

• The economies of Maryland and the Carolinas were based on slave labor on plantations.

Effects of European Settlement

• The diseases inadvertently brought by the Europeans devastated the Native Americans.

• The Pilgrims were able to settle in Plymouth because the natives had died from diseases brought by earlier visitors.

• European plants and animals changed North America's ecology.

• An Atlantic slave trade centered on the Caribbean and South America fueled Southern labor needs.

• The English colonies' self-government and religious freedom made them distinct from Europe and the rest of the world.

Chapter 8: British Empire in America: Growth and Conflict (1650–1750)