The Arrival of the English

• England arrived 5 years after Spain and John Cabot led the exploration

The Commercial Incentive

• English wanted to find a new place where they could settle

• Enclosure acts caused many people to become homeless because they were getting evicted from their land & caused there to be less crops grown, so people were dying

• Merchant capitalists began profiting from foreign trade, mainly trading cloth

• Mercantillism arose

• Richard Hakluyt argued that colonies could create new markets for English goods but also alleviate poverty and unemployment

The Religious Incentive

• Protestant reformation in Europe

• English reformation was when King Henry VIII was mad that the pope wouldnt let him divorce his wife becuase she couldnt birth a boy, so he broke ties with the catholic church

• Protestants became Puritans because they hoped to “purify” the church

• Quakers alllowed women to serve as preachers which was not possible in the Catholic church

• People began looking for other places to go besides England because they didnt like the way the monarchy was dealing with religion

The English in Ireland

• English firt only controled small settlements around Dublin, but soon conquered the whole island

  • There were around 1 million people living here at the time who were loyal to the catholic church and spoke Galic and lived in a way that the english consided “beast” llike

• Sir Humphrey Gilbert established the first British colony in the New World in Newfoundland that ended up being unsuccessful

• English established plantations in their colonies

• In ireland, the english tried to form a completely new society and push out the native Irish people

The French and the Dutch in America

• French founded its first permanent colony in Quebec and formed slowly because few French wanted to leave France

• Coureurs de Bois were French fur traders and trappers who lived deep in the woods and traded and they often married Native American women 

• Dutch became free from Spanish rule and started trading with lots of people and expanding their land

• Dutch thought they found a way across the pacific because they were able to get far through a large river in New York

• Established themselves in New York and established permanent trading posts on the Hudson river

• New York colony was loosely united and didnt have a strong government so it didnt last long

The First English Settlements

• Jamestown, Virginia in 1607

• English had been trying to make colonies in the americas, but Jamestown was the most successful

• English “sea dogs” were finally able to defeat spanish ships, so they were more comfortable to go to the americas

• The Spanish Armada was fleets of ships that traveled to England to try and get them to rejoin the Catholic Church, but were defeated by the Enlgish

• Sir Humphry gilbert led an expidition to the new world and went south along the coast, but a storm sunk his ship and he was lost at sea

Roanoke

• A group of explorers were sent out to the americas and they brought two native americans back with them to england, one being called Roanoke

• Plymoth merchants colonized the north and london group colonized the south

The Early Chesapeake

• London company launched a colonizing expedition to Virginia, the boats were the Discovery, Susan Constant, and the Godspeed

Colonists and Native Americans

• 104 men survived the journey and set up Jamestown colony on a Peninsula

• Chose the location becuase it was low, swampy and surrounded by thick woods making it hard for Native Americans to get to them

• Colonists vulnerable to diseases which were common in the marshes

• Colonists focused on getting gold instead of growing food and building 

• Colony only survived becuase the native americans helped them make canoes for the rivers and how to grow crops

• Europeans saw Native Americans as “savages” 

• Many Native American tribes lived in virginia, or what they called Tsenacommacah

• Only 38 men were left out of the 144 after only a few months

Reorganization and Expansion

• The London Company was renamed to the Virginia company and to get more people to come over, they would give free land to anyone who came

• In 1610, in a period known as the “starving time”, people had to eat anything they could find because of how little food they had

• Lord De La Warr was the colonies first governor

• People tried leaving Jamestown because of the harsh conditions, but as they wer leaving, they raninto Lord De La Warr and ship that were bringing them supplies, so they turned back and stayed

• New settlements began popping up along the James river

• Started growing Tobacco and it was the first profitable crop in Jamestown

• Lord De La Warr imposed harsh and rigid discipline on the colony but soon Governor Dale thought that if people had better incentives to work, they were more likely o do it, so he permitted private ownership and cultivation of land

Tobacco

• Indigenous Cubans were seen smoking tobaco cigars by Columbus

• By the 1600s, tobaccos was already in Europe

• King James told Europeans not to smoke tobacco

• John Rolfe first starte growing tobacco in Jamestown which spread and ended up transforming Chesapeake society

• Farmers began moving into Native American territory to grow tobacco whcih they considered their own

Expansion

• The Headright system was a campaign launched to attract people to come to the conoly by giving settlers fifty acre grants of land and it encouraged families to travel togther becuase it was 50 acres per person

• The House of Burgesses was where the first meeting of an elected legislature was in what would be the United States

• A dutch ship brought the first enslaved africans to the english colonies

• Sir Thomas Dale kidnapped Pocahontas and converted her to Christianity and she married John Rolfe

• Jamestown became controled by the crown after it went bankrupt

Exchanges of Agricultural Technology

• Europeans believed they were greatly superior & that they were more technologically advanced

• Agricultural techniques - native american techniques borrowed by the europeans and allowed their colony to survive

• Mainly grew corn which was new to the Europeans and learned the advantages of growing beans next to corn

Maryland and the Calverts

• Different than in virginia

• George Calvert started the Maryland colony as a retreat for Catholics who felt oppressed by the anglican establishment in england

• Propritary Rule- Calvert’s son, Cecilius was granted an area in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia and Maryland and was told he could rule over it as long as he paid an annual fee to the crown. 

• Marylanders experienced no assaults by Native Americans unlike the Virginians

• Calverts invested a lot into Maryland colony and needed to attract people to make it profitable, so they were Religiously Tolerant 

• Tensions between catholic minority and Protestant majority

  • Protestants once barred catholics from voting and repealed the Toleration act

• Frequent violence in the colony

• Maryland adopted headright system after a servere labor shortage

• Became center of tobacco cultivation

Turbulent Virginia

• Population and complexity were increasing

• Growing more politically contentious as people began to fight over laws

• Virginias Westward Expansion - Virgianians moved further west into NA land, border conflicts grew more frequent and tension in the colony revolved maily around what to do about it

• Sir William Berkeley, who was sent to Virginia by the King, controlled the government and opened up the western interior of virginia

• Berkeley’s Autocratic Rule - Sir William Berkeley started to take full control over the government and only allowed powerful people to vote in infrequent elections. Additionally, the counties in the colony each had two representatives even though some had more people than others

• Many indentured servants who had served their time moved around the colony working, begging, or stealing

Bacon’s Rebellion

• Nathaniel Bacon, a wealthy graduate of Cambridge, came to virginia and purchased farmin the west and was on the governor’s council

• Backcountry grievances - people who lived in the backcountry were in constant danger of Native Americans becuase they were technically on their land

• Bacon did not like how Berkeley did not allow people into the governor’s council and how he didnt allow Bacon access toNative American fur trade

• Bacon’s Rebellion- In 1675 Doeg Indians were angry about the Europeans taking their land, so they attacked and the Europeans attacked back not only that tribe, but also another one close by. Bacon asked for help from Berkeley, and he refused, and Bacon still attacked the Native Americans. Instead of stopping, he continued on and almost ended up taking over Virginia but then he died suddenly. 

• Significance of Bacon’s Rebellion- part of struggle to define Native American and European lands in Virginia, how unwilling Europeans were to follow the rules of what land agreements they made, and how unwilling Native Americans were to give up their land

The Growth of New England

Religious Seperation- many people in engalnd were periodically imprisioned and even executed for defying the government and the Church, so many people wanted to leave