Colonial history of the United States

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 This article is part of the
History of the United States series.
"Colonial History of the United States'
History of the United States (1776-1865)
History of the United States (1865-1918)
History of the United States (1918-1945)
History of the United States (1945-present)
Demographic History of the United States
Military History of the United States

From 1492, when Christopher Columbus brought the lands of the Western Hemisphere to the attention of a Europe that had long forgotten about them, throughout the 16th century, North America was a backwater of colonialism. Spain, the main colonial power of the day, focused its efforts on the despoilation of the gold-rich empires of southern Mexico (the Aztec) and of the Andes (the Inca). Little Portugal, which had in fact begun charting the far shores of the Atlantic Ocean before Spain began, was limited by the Treaty of Tordesillas to the easterly lands of Brazil. John Cabot reached southeastern Canada (possibly Maine) in 1597, and a bevy of other explorer-conquerors followed, but no serious colonization efforts were made for decades.

However, when new European powers began to arise in the latter part of the 16th century, the lands that now make up the United States presented themselves as an attractive place for those new powers to establish colonies. They are, after all, closer to Europe than any of Spain's or Portugal's mainland holdings.

The English made a number of failed ventures in the closing decades of the century. One of the more nearly successful of these was the "Lost" Colony of Roanoke, established in 1586 off the coast of today's North Carolina by Sir Walter Raleigh. The second resupply ship, delayed for several years by circumstances in England, found no trace of the colonists, and the mysterious word "CROATOAN" carved on a tree. Over a hundred men, women, and children had apparently left in the middle of their daily tasks.

Contents

The first colonies

Historians typically recognize four regions in lands that became the eastern United States: from north to south, New England, the Middle Colonies, the Chesapeake, and the Carolinas. Some historians add a fifth region: the frontier, which had certain common features no matter what sort of colony it sprang from.

The Chesapeake

The first truly successful English colony was established in 1607, in a region called Virginia. It lay on an island in the James River, near the place where it empties into Chesapeake Bay. Jamestown - named after the recently enthroned James I of England - very nearly became the next in the string of colonial failures.

Establishment

The venture was financed and coordinated by a joint-stock company - the London Virginia Company. The company hoped to follow in the footsteps of the Spanish conquistadores by finding gold. With that in mind, it sent jewelers, goldsmiths, aristocrats, and the like - but not a single farmer. The colonists behaved as the company had expected them to. Hoping to obtain all of their food by trading with the nearby Powhatan tribes, they spent their time searching for gold.

Archaeological findings have indicated that the entire region was, at the time, struck by the most severe drought in centuries. For whatever reason, the American Indians were not very willing to give away their corn. Only a third of the colonists survived the first winter. Among them was an engimatic figure named John Smith. Smith made himself the benevolent, if uncompromising, autocrat of the colony. He put the colonists to work, and befriended Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan, who was able to supply the colony with more food.

Growth

The colony had been saved, but it still needed to earn a living somehow. Gold was nowhere to be found. Finally, in 1612, John Rolfe hit upon the cultivation of tobacco as a cash crop. The new product earned fabulously high profits in the first year, and substantially lower but still extraordinary ones in the second year. This state of economic affairs did not last, but tobacco continued to be the mainstay of the region's economy for two centuries. Tobacco cultivation is labor-intensive. To provide this labor, the colonists in 1619 tapped into the slave trade, which was already bringing large numbers of Africans to the sugar-producing islands of the Caribbean.

The colony of Virginia was heavily influenced by the cultivation of tobacco and the ownership of slaves. Plantation agriculture came early to this region. Slaves were readily available, so most new settlers claimed large areas of land and bought slaves to farm them. As cash-crop producers, these plantations were heavily dependent on trade. Without the ability to construct roads, and with irrigation needs, the planters were confined to the banks of rivers. However, because rivers and creeks were abundant, this tended to spread the plantations out.

Virginia society was predominantly secular. The lucrative tobacco business attracted unmarried men eager to make a living - not the sort of audience that is usually receptive to the call of religion. It did not attract many ministers, and even if it had, they would have had a difficult time building their congregations out of the far-flung tobacco planters.

The colonial assembly that had governed the colony since its establishment was dissolved, but reinstated in 1630. It shared power with a royally appointed governor. On a more local level, governmental power was invested in county courts, also not elected.

New England

The next successful English colonial venture was of an entirely different sort than the Chesapeake settlements. It was founded by two separate groups of religious separatists who had been persecuted under the Anglican establishment for demanding greater church reform and elimination of Catholic elements remaining in the Church of England.

The first and smallest of these two groups was called the Separatists. Some of them had sailed in 1605 for the Netherlands, which was establishing itself as a haven for the persecuted. Dissatisfied with the Dutch influence on their children, and with poor economic conditions, some of these emigrants joined a larger group of Separatists who had remained in England and sailed for the New World.

The Pilgrims

The men and women who sailed to America on the Mayflower intended to arrive in the northern parts of what was known as Virginia - somewhere in the area of today's New York. Blown off course, they came instead to what is now called Massachusetts, and landed on the west side of Lower Cape Cod. They later relocated to Plymouth Colony on the mainland, establishing that settlement on December 21, 1620.

Like the settlers at Jamestown, the Pilgrims had a difficult first winter, having had no time to plant crops. However, in 1621 they enlisted the aid of Squanto and Samoset, two American Indians who had learned some English from sailors. That fall brought a bountiful harvest, and the first Thanksgiving feast was held.

The Puritans

A second group of colonists seeking religious freedom established Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629. This expedition consisted of 400 Puritans organized by the Massachusetts Bay Company. Within two years, an additional 2000 had arrived. Though they fled from religious repression, they did not seek to establish toleration. Their chosen ideal was that of the "nation of saints" or the "city on a hill," an intensely religious, thoroughly righteous community that would serve as an example for all of Europe and stimulate mass conversion to Puritanism.

Other related topics

References

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