Chapter 7: Colonial America (1607–1650)

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)