I. England’s Imperial Stirring

A. North America

1. North America in 1600 was largely unclaimed, though the Spanish had much control in Central and South America.

2. Spain had only set up Santa Fe, while France had founded Quebec and Britain had founded Jamestown.

3. In the 1500s, Britain didn’t really colonize because of internal conflicts.

a. King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s and launched the English Protestant Reformation.

b. After Elizabeth I became queen, Britain became basically Protestant, and a rivalry with Catholic Spain intensified.

c. In Ireland, the Catholics sought Spain’s help in revolting against England, but the English crushed the uprising with brutal atrocity, and developed an attitude of sneering contempt for natives.

II. Elizabeth Energizes England

A. Colonization

1. After Britain basically defeated Spain (i.e. Spanish Armada defeat), British swarmed to America and took over lead in colonization and power.

a. Sparked new literature, like Shakespeare

2. After Drake circumnavigated the globe, Liz I knighted him on his ship.

3. However, English tries at colonization in the New World failed often and embarrassingly.

4. Britain and Spain finally signed a peace treaty in 1604.

III. England on the Eve of the Empire

A. Reasons for Emigration

1. In the 1500s, Britain’s population was mushrooming

2. Farmers were enclosing land for farming.

3. Puritanism took a strong root in the woolen districts of western and eastern England.

4. Younger sons of rich folk (who couldn’t inherit money) tried their luck with fortunes elsewhere, like America.

5. By the 1600s, the joint-stock company was perfected, being a forerunner to today’s corporations.

IV. England Plants the Jamestown Seedling

A. Jamestown

1. In 1606, the Virginia Company received a charter from King James I to make a settlement in the New World

a. Such joint-stock companies usually did not exist long, as stockholders hoped to form the company, make a profit, and then quickly sell for profit a few years later.

2. The charter of the Virginia Company guaranteed settlers the same rights as Englishmen in Britain.

3. On May 24, 1607, about a 100 English settlers disembarked from their ship and founded Jamestown

a. Forty colonists perished during the voyage.

b. In mosquito-ridden Virginia, disease was rampant. It didn’t help that a supply ship shipwrecked in the Bahamas in 1609 either.

4. Luckily, in 1608, a Captain John Smith took over control and whipped the colonists into discipline.

a. He had been kidnapped by local Indians and forced into a mock execution by the chief Powhatan and had been “saved” by Pocahantas.

b. The act was meant to show that Powhatan wanted peaceful relations with the colonists.

5. Still, the colonists were reduced to eating cats, dogs, rats, even other people.

6. Finally, in 1610, a relief party headed by Lord De La Warr arrived to alleviate the suffering.

7. By 1625, out of an original overall total of 8000 would-be settlers, only 1200 had survived.

V. Cultural Clash in the Chesapeake

A. The Indian’s Begin to Lose Power

1. At first, Powhatan possibly considered the new colonists potential allies and tried to be friendly with them, but as time passed and colonists raided Indian food supplies, relations deteriorated and eventually, war occurred.

2. The First Anglo-Powhatan War ended in 1614 with a peace settlement sealed by the marriage of Pocahontas to colonist John Rolfe.

3. Eight years later, in 1622, the Indians struck again with a series of attacks that left 347 settlers, including John Rolfe, dead.

4. The Second Anglo-Powhatan War began in 1644, ended in 1646, and effectively banished the Chesapeake Indians from their ancestral lands.

5. After the settlers began to grow their own food, the Indians were useless, and were therefore banished.

VI. Virginia: Child of Tobacco

A. Tobacco Info

1. Tobacco created a greed for land, since it heavily depleted soil and ruined the land.

2. King James I detested tobacco.

3. Representative self-government was born in Virginia, when in 1619, settlers created the House of Burgesses.

4. Slavery in the Americas was also born in 1619.

VII. Maryland: Catholic Heaven

A. Religious Diversity

1. Founded in 1634 by Lord Baltimore, Maryland was the second plantation colony and the fourth overall colony to be formed

2. It was a place for persecuted Catholics to find refuge.

3. Lord Baltimore gave huge estates to his Catholic relatives, but the poorer people who settled there where mostly Protestant, creating friction.

4. However, Maryland prospered with tobacco.

5. It had a lot of indentured servants.

6. Only in the later years of the 1600s (in Maryland and Virginia) did Black slavery began to become popular.

7. Maryland’s religious statute guaranteed toleration to all Christians, but decreed the death penalty to Jews and atheists and others who didn’t believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ.

VIII. The West Indies: Way Station to Mainland America

A. Their Use

1. As the British were colonizing Virginia, they were also settling in the West Indies (Spain’s declining power opened the door).

2. By mid-1600s, England had secured claim to several West Indies islands, including Jamaica in 1655.

3. They grew lots of sugar there.

4. Thousands of African slaves were needed to operate sugar plantations, and these weren’t for the poor either. 

5. To control so many slaves “codes” were set up that defined the legal status of slaves and the rights of the masters. They were typically strict.

IX. Colonizing the Carolinas

A. Restoration Period

1. In England, King Charles I had been beheaded. Oliver Cromwell had ruled for ten years before tired Englishmen restored Charles II to the throne.

2. The bloody period had interrupted colonization.

3. Carolina was named after Charles II, and was formally created in 1670.

4. Carolina flourished by developing close economic ties with the West Indies.

5. Many original Carolina settlers had come from Barbados.

6. Interestingly, Indians as slaves in Carolina was protested, but to no avail. Slaves were sent to the West Indies to work, as well as New England.

7. Rice emerged as the principle crop in Carolina.

a. African slaves were hired to work on rice fields, due to their immunity to malaria and their familiarity with rice.

8. Despite violence with Spanish and Indians, Carolina proved to be too strong to be wiped out.