Беликова Е.К., Саратовская Л.Б. - The United Kingdom and United States of America in Past and Present (1268141), страница 16
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After the defeat of the SpanishArmada by England in 1588, Spain’s power started declining.Part 2. The First Wave of North America ImmigrationThe English did not attempt to “share the American pie” and inhabitNorth America until the 17th century settlements in North America.English first colonization steps were stimulated by their hostility to Spain.The accession to the throne in 1558 of a protestant, Elizabeth 1, turnedEnglish and Spanish nations into real enemies.
Queen Elizabeth’sadvisers Sir H. Gilbert, Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake proposed amore aggressive policy toward Catholic Spain and persuaded the Queenthat New World colonies would serve as bases for attacks on Spain,which had already founded its colonies in the New World. The firstEnglish attempts at colonization in Newfoundland and North Carolinahowever failed. Sir H. Gilbert’s expedition in 1583 was destroyed by astorm.
It was bound to be unsuccessful from the start as the boats weretoo light for the trans-Atlantic passage. Walter Raleigh’s first expeditionto America in 1587 brought back glorious reports of the coast of Virginia,but the outbreak of war between England and Spain in 1588 postponedthe mission of England’s transatlantic ventures.Only two decades later King James I authorized the chartering of ajoint stock company to colonize Virginia. In 1607 Virginia Companylanded 144 men near the mouth of the James River as a site forpermanent settlement. The Virginia Company resembled English jointstock companies of Africa and Asia, but the small Jamestown colony63proved to be economic “white elephant” for investors and a nightmare formany of its earliest inhabitants.
The location was low, swampy, coveredwith trees full of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. During the first six monthsfever and disease killed approximately half the settlers.The English pictured the new land of America as New England – aregion not noticeably different from old England. In 1609 the reorganizedVirginia Company petitioned for a charter, fixing the limits of the colonyat two hundred miles north and south and including all islands within onehundred miles of the coast.
Over the years, the company established moreliberal land grants, encouraged immigration of men and women, andslowly but steadily built strong political and economic institutions.Finally the Crown recognized Virginia’s elective assembly, and as thepopulation increased the planter class created effective units of localgovernment. Tobacco eventually gave Virginia colony a valuable exportcrop. Maryland, Virginia’s neighbor to the north, became the first privateestate of a single family – the Calverts who became the owners of a vastNew World estate by charter of 1632.The next group of the immigrants to the New World consisted of theEnglish who disagreed with the teaching of the Church of England andfled from persecution at home to Holland .Later in July 1620 a group of102 so-called pilgrims sailed on the ship “Mayflower” to North Americawith the hope to set up a colony and find there civil and religiousfreedom.
After a long Trans - Atlantic crossing the pilgrims landed in aplace now called Province Town and started building one of the firstpermanent Massachusetts’s villages called New Plymouth. The groupwas ill prepared for the rugged existence of the New World. Althoughonly a few people perished in the trans-Atlantic crossing, many of themwere weakened by the journey, had little skill in hunting and fishing andsurvived through the following winter only thanks to the help of theneighboring Indians.The first religious group was followed by a thousand so-called EnglishPuritans who came to Massachusetts Bay and founded in 1630 somecommunities in Boston. Like the Pilgrims, the Puritans had beendistressed by the policies of the English crown, alarmed over growingimmorality in English society and beset by economic anxiety. But unlikethe Pilgrims, the Puritans claimed not separating from the English church,but establishing a purer version of it.
Puritans built the first small townscentered around a church and a meeting house. The colony’s political64leaders were also church leaders who tried to create the orders basedupon true and strict Christian rules and the family as the basic unit ofsociety. Good harbors, especially at the new town Boston, provided thefoundation for a thriving commerce. The growth of trade and thedevelopment of shipping industry assisted the colony’s prosperity.While the English settlers were adjusting to the new region, France andthe Netherlands also tried to acquire the territories in America.
