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)