C HAPTE R II

ENGLAND’S COLONIES
 OBJECTIVE

The objective of this

lesson is to familiarize
students to the English
settlement in America.
 I – RELIGIOUS CONFLICT AND WAR
England was a parliamentary monarchy.
Political considerations influenced many people to move to
America. In the 1630s, arbitrary rule by England’s Charles I
gave impetus to the migration.

The subsequent revolt and triumph of Charles’ opponents under

Oliver Cromwell in the 1640s led many cavaliers — “king’s
men” — to cast their lot in Virginia.

 The oppressive policies of various petty princes — particularly

with regard to religion — and the devastation caused by a long
series of wars helped swell the movement to America in the late
17th and 18th centuries.
 II – AMERICAN COLONIES
II-1 People and profits
During the eventful years, all but one of England’s North American
colonies (Georgia) were founded.

England envied the riches taken from the New World by Spain,
especially the enormous amount of gold and silver.

The English colonies in America were quite different from the

Spanish colonies because Spanish settlements were royal expeditions
whereas English colonization was led by two different groups : those
seeking for freedom from religious persecution (both Protestants
and Catholics) and those seeking land and wealth.
In addition, English colonies in America were private
business ventures or collective religious experiments rather
than government enterprises.

The English formed profit joint-stock companies that

represented the most important organizational innovation
of the Age of exploration, and they provided the first
instruments of British colonization in America.
 II-2 Self-sustaining Colonies
The English settlements in America were much more
compact than those in New Spain.

Most English settlers viewed the Indians as devilish

threats to be removed as they created family-based
agricultural and trading communities.

English colonies were much more populous than the

Spanish and the French colonies in North America.

The English government and individual investors had two

primary goals for their American colonies:
 (1) To provide valuable raw materials such as
timber for shipbuilding, tobacco for smoking, and
fur pelts for hats and coats.

 (2) To develop a thriving consumer market for

English manufactured goods.

 To populate the colonies, the English encouraged

local rebels, religious dissenters, and the homeless
and landless to migrate to America, thereby
reducing social and economic tensions at home.
II-3 The Chesapeake Colonies
II-3-1 Virginia
In 1606, King James I chattered a joint-stock enterprise called the
Virginia Company.
 The Virginia Company planted the first permanent colony in
Jamestown, Virginia.
In 1624 Virginia became a Royal colony.
Colonists became farmers. They grew tobacco for valuable export.
 The leaders of the company expected the Native Americans to submit to
the authority of the colonists. They were wrong.
Powhatan, their chief, stated an alliance with the English but later
realized too late that the new comers had come to seize his lands and
subjugate his people.
The English ensued a state of “perpetual enmity” in which the Indians
were killed.
 II-3-2 Indentured Servants
 The system of Indenture servitude and Indentured servants was
introduced in Colonial America to meet the growing demand for
cheap, plentiful labor in the colonies.
Indentured Servants were Europeans, contracted to work for a
fixed period of time usually from five to seven years in exchange for
transportation and the prospects of a job and a new life in the
American colonies.
Indentured servitude became the primary source of laborers in
English America during the colonial period.
Not all indentured servants came to the colonies voluntarily.
II-3-3 Bacon’s Rebellion
It was an uprising in 1676 in Virginia led by a 29-year-old
planter Nathaniel Bacon.

About a thousand Virginians rose because they resented

Virginia Governor William Berkeley's friendly policies
towards the Native Americans.

 He refused to retaliate for a series of Indian attacks on

frontier settlements.

Rebels attacked Indians, chasing Berkeley from

Jamestown, Virginia.
II-3-4-Maryland
In 1634, in Maryland, a settlement appeared on the
northern shores of Chesapeake Bay.

It belonged to Lord Baltimore who sought it as a refuge

for English Catholics.

Colonists imported indentured servants.

