Colonial Beginnings to 1690

1. Colonial Beginnings to 1690 Part 1 English Settlement of New England, the Mid Atlantic Region and The South

2. Introduction • Although the English were more than century behind the Spanish and Portuguese in establishing permanent colonies in the Americas, in the latter half of the 16th century a number of factors combined to make colonization plausible. • First among these was a growing rivalry with Spain itself. Although they had been nominal allies through the first half of the 1500s, the English Reformation, a lengthy economic boom, and a rising sense of national destiny bolstered the English to challenge Spain for a piece of America. • Colonization of America was promoted in England as a necessity for economic competition with Spain, as well as a cure for several social issues then emerging in England.

3. Introduction • The earliest English attempts at colonization were miserable failures. In 1585, the flamboyant Sir Walter Raleigh successfully landed a colonizing party at Roanoke Island, but they had vanished upon his return the following year. • Finally, in 1607, a colony was established at what would become Jamestown, Virginia.

4. English settlement of New England, the Mid-Atlantic region, and the South • The earliest years of the Jamestown colony were a struggle- the pitiful band nearly starved to death in the winter of 1609-10. But fresh colonists from England and a change in command put the colony back on track to survive. • The long-term permanence of the colony was assured when they developed a viable commodity in tobacco, and, aside of a devastating war with the Powhatan Indians in 1622, their numbers grew substantially through the 1620s and 1630s. • Meanwhile, to the north, another group of Englishmen had undertaken a colonial venture inspired by much different circumstances.

5. New England • Religious tensions were increasingly divisive in England through the first decades of the 1600s. A schism developed in the Church of England, producing a sect called the Puritans, because their aim was to “purify” Anglicanism of the remaining vestiges of Catholicism. • As life became more untenable for the Puritan dissenters, fleeing England was perceived as necessary for religious freedom. The earliest of these, the famous “Pilgrims” made their way to Plymouth Rock in 1620, after a settlement in Holland had to be abandoned. • Back in England, the religious schism erupted into civil war, and through the 1630s and 1640s, a large contingent of Puritans left England to establish a series of colonies known collectively as New England.

6. New England • Colonization in New England began in earnest in 1630, when 1000 Puritans fled to America to found the Massachusetts Bay Company. Their pious and enigmatic leader John Winthrop famously proclaimed the colony “as a City upon a Hill”- in his view, a beacon shining the light of true religious faith to England and the world. • Another 25,000 colonists would join the initial group in New England over the next dozen years. • Religious disputes produced several splinter colonies in the first decade, as in the case of Roger Williams, a Separatist with radical views who was banished from the Bay Colony, and founded Rhode Island in 1636. • Another group, led by Reverend Thomas Hooker, moved westward into the Connecticut River valley- overrunning the already established outpost at Hartford.

7. New England • In the long scope of history, several aspects of early New England echo through American history- • The Plymouth Pilgrims’ attempted establishment of an ordered, limited government with the Mayflower Compact • the Puritans’ piety and belief in the divine providence of the English presence in America- “American exceptionalism” • Rhode Island’s early experiment with complete religious toleration • Anne Hutchinson’s unbendable individualism • The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the first constitutional government • The development of self-rule and representative democracy in colonial legislatures • A legacy of commerce and industry • Socio-cultural focus on self-reliance, self-improvement, thrift, and hard work

8. Mid-Atlantic • As discussed in reference to French Canada, England was not the only European nation looking to colonize in eastern North America. The Dutch had also established a presence along the eastern seaboard to capitalize on the market for American furs. • The Dutch built a post far up the Hudson River valley in 1614, establishing a shipping point on the Atlantic in 1624, with the founding of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. • New Netherlands, however, was never a serious concern for its proprietors, and its numbers remained small compared to the throngs of New England. • By mid-century, the English were poised to absorb the Dutch holdings, and did so in 1664, renaming the colony New York. The English established New Jersey in the same year, and inherited Delaware- a sparsely populated colony previously controlled by the Dutch, who themselves had wrested it from Swedish colonists a decade prior. (New Sweden was founded 1638).

9. Mid-Atlantic • The last of the Mid-Atlantic colonies to be founded was Pennsylvania, a huge tract of fertile land given by the English crown to William Penn, in payment for a debt owed his father. • As proprietor, William Penn imbued Pennsylvania’s early years with high-minded principles congruent with his Quaker faith. Formally launched in 1681, Pennsylvania promised total religious freedom, comparatively progressive governance, and became a model for the possibilities of peaceful Anglo/Indian relations. • Pennsylvania grew rapidly- 2500 hundred people in the first two years, and ranking third in population among English colonies by 1700- behind only Virginia and Massachusetts

10. Mid-Atlantic • By 1700, the 4 Mid-Atlantic, or “Middle” colonies- New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania- were culturally as well as geographically in the center of Anglo-America- straddling the divide between the ways of life in New England, and the very different development of the southern colonies.

11. The South • As mentioned, the first English settlement at Jamestown got off to an unflattering start, but recovered and expanded in the decades after the successful introduction of tobacco. • Immigration to Virginia was aided tremendously by the lure of land. Following its designation as a royal colony in 1624, colonists flocked to Virginia to take advantage of these “headright” land grants. • The tobacco economy also required a substantial labor force- filled initially with a mix of Indian slaves, indentured servants, and beginning in 1619, imported slaves from Africa.

12. The South • In 1634, Maryland was founded as a proprietary colony by Lord Baltimore, ostensibly as a haven for English Catholics. • Marylanders quickly followed the lead of Virginia, establishing sprawling tobacco plantations throughout the tidewater Chesapeake.

13. The South • As the Virginia population grew, they spread both westward and further to the south- founding what is now North Carolina in 1653. Although some tobacco was grown there, naval stores (pitch, tar, and turpentine used in shipbuilding) also emerged as a viable commodity. • The Carolina colony was formally established in 1670- a venture of Barbadian planters and merchants. After some years of trial and error, the colonists in Carolina began successfully exporting rice, which quickly became the primary commodity. • Unlike in the Chesapeake where early on there was some ambiguity in the status and social mobility of servants and slaves, the Carolinians used un-free African labor exclusively, holding slaves and their descendants as property (chattel) in perpetuity. • The common thread for most of the south through the early colonial period was the economic dependence on single cash crops, and the labor systems that developed with it.

14. The South • The southernmost colony was Georgia, the last of the 13 English colonies to be established. Initially conceived as a buffer between Carolina and the Spanish in Florida, Georgia did not allow slavery for almost 20 years from its founding in 1733. • As the Spanish threat abated, Georgians followed South Carolina in establishing large plantations for the cultivation of rice, along with some indigo, and long-staple cotton.