Colonization Important Ideas

COLONIZATION – IMPORTANT IDEAS

1607 to the American Revolution

1. European nations like Spain, France, and England (Great Britain) explored and colonized North and South America between 1492 and the end of the 17th Century seeking to find gold, spread Christianity, and obtain national strength.

2. Colonies were established for the purpose of providing raw materials to their European homeland and a market in which their homeland could sell their manufactured goods (mercantilism).

3. The first permanent English colony was at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. Colonists there went through starving period, were saved by Pocahontas and John Smith’s work ethic, and then became self sufficient with the development of the tobacco plant as a cash crop by John Rolfe. They established the first representative assembly (congress/gov’t) with the Virginia House of Burgesses.

4. The second significant English colony was at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620 when pilgrims came to escape religious persecution in England and gave us our first example of self-government in the Mayflower Compact. Puritans in the Great Migration during the 1630s and 40s overtook the Plymouth colony and built a “city upon a hill” society based on the Bible.

5. Thirteen separate colonies develop in three distinct regions for political, economic, religious, or social reasons and eventually become the first 13 states of the United States.

• Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia are in the Southern region, have hot climates, a longer growing season, rich soil, a plantation system of economics, cash crops, and a dependence on slavery which got its start in this region.
• Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island are in the region called “New” England. They have a cold climate, short growing season, rocky soil, an economy based on shipping, whaling, and fishing.
• New York (formerly New Amsterdam/Dutch), Pennsylvania (Penn/Quakers), New Jersey, and Delaware made up the Middle Colonies which were more diverse than the other regions, more tolerant of other religions, ethnic groups, and the first to ban slavery (Pennsylvania). They have warm climates, but their economics were based on iron works, lumber, and to some extent grains (known as “Bread Basket” of the colonies for their (<Quaker> oats).

6. The Virginia House of Burgesses, the Mayflower Compact, and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established the foundations for representative and self-government in the colonies.

7. Colonists were expected and did trade their raw materials in triangular trade routes. They bought sugar from the British West Indies colonies, turned it into rum in New England, shipped the rum to England or Africa in exchange for manufactured goods from England and slaves from Africa.

8. Religion played an important part in colonial life and their belief in their right to govern themselves. The First Great Awakening in the early 1700s helped contribute to the ideas of self responsibility, service to the community, and civic virtue.