Coming to the New World

1. Coming to the New World

2. Motivation for Exploration- 1400s • To find a Sea Route to Asia, by shortest distance – Northwest Passage across the Atlantic • Trade: spices and silk • To Spread Christianity

3. Reasons to Establish Colonies Overseas • To add to the Wealth and Power of the home country-Mercantilism • To gain Raw Materials • 1500s – gold and silver (Spain) • 1600s – fur pelts (French) • To sell their own manufactured goods, such as cloth, lace, pots, dished, books, • By the 1600’s the English and Spanish were competing for overseas territory

4. Colonial Push Factors • Economics: hunger, poverty, homelessness, lack of opportunity • Many people were willing to risk it all for a fresh start in a new place • Religious Intolerance in home country • If a person did not conform to teachings of official state church, they were often persecuted • English Separatists traveled to Netherlands because of persecution in England; later traveled to New World as Pilgrims

5. Colonial Pull Factors • Belief that America was a land of abundance • Open land, food, hunting… • Religious Freedom • Pilgrims travel to America in hopes of religious freedom • The Pilgrims were followed by other non-conformists: Puritans, Quakers, Catholics, Jews, Baptists, and others

6. Force • Africans kidnapped and forced to come to the New World (in chains) • Portuguese 1st to enslave the Africans (1444) • 1500s – Spanish colonists importing large numbers of Africans to work on sugar plantations in the West Indies • 1619 – a few Africans brought to English Colony of Virginia and sold as servants • Late 1600s – thousands of captive Africans brought into colonies each year and sold into slavery