Colonization

The English Colonies

Colony: a place that is settled by a group of people and governed by the country from which the people came.
Three ways that England hoped to acquire wealth from its colonies :
a. by getting natural resources.
b. by getting more money from taxes on the goods traded in the colonies.
c. by selling more of its own goods to its colonies.
Queen Elizabeth changed the rules for claiming colonies in the 1500s to a way which depended on a country's ability to have permanent colonies there.

England Starts to Colonize North America

Failed attempts at colonization

The first English attempt at colonization failed because the settlers were lost at sea and never reached North America.
The Roanoke Colony lasted only one year because the colonists did not have enough food and supplies.
Nobody ever discovered what happened to the second Roanoke Colony.

Permanent colonies require a lot of financial support to survive

England needed to get money before it could set up new colonies.
"Commercialize the colonies" meant to set up a business or company to make a profit from the colonies.
The London Company would support a new colony because it expected to make money by establishing colonies in America.

Four Factors of Group Success in Jamestown

The four factors of group success:
a. capability
b. leadership
c. resources
d. motivation
Capability: what people know how to do and what they are able to do.
Native Americans gave the colonists the knowledge and the capability to survive in Jamestown.

Jamestown finds a way to make money for the Virginia Company

Cash crops are crops and animals raised in order to be sold.
Leadership is the skillfulness or expertise of a group's leaders.
Many Jamestown colonists died the first year from the disease malaria and from starvation resulting from their serious leadership problem.
Captain John Smith created improvement in leadership that enabled the Jamestown colony to survive.
Resources are the things and people available to use in reaching goals.
Advantage in resources the Jamestown colony had over earlier attempts at colonization was that the Virginia Company had enough money to afford to send many supplies with the colonists.
Motivation is a group's desire to succeed.
The extra help from the Virginia Company gave the colonists in Jamestown new motivation.

Why People Moved to the English Colonies

A king or queen would try to control peoples' religious beliefs and loyalties because religion was a serious matter to many people in the 17th century.

Plymouth Colony

The Pilgrims wanted to set up a colony in North America to gain their religious freedom.
The Pilgrims were supposed to go to the northern part of the Virginia Colony.
The Pilgrims ended up hundreds of miles north of Virginia in an area that the Virginia Company did not control.
The Pilgrims didn't go where they had planned because a storm forced the ship off course.
Charter is a set of rules that a group had to obey.

Problems in the Plymouth Colony

The Mayflower Compact was an agreement made by the Pilgrims to create their own colonial government and decide what rules the Plymouth Colony should follow.

Massachusetts Bay Colony

The Puritans differed from the Pilgrims in that the Puritans did not want to separate from the Church of England while the Pilgrims did.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was the name of Puritans' first colony.
The Puritans and the Massachusetts Bay Colony contributed to self-government in the colonies by allowing all male Puritan landowners to vote in town meetings and to elect officials.
The Puritans did not pass religious freedom on to others. The Puritans forced everyone who lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to attend the Puritan church and behave in Puritan ways.

Roger Williams

Statue of Roger Williams

Rhode Island Colony

Much like the Pilgrims and Puritans, Roger Williams and his followers chose to move and create a new colony.
The religious freedom attracted settlers to Rhode Island.

Other Colonies Established for Religious Freedom

The Puritan World View

Similar Views of Native Americans and Puritans

The world views of Native Americans and Puritans were similar because both believed in a creator god and the importance of the relationship of human beings to God, nature and the universe.

Different Views of Native Americans and Puritans

The world views of Puritans and Native Americans were different:

Puritans - Believed that human beings differed from all other creatures in that God had given people dominion, control over animals and plants
Native Americans - Tried to understand how the Great Spirit expected each person in his or her particular way to bring harmony to nature.

Puritan religious beliefs

The Puritans make important personal and political decisions by asking themselves what God would expect them to do.

Puritans and education

Puritans established:
Harvard College (Massachusetts)
William & Mary (Virginia)
Yale (Conneticut)

Puritans and religious freedom

Puritans felt that people who did not believe like them were mistaken and should not live in a Puritan community.

Why People Continued to Move to the English Colonies

Freedom from Religious Persecution

Persecution: being hurt, punished, or not given equal rights because of one's beliefs.
Some Germans, Scots, Irish, and French people move to the English colonies to escape religious persecution.

Economic Opportunity

Economic opportunity for poor people

The effect of enclosure in England was that many tenants (renters) who had been farming on the land were forced to leave their farms and move to the cities to look for work.
An indentured servant was a person bound by contract to serve someone else.
Some English people became indentured servants in the 1600s by borrowing money to pay for their trip to North America.
One economic opportunity that existed in the colonies that did not exist in England was owning a farm.

Economic opportunity for wealthy people

The headright system was an offer of 50 acres of Colonial land given to a person who paid for himself or others to come to Virginia.
The effect of the headright system was that many people came to Virginia to own land.
Wealthy people move to the English colonies because the headright system gave them good economic opportunity to start large farms.

Participation in Local Government

Wealthy men who owned land were the only people who had the right to vote in England.
Legislature is a group of people elected to make the laws for a government.
The companies that started colonies tried to attract more people to come to their colonies by giving male colonists who owned land the right to help make some of their own laws.

English Colonies & Purposes Colonized