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Article Outline
Introduction; European Colonial Ventures; Development of England's Colonies; English Revolution; English Imperial Policy ; The Rise of American Assemblies; The Evolution of Colonial Society; The Struggle for North America; Political and Social Upheavals
In 1635 the Massachusetts Bay Puritans expelled Roger Williams, a Puritan minister at Salem, Massachusetts, because he questioned church doctrines and government policies. Williams founded a settlement in the neighboring region of Rhode Island, which soon became a separate self-governing colony with an elected governor and a representative assembly. In Rhode Island, as in Plymouth Colony, there was a complete separation of church and state. Each congregation could set its own rules and doctrines. Rhode Island and Plymouth differed from Massachusetts Bay colony in their guarantee of religious toleration, permitting Christians (and in Rhode Island, a few Jewish traders) to worship God as they pleased.
Beginning in 1636 additional Puritans left Massachusetts Bay because of religious conflicts or a desire to find more fertile lands. Some of these dissenters established settlements in New Hampshire, which was originally part of a land grant given to an English colonizer, Captain John Mason. The early focus of the New Hampshire towns was trade, so religion was not a central issue as it was in other Puritan colonies. Mason’s heirs neglected the colony, so the New Hampshire settlements came under the protection of the Massachusetts Bay Colony from the early 1640s until 1679, when a new royal charter for New Hampshire was initiated. Another Puritan group purchased land from Native American people and began a settlement originally called Quinnipiac, but later given the name New Haven. The colony was an independent theocracy, as its leaders believed they had divine guidance to govern. Many Puritans also settled along the Connecticut River on lands originally claimed by the Dutch. They established their own towns at Windsor, Wethersfield, Saybrook, and Hartford, and eventually far outnumbered Dutch settlers. The Puritan colonists did not get along well with a local Native American group, the Pequot, and in 1637 New England’s first major war broke out. Some Native American enemies of the Pequot joined in the conflict, and most of the Pequot were killed or sold into slavery. In 1639 the Puritans who had migrated to Connecticut adopted the Fundamental Orders, a plan of government that included a representative assembly and a popularly elected governor. In 1662 Connecticut and New Haven merged into a single colony with a government based on the Fundamental Orders. In the new colony, there was a firm union of church and state and a congregational system of church government in which each local congregation was self-governing. The colony gave voting rights to all men who owned 40 acres of land, rather than just to church members, as was the case in Massachusetts Bay until 1692. Land was relatively easy to obtain in Connecticut—and throughout New England—so a substantial majority of adult men gained the right to vote and to hold office.
As settlers set up their American colonies, a major political and religious conflict, the Puritan or English Revolution, began about 1640 in England and lasted for 20 years. Revolutionaries started an armed uprising, and after two civil wars, they deposed and executed King Charles I. They then established a republican commonwealth, led eventually by Oliver Cromwell, a Puritan and military hero of the rebellion. During these two decades of political strife in England, there were no new settlements in North America. The seven existing colonies largely governed themselves and firmly established the representative institutions allowed by their charters. During these years Virginia elected its own governor, following the lead of other colonies, including Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts Bay. By 1660 the government run by Cromwell had collapsed. During this period of turmoil, the American colonists developed their own ideas about political authority and government institutions. Three fundamental principles won broad support among the American settlers: (1) People can create their own governments by composing a written constitution or by transforming a charter into a political framework. (2) People have a right to govern themselves through representative institutions. (3) People can most effectively organize church-state relations by practicing religious toleration and by establishing either a single church or a system of multiple churches.
In the first decades of settlement, England lacked a coherent imperial policy, and it created and governed colonies in a haphazard fashion. This situation began to change in 1660, when the English government reestablished its monarchy and placed King Charles II (1660-1685) on the throne. Although the king continued some of the old policies, such as awarding proprietary colonies to his supporters, royal bureaucrats now tried to assert central control over the American colonies by implementing an economic policy known as mercantilism. Mercantilists believed that a nation’s strength was linked to the value of exported products and that colonies were established mainly to increase the wealth of the home country. The colonies produced raw materials, which were sent to the home country and manufactured into products that were exported. Often colonies were also markets for these finished products. To implement this policy, England began to pass legislation to ensure that it reaped more trade benefits from its colonial possessions. From 1660 to 1696, Parliament enacted a series of navigation and trade acts (see Navigation Acts) designed to enhance English prosperity by increasing regulation of colonial trade. The new acts required that goods going into and out of the colonies be shipped in English or colonial ships, and that certain articles, such as tobacco, sugar, and other tropical products, could go only to England. Other measures specified that non-English manufactured goods should first land in England—where shippers had to pay duties and merchant commissions—before the goods were sent to the colonies. Manufacturing in the colonies was discouraged if it competed with English products.
England went to war with the Dutch in 1664 to enforce these trading rules and to extend its supremacy in North America. Dutch merchants were active in the Chesapeake tobacco trade, so English forces tried to stop that lucrative commerce by attacking Dutch ships and seizing New Netherland and its spacious harbor at New Amsterdam. King Charles II gave the conquered territory to his brother James, the Duke of York (who later succeeded him as King James II). James divided the former Dutch colony into two proprietary provinces: New York, which he ruled himself, and New Jersey, which he gave to Sir George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley for their loyal support of the monarchy. New Jersey developed representative political institutions with a proprietary governor and an elected assembly. However, in New York, James ruled through an appointed governor and did not allow the settlers to have a representative assembly.
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