In 1609 anEnglish adventurer Henry Hudson employed by Dutch East IndiaCompany in his small vessel the “Half Moon” sailed up the river in NorthAmerica, which now bears his name. He changed little trifles and somefirearms for the beautiful furs, given by Indians. In 1624 the Dutch ship“New Netherlands” brought thirty families to the mouth of the HudsonRiver. In 1626 the governor of the Dutch Colony bought from IndiansManhattan Island for the trinkets valued approximately $24, built atrading fort and a town, which he called New Amsterdam.
The defensesof New Amsterdam were poor and later when English warships appearedin the bay the Dutch had to surrender the fort and the town to the English.In 1664 King Charles II gave a large area of Manhattan Island to hisbrother Duke of York and New Amsterdam was turned into New York inhonor of the dukeAs English settlements spread to the north, west, and south, they grewinto thirteen colonies, populating the gap between New England andother British settlements. In 1681 William Penn, a son of the famousadmiral of the English Navy, and a follower of religious group calledQuakers made an agreement with the King, about the land in America.He called this land Pennsylvania (“Penn’s woods”). W.
Penn did verymuch to build up Pennsylvania, writing advertisements, telling people inEurope about the beauty of his colony, promising that it would be a placeopen to settlers of all faiths.One of the most striking characteristics of the mainland colonies inthe 18th century was their rapid population growth. European immigrantsflooded New England attracted by beautiful stories about America. In1700 only 250,000 people resided in the colonies, but from the meagerbeginnings the population began to double every 25 years, sprawlingalong the Atlantic coast. By 1760 the colonies already had containedover a million inhabitants – rich and poor, white and black, rural andurban, commercial and agricultural, Protestant and Catholic.17 -century65settlers came largely from Britain, bringing with them the Englishlanguage, institutions and cultures.But in the 18th century other groups of immigrants began to arrive.The largest of them were the Scots and Irish who fled from economicdistress, failure of crops and religious discrimination.
Many Europeans,mostly from Germany, came to America through so-called “redemption”.Under that form of indentured servitude, so-called redemptioners paid asmuch as they could of their passage before sailing from Europe toAmerica. After they landed in the colonies, they were indentured for aterm of service proportional to the amount of their debt.
The term ofservice lasted from one year to four or even longer. According toAmerican historians only two of every ten indentured servants becamesuccessful farmers or artisans. The remaining 80% died during servitude,became drifters or caught the land belonging to native tribes.The development of American colonization was dramaticallyinfluenced by two most important aspects: the relationships of Europeansand Native Americans and the importation of more than two hundredthousand Africans into North America.Native Americans. It is well known that when Christopher Columbusarrived in the “New World” and thought that he was in India, he calledthe native people as Indians.
When Columbus discovered the New Worldthere seemed to be approximately from 1 to 10 million different Indiantribes who lived within the present limits of the United States and spokeabout 450 distinct dialects. It is well known now that the AmericanIndians who demand now to be called Native Americans or by their tribalnames like Navajo or Lakota developed great civilizations in PreColumbian America( the Incas and the Aztecs and others), andcontributed much to world culture and the welfare of the human race.They domesticated corn, potatoes, tobacco and many vegetables andfruits which we like so much now.
They made discoveries of very manydrugs that are used today in chemistry and medical science.At the time of European settlement in the 17th century the New Englandcoastal area was densely populated with Indian tribes who mostly huntedbuffalo for food, shelter, clothing, and articles of warfare. At that timeIndian – white contacts in the New World favored the white settlers. Itwas the Indians who taught European newcomers how to adjust to thenew nature and climate, how to hunt in the wilderness and fish.Christopher Columbus described the American Indians as “a loving,66unobvious people, so docile in all things that there are no better people orbetter country… They loved their neighbors as themselves and they hadthe sweetest and gentlest way of speaking in the world, and always with asmile”.
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