History of Colonial America

C

The Netherlands

The Netherlands (known from 1648 to 1795 as the Dutch Republic) founded the American colony of New Netherland in 1609 on land that is part of present-day New York. Its early settlers were primarily interested in developing the region’s resources for trade. The Dutch government gave a commercial monopoly to the Dutch West India Company, which set up fur-trading posts at New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island and at Fort Orange (present-day Albany). The company also granted huge manors or estates along the Hudson River to wealthy Dutchmen, hoping they would populate the land with Dutch tenant farmers and thus encourage increased immigration. But the mother country was prosperous, so few permanent settlers came to New Netherland. Only 1,500 Europeans lived in the colony by 1664, making it the smallest of all the European colonies in North America.

Dutch officials in New Amsterdam ruled with absolute power. The colonial governor, Peter Stuyvesant, conquered the small Swedish colony of New Sweden and rejected the demands of English settlers on Long Island for a representative system of government. He also alienated the colony's small but increasingly diverse population of Dutch, English, and Swedish settlers with other unpopular policies, including high taxes. Consequently, in 1664, when English troops invaded the island, residents of the colony did not resist and subsequently accepted English rule. However, the influence of Dutch architectural styles and the Dutch language remained strong until 1720, when rapid growth of the English population changed the cultural character of New York.

III

Development of England's Colonies

English colonies differed from other European settlements because of the growth of self-government, which marked the colonies’ early political development. The rise of self-government stemmed from two factors. First, most of the English colonies were founded as private corporate enterprises called proprietary ventures, and some time elapsed before the English government imposed direct controls on them. Second, many English colonists had participated in government at home, and they carried this tradition to America.

England began its colonies during the 17th century when Parliament, the nation’s primary legislative body, was increasing its powers at the expense of the crown. During these struggles over constitutional control, most English settlers in America supported Parliament and the idea of representative government. In the British colonies, representative government developed within three distinct types of colonies: royal colonies headed by a governor who was appointed by the king, proprietary colonies owned and managed by English proprietors, and corporate colonies that selected their own governors and political leaders.

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A

Virginia

Virginia was founded in 1607 as a trading outpost and became the first permanent English colony in the western hemisphere. King James I of England (1603-1625) granted the Virginia Company a corporate charter that gave authority over the colony to the company’s shareholders and directors, who ruled through an appointed governor and a council of advisers. In 1618 the Virginia Company also created a representative assembly, the House of Burgesses, which was the first such assembly in colonial America. This step toward self-government was designed to encourage people who sought more freedom to migrate to the new colony. However, the company included a provision that limited the burgesses’ power; the provision required the company to approve any laws that they enacted.

Virginia soon failed as a trading venture because the native people had no valuable crops or products to exchange for English goods, and so colonists turned to farming. They increasingly began to settle on lands belonging to local Algonquian people. In 1622 a revolt led by Opechancanough, chief of the alliance of several Algonquian groups called the Powhatan Confederation, nearly destroyed the colony.

Following this revolt, the crown accused the Virginia Company of mismanagement and in 1624 revoked its corporate charter. Because Virginia had begun to prosper by growing tobacco and exporting it to England, King James I took an interest in the settlement and made it the first royal colony. The king and his ministers then assumed the authority to appoint the governor and his advisory council and retained the House of Burgesses, though they made its legislation subject to approval by the king's top aides, the Privy Council. They also made the Church of England the official church in Virginia, so that all property owners in the colony had to pay taxes to support its ministers. These institutions—a governor and council appointed by the crown, an elected assembly, and an established Anglican church—became the model for England’s royal colonies throughout America.

B

Maryland

Another tobacco-growing settlement developed in neighboring Maryland as a proprietary colony. In 1632 King Charles I (1625-1649) granted ownership of the lands surrounding Chesapeake Bay to George Calvert, an aristocrat who held the title of Lord Baltimore. George Calvert died that same year and his son, Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, inherited the charter. According to its terms, Baltimore owned Maryland as a private estate and could hold or dispose of the land as he wished. As the proprietor, he also had authority to appoint public officials, to found churches, and to name ministers.

Baltimore sent his brother, Leonard Calvert, to serve as the head of the new colony, but when Calvert tried to govern as he wished, the settlers resisted. The Maryland charter gave settlers the right to have a representative assembly but did not clearly specify its powers. Assembly members argued that the assembly had power to initiate legislation (and not simply to assent to the governor’s proposals), and Baltimore grudgingly agreed.

Baltimore, who had recently converted to Catholicism, wanted Maryland to become a refuge where his fellow English Catholics could escape religious persecution. To minimize conflicts with Protestant authorities in England, he instructed Governor Leonard Calvert to “cause All Acts of Romane Catholicque Religion to be done as privately as may be.” In another attempt to protect Catholics, who were a minority in Maryland, Baltimore persuaded the Protestant-dominated assembly in 1649 to enact a toleration policy that granted freedom of worship to all Christians.

C

Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay

Religious refugees founded settlements in New England. One group of radical Protestants was known as Puritans because they wanted to “purify” the established Church of England. They left England to escape religious persecution. In 1620 a group of these Puritan Separatists, including some who had already left England for Holland, moved to America in a holy migration—a pilgrimage. Before they disembarked from their ship, the Mayflower, these so-called Pilgrims, as well as a number of other passengers, agreed to enact just laws based on the will of the majority. Because the Pilgrims lacked a proper charter from the king, the migrants contracted with each other in the Mayflower Compact to form a “civil body Politick.” They established Plymouth colony in present-day Massachusetts and set up a system of political and religious self-rule, allowing each town and congregation to govern itself.

In 1630 a much larger group of English Puritans, led by John Winthrop, migrated to America under an agreement with the Massachusetts Bay Company, a joint-stock company that held a charter from King Charles I. The company chose Winthrop to be the governor of its colony, and he and his associates took the charter with them to America. Once in the New World, they transformed the governing body of the joint-stock company, called the General Court, into a colonial legislature. In the General Court, each shareholder had a vote; in the colonial legislature each qualified settler was given a vote. Winthrop and his associates also created representative institutions within each town. However, to ensure rule by those they considered godly, the Puritans limited the right to vote and to hold office to men who were Puritan church members. This law excluded all women and about half of the men (all those who were not Puritans) from participating in the political life of the colony. The Massachusetts Bay Puritans also established Congregationalism as the state-supported religion and barred members of other faiths from conducting services.

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