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Chapter 2 The Planting of English America 1500-1733
The Spanish were at Santa Fe in 1610. The French were at Quebec in 1608. The English were at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.
England's Imperial Stirrings King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s, launching the English Protestant Reformation, and intensifying the rivalry with Catholic Spain.
Elizabeth Energizes England In 1580, Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe, plundering and returning with his ship loaded with Spanish booty. He had a profit of about 4,600%. When the English fleet defeated the Spanish Armada, Spain's empirical dreams and fighting spirit had been weakened - helping to ensure the English's naval dominance over the North Atlantic.
England on the Eve of an Empire Because an economic depression hit England in the later part of the 1500s and many people were left without homes, the stage was set for the establishment of an English beachhead in North America.
England Plants the Jamestown Seedling In 1606, a joint-stock company, known as the Virginia Company of London, received a charter from King James I of England for a settlement in the New World. The company landed in Jamestown on May 24, 1607. In 1608, Captain John Smith took over the town and forced the settlers into line. By 1609, of the 400 settlers who came to Virginia, only 60 survived the "starving winter" of 1609-1610.
Cultural Clash in the Chesapeake Lord De La Warr reached Jamestown in 1610 with supplies and military. He started the First Anglo-Powhatan War. The Indians were again defeated in the Second Anglo-Powhatan War in 1644. By 1685, the English considered the Powhatan people to be extinct.
Virginia: Child of Tobacco John Rolfe married Pocahontas in 1614, ending the First Anglo-Powhatan War. In 1619, self-government was made in Virginia. The London Company authorized the settlers to summon an assembly, known as the House of Burgesses. King James I didn't trust the House of Burgesses and so in 1624, he made Virginia a colony of England, directly under his control.
Maryland: Catholic Haven Maryland was formed in 1634 by Lord Baltimore. Maryland was made for a refuge for the Catholics to escape the wrath of the Protestant English government. The Act of Toleration, which was passed in 1649 by the local representative group in Maryland, granted toleration to all Christians.
The West Indies: Way Station to mainland America By the mid-17th Century, England had secured its claim to several West Indian Islands. Sugar was, by far, the major crop on the Indian Islands. To support the massive sugar crops, millions of African slaves were imported. By 1700, the number of black slaves to white settlers in the English West Indies by nearly 4 to 1. In order to control the large number of slaves, the Barbados Slave Code of 1661 denied even the most fundamental rights to slaves.
Colonizing the Carolinas Civil war plagued England in the 1640s. In 1707, the Savannah Indians decided to end their alliance with the Carolinians and migrate to the back country of Maryland and Pennsylvania, where a new colony founded by Quakers under William Penn promised better relations. Almost all of the Indians were killed in raids before they could depart - in 1710. Rice became the primary export of the Carolinas.
Chronology 1558 - Elizabeth I becomes queen of England 1565-1590 - English crush Irish uprising 1577 - Drake circumnavigates the globe 1585 - Raleigh founds Roanoke colony 1588 - England defeats Spanish Armada 1603 - James I becomes king of England 1604 - Spain and England sign peace treaty 1607 - Virginia colony founded at Jamestown 1612 - Rolfe perfects tobacco culture in Virginia 1614 - First Anglo-Powhatan War ends 1619 - First Africans arrive in Jamestown. Virginia House of Burgesses established 1624 - Virginia becomes a royal colony 1634 - Maryland colony founded 1640s - Large-scale slave-labor system established in English West Indies 1644 - Second Anglo-Powhatan War 1649 - Act of Toleration in Maryland. Charles I beheaded; Cromwell rules England 1660 - Charles II restored to English throne 1661 - Barbados slave code adopted 1670 - Carolina colony created 1711-1713 - Tuscarora War in North Carolina 1712 - North Carolina formally separates from South Carolina 1715-1716 - Yamasee War in South Carolina 1733 - Georgia colony founded
The Thirteen Original Colonies
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