 III - SETTLING NEW ENGLAND
III-1 Plymouth
 The first settlers were Puritan refugees heading for
Virginia.
William Bradford, a passenger of the Mayflower (Sept
1620), was a founder and longtime governor.
Since they were outside the jurisdiction of any organized
government, the forty one separatists on board of the
Mayflower signed the Mayflower Compact, a covenant
(group contract) to form a church.
The Plymouth colonists settled in a deserted Indian village
that had been devastated by smallpox.
III-2 Massachusetts Bay
Plymouth was absorbed into its larger neighbor,
Massachusetts Bay colony in 1691.
John Winthrop, a puritan leader, reflected the strengths
and weaknesses of the puritan movement.
He urged puritans to live in strict accordance with their
religious beliefs and set an example for all of
Christendom.
III-3 Rhode Island
The Rhode Island Colony was founded in 1636 by Roger
Williams (1603-1683), a prominent puritan.
III-4 Connecticut, New Hampshire and Maine
 Connecticut was founded by Massachusetts Puritans seeking better
land and facilities.

Two small proprietary colonies were set up - one in New Hampshire

and one in Maine. New Hampshire was not truly a separate
province from Massachusetts until after 1691.
III-5 The Carolinas (North and South)
Focused on producing commercial crops for profit
Planters used enslaved Africans and British indentured servants.
III-6 Enslaving Indians
Settlers used Indians to capture other Indians with guns provided
by them and enslave them.
IV. THE MIDDLE COLONIES AND GEORGIA
IV -1 New Netherland becomes New York
The Netherlands (Holland) was also there and had colonies
New Netherland was conquered in 1664 by the British that
named it New York.
Here again there were Indians: The Iroquois.
They were enslaved and killed by infectious diseases and
dissensions among themselves made them vulnerable.

New Jersey
Pennsylvania and Delaware
Georgia (the last of the English colonies to be established in 1732.
It became a royal colony in 1754.)
V-NATIVE PEOPLES AND ENGLISH SETTLERS
V- 1 Native Americans and Christianity
Clash of cultures: the interactions of two cultures involved
misunderstandings.
Native Americans believed that nature was suffused with spirits
(Animals, plants, trees, stones etc.).

The New England Puritans aggressively tried to convert Native

Americans to Christianity and “civilized” livings.

They insisted that Indian converts abandon their religion, language,

clothes, names, and villages, and forced them to move to what were
called “praying towns” to separate them from their “heathen”
brethren.
 V-2 The Pequot War
In the English colonies Indians who fought to keep their
lands were forced out or killed.

Indians were viewed as domestic savages, “barbarous

creatures”, and “merciless and cruel heathens”.

In 1636, settlers accused a Pequot of murdering a colonist.

The English took revenge by burning a Pequot village.

The Pequot were defeated and were forced to sign the

Treaty of Hartford in 1638. It dissolved the Pequot nation.
 V-3 King Philip’s War (June 1675-Aug 1676)
Also called Metacom's Rebellion, Metacom's War, or
Metacomet War.

Located in the New England colonies of Connecticut,

Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine.

It opposed New England colonies and Native Indian Tribes

Two causes: Culture Clash (Distrust and hostilities
between Natives and the Europeans) and land (European
practice of expansion).

Natives were defeated.

 VI-SLAVERY IN THE COLONIES
Slavery (bondage, servitude): the first black Africans were brought
to Virginia in 1619, just 12 years after the founding of Jamestown.

VI-1 African Roots and Black Culture

 In Africa, slavery was less brutal than in America.

Language: enslave Africans spoke Mandigo, Ibo, Kong, and

countless other languages.

In the cohabitation with indentured servants, some succeeded in

earning money and bought their freedom.

Some rebelled against their masters.

Their diverse origins forged a new identity as African Americans
 Creation of an African American culture seen through their
influences in music, folklore, and religious practices.

Religion: After 1642, Anglicanism predominated in Virginia and

Maryland but there were puritans, Quakers and Baptists.
 VII - THRIVING COLONIES

By 1770, after a late start, the British outstripped

both the French and the Spanish in the New
World.

British colonists were successful but at the expense

of Indians, indentured servants and African slaves.
 Focus Questions
1) What motivated England to establish American colonies?
2) What were the characteristics of the English colonies in
the Chesapeake region, the Carolinas, the middle
colonies, - Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and
Delaware – and New England prior to 1700?
3) In what ways did the English colonists and Native
Americans adapt to each other?
4) What role did indentured servants and the development
of slavery play in colonial America?
5) How did the English colonies become the most populous
and powerful region in North American by 1700?
THANK YOU

THE END

DR. YAPO ETTIEN