The French were more interested in trade, whereas the Spanish were interested in gold and land. They wanted to conquer and spread Christianity. In 1604, Samuel de Champlain left Le Havre to Québec. Acadia is the region in North West Canada.
French and Indian War (1754-1763): A lot of tribes befriended the French, because the French were allies with several of them. They became enemies of the allied tribe of the British à The Last of the Mohicans (several books and movies). Eventually, by 1763, the British took control of Canada, a lot of French were expelled, either killed or sent in ships that were refused on the West Coast so they ended up in Louisiana. There was a treaty signed: the Treaty of Paris in 1763.
The Dutch were known as fabulous merchants. They were establishing trading posts. In 1609, Henry Hudson (English) explored the New York region for the Dutch Wes India Company. They settled throughout NYC. They settled on the islands around downtown Manhattan. They decided to build high walls to protect their city from pirates and locals. Today, it’s called Wall Street. There was up to 18 different languages spoken. This is a polyglot tradition (more than 200 spoken languages in NY today).
There were Swedish settlements as far back as the late 1630’s. Their legacy is the log cabin: it became a symbol for early pioneers and the early constructions come from the Swedish.
The British were conquerors and they won out. Their attitude was all or nothing. Sir Walter Raleigh did some exploring for Queen Elizabeth in 1585 in North Carolina. They struggled for two years and when the other ships arrived, they never found them. They are known as The Lost Colony.
A decade later, in 1606, King James had succeeded Queen Elizabeth the 1st (her nephew) and he decided with investors Virginia Company of London and Plymouth Company to establish a colony. They sailed in West Virginia in a town later called Jamestown and established a port in 1607. They wanted to find gold and silver. It’s a hostile environment and the colonists of Jamestown struggled and most of them died. By 1624, 13 hundred people had survived). John Smith was deemed as the leader of the colony. He was a military leader, very harsh. He traded a lot with the neighboring tribes: corn, sweet potatoes and tobacco. He kept a diary and wrote in the 3rd person. Pocahontas was a key figure, was the daughter of chief Powatan. She was 11 or 12 and was taken prisoner by the colonists. While she lived with them, she married John Rolfe and had a son with him. They went to England and Pocahontas caught small pox and died in England. John Rolfe was able to raise tobacco and crossed tobacco with other types of plants; it became the New World’s first viable cash crop. In 1613, there were advertisements for that in British papers.
By 1640, the colony was shipping 3 millions pounds of tobacco a year to England.
As the colony was expanding, there was another settlement: Williamsburg (Virginia). In 1619, there was the first elective legislative body assembled. Virginia became very lucrative (there were already houses built with bricks, which were rare and expansive). In the same year, there was a boatload of men and women (mainly 90 women) who were sold to be married for 120 pounds of tobacco each. During that year, there was a Dutch ship (The White Lion) brought 20 enslaved African Americans to Jamestown. They traded them for supplies. By 1670, there weren’t very many African slaves. The British were not interested in black workers because of a prejudice. They cleaned out their jail systems: they were either executed or sent to America. It was better to have a white British subject than a black slave. They came up with the system of indenture: a contract where someone in the colony would pay for the voyage of another person in exchange of 5, 7 to 11 years of service. At the end of their adventure, they had land. The first slaves in the colonies were white and called indenture servants. At the end of the service contract, the master had to give them a house and money. But in reality, a lot of them died because they were badly treated. It wasn’t worth it for the masters anymore.
That is why the buying and selling of slaves didn’t become important until 1676. There was a rebellion: Nathanial Bacon owned a little bit of land but wasn’t very prosperous. Along with the few slaves and other small planters, he waged war. They were looking for new lands and took them from the Native Americans. They fought back: there were many small Indian raids on British farmers. Nathanial Bacon didn’t like that and sought help from the local government. Governor Buckley refused to follow him so Bacon and others rebelled against the British government. This is the first example of anti-authority sentiment in America.
They marched to the Capitol in Williamsburg and burnt it. The British authority decided they needed more controllable work forced. They didn’t like the fact that the black and white people were on the same side against them. This was the first major rebellion in the colonies against the British government.
After that year, the British decided to import West African slaves brought over by Dutch traders. They introduced slavery into the US.
While the settlements were struggling to survive, there was another colony that was founded in December of 1620: a protestant reformation played a huge part in the founding of this colony of North. After the split from the Catholic Church with Henry the 8th, they raised further questions about religious reforms. Many of these members believed there was still a lot of corruption within the Catholic Church: they were the Puritans (Separatists) who wanted to purify the Church. They were considered as very radical people. Many of them sailed in Mayflower (in Plymouth). There were 102 men, women and children. A little bit more of half of them were puritans.
The Virginia Company had boundaries in North Carolina but because of the weather, they landed in Plymouth, in the Massachusetts Bay Area: Mayflower Compact. They decided to sign an agreement of “self government”. This established the colony, which was to be free of English Law. Within this compact, they’d come up with their own government and live by their own laws.
They had trouble, just like the people in Jamestown. It was cold and the elements were very harsh. After several months, half of the settlers survived after only a few months because of shortage of food and diseases. Local representatives from the communities brought them food. Squanto had been taken prisoner by a British sea captain and learned the language. He escaped and found his tribe back. He was the one to communicate between the colony and the tribe. He brought them food and showed them how to plant (squash, corn) and different hunting methods (fishing, etc). This is where Thanksgiving comes from. There was a meal shared by both the colonists and the Native people. The first officially celebrated Thanksgiving was first moved to the last Thursday of November by Roosevelt in the 20th Century.
By 1643 the population had jumped to more than 16 thousand people.
New England’s Puritans:
They came to America to escape religious persecution. They were not tolerant people. They thought having different cults was not good for a society, which had to be ordered. They believed they possessed the truth. They punished a lot of people who were different by executing or banishing them.
Religion in the English Colonies:
The Puritans were extremely hard workers; they changed the countryside. They cultivated fields (barley, wheat and corn). They began to make profits and were able to repay the Virginia Company of London for their ship. They paid all their debts back to London. Their financial success got back to Europe and many people wanted to come to the New World.
They were successful but they transformed the land. The Native Americans didn’t like that. They eliminated the Native American communities.
There were several men in the English colonies:
- William Penn was a Quaker: they believed the answer was in the human soul and they would wait in groups for one of them to be taken by God’s spirit; people would physically shake. He wanted to start his own colony with religious freedom. He started the State of Pennsylvania
- Roger Williams came to the Massachusetts Bay in 1631; he was a radical and a troublemaker. He established Providence, Rhode Island. He believed in religious freedom and tolerance
- Cotton Mather was born in Boston in 1663; he is known for his connections with the Salem Witch trials. He was a very strict Pasteur and a loyalist patriot.
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