English Colonization of North America during 17th century

When English King James I ascended the throne in 1603, the British Empire was non-existent. Attempts had been made to colonize Virginia, but they had failed. With the Stuarts, however, the beginnings of Empire came, and the seventeenth century is, therefore, from an imperial as well as from a domestic point of view, a very important one. And it is worth pointing out that the successful development of this Empire in the seventeenth century was largely due to private enterprise. It was under Portuguese auspices that route to India and the Far East by the Cape of Good Portugal had been discovered in 1502, and during the sixteenth century Portugal had been successful in preserving a monopoly of the Eastern trade for her own merchants. 

But in the seventeenth century both the Dutch and English nations determined to secure some share in that trade. In the Far East the Dutch proved themselves persistent and intrepid traders. The English East India Company also endeavored to trade in the English East India Company was wealthier and stronger. Disputes between Dutch and English occurred and culminated in the massacre at Amboynas’ (1623). Soon after this the English practically gave up their attempts to complete with the Dutch for trade in the Far East and they did not re-enter the contest till the close of the eighteenth century.

On the mainland of India the English East India Company met with greater success. It had to encounter the hostility of the Portuguese, but despite that, it managed to prosper. In 1612 it established its first depot for goods, or “factory” as it was called at Surat, on the west coast of India. At the close of the Seventeenth century a rival company to the East India Company was started in England.

James I’ s reign saw the first establishment of English colonies beyond the seas. In 1607 Virginia was colonized by a band of emigrants who named their first settlement Jamestown in honour of the English King. Bermudas was also colonized the same year. A colony was also established in Maryland to the North of Virginia. In May,1807, some hundred emigrants landed in Chesapeake Bay and founded the settlement of Jamestown. But the colony had great difficulties at first.

In 1608 a band of Separatists emigrated from England to Holland to avoid religious persecution at home. After a time they resolved to emigrated to America where they might lead an ideally religious life. In 1620 they crossed the Atlantic in the ‘Mayflower’. These emigrants were known as the Pilgrim. Fathers they called their first town Plymouth. Their example was followed by others and a group of colonies called New England, and Puritan in faith, grew up on the eastern coast of North America.

It was in this reign that the East India Company established the first factory at Surat in 1612. Thus the foundation of modern British empire in America and India, was laid in the reign of James I.

The “New England” colonists were Puritans by religion, inclined to be democratic in government and they were hard working, keen, if somewhat austere men. The southern colonies were more aristocratic and in them the Church of England was established by law. There the climate was hot and the chief products were tobacco and rice the cultivation of which was worked by slaves. The colonists were owners of plantations many of which were very large. The central colonies were composed of somewhat heterogeneous elements and every variety of race and religion might be found in one or other of them. With such differences between these various groups it was not likely that the colonies would find combination an easy matter and indeed there were continual disputes chiefly about boundaries between them. Unity was not to come till the oppression of the mother country------or what was considered by the colonists to be oppression----roused the colonies to common action in 1775 and less than a century after this the underlying differences between the North and the south were to produce the American Civil War of 1861.

Of the other parts of our Empire developed or acquired in the seventeenth century we must say little. In the West Indies the small island of Barbados was successfully colonized in 1626. The resources of famaica captured by Cromwell in 1655 were quickly developed and this island was also the home of the Buccaneers who preyed upon Spanish commerce in the Caribbean Sea. Meantime, settlements were made in Newfoundland and the Bahamas whilst various points on the West African Coast were secured and in 1651 St...Helena was occupied by the East India Company. Bermuda was first settled by sir George Somers in 1609 and the Crown took over the Government in 1684.