Chapter 16 The World in the Age of European Expansion

1492-1763
Section 3 The Dutch, French, and English in the Americas
As Spain and Portugal consolidated their empires in the Americas, the Dutch,
English, and French established competing empires of their own. The nature
of their colonization reflected their different goals and priorities. While the
Dutch and French were interested primarily in trade along mercantilist lines,
English colonization reflected a variety of different goals. Although many
Native American peoples tried to adapt to the changing environment created
by European colonization, disease and competition over land drastically
affected their traditional ways of life.
Northern Explorations
Spains and Portugal's profitable overseas colonies prompted other European
countries to send out explorers of their own. With royal support, French and
English expeditions sailed across the Atlantic in the early 1500s. Like the
Spanish and Portuguese, these countries were primarily interested in finding a
route to the treasures of Asia. With Spain and Portugal in firm control of the
southern routes, however, they sought a Northwest Passagea waterway
around or through North America.
In 1497 John Cabot, an Italian navigator in the pay of Englands King
Henry VII of England, sailed west to the coasts of Newfoundland and Nova
Scotia. When Cabot found no passage to China, however, English seafarers
spent the next half-century vainly searching for a northeastern route through
the Baltic Sea or around Scandinavia. By the 1580s they had turned back to
the west. In 1585 and 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh established short-lived
colonies on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina.
Meanwhile, French explorers concentrated exclusively on the
northwestern route. In 1534 French explorer Jacques Cartier set sail with a
twofold mission: to search for the Northwest Passage, and to discover new
lands.i[xlvi] Although he never discovered a Northwest Passage, Cartier
sailed up the St. Lawrence River as far as present-day Montreal, and
established France's claims to eastern Canada, or New France, as he called it.
As the Northwest Passage continued to elude them, France, England, and the
Netherlands eventually turned to colonization to make a profit. During the
1600s all three countries took valuable sugar-producing islands in the

Caribbean from Spain and Portugal. The major thrust of colonization,

however, was aimed at North America.
Dutch and French Colonization
The French and the Dutch were primarily interested in trade along
mercantilist lines. The French also hoped to spread French Catholic culture to
the Native Americans. After initial unsuccessful attempts under the patronage
of the French clergy to establish colonization for missionary purposes,
eventually French colonization was organized by the Crown, which preferred
only loyal Catholics to settle in New France. The French attempted to exclude
potential dissidents, such as the Huguenots, from the colony. The Dutch
preferred to encourage private companies like the Dutch West Indies
Company and the Dutch East Indies Company to establish colonies by
granting them a monopoly on any trade they might develop.

Map of the main WIC (West Indies Company) settlements in the Atlantic Ocean
(1640s/1650s.). Taken from http://www.colonialvoyage.com/wicmap.jpg

Critical to both French and Dutch colonization was the fur trade. In
1603 Samuel de Champlain arrived in New France to trade for furs,
specifically beaver pelts. Champlain began exploring the Great Lakes region
and made agreements with local tribes to trade their furs for European goods
at a string of trading posts he established. In 1608 he founded a permanent
French settlement at Quebec to act as a central collection point. French
colonists also settled at Montreal and in present-day Nova Scotia. From

Canada, the French gradually moved south. Between 1679 and 1683 RenRobert de La Salle traveled down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of
Mexico. He claimed the entire inland region of North America for France,
calling it Louisiana after Louis XIV.
Meanwhile, sailing for a Dutch company in 1609, Henry Hudson
sighted present-day Manhattan Island and sailed up "as fine a river as can be
found, wide and deep, with good anchoring ground on both sides."ii[xlvii] In
1624 the newly chartered Dutch West India Company sent some 30 families
to establish the colony of New Netherland in this Hudson River Valley.
iii
[xlviii] iv[xlix]

New Netherland Colony, taken from http://www.colonialvoyage.com/newnetmap.jpg; Nieuw Amsterdam,

Long Island and environs 1664. Taken from http://www.colonialvoyage.com/longislmap.jpg

In 1626 Peter Minuit, the first governor of the colony, bought Manhattan
Island from the local Canarsee tribes and founded New Amsterdam, which
later became New York City. By the early 1650s, New Netherland contained
some 2,000 settlers from all over Europe. Clashes over land with local Native
Americans, who were being squeezed out of their own territory, convinced
the company to restrict further immigration and stick to fur trading.
French settlement was also relatively light. By 1750 only about 70,000
French lived in all of North America. With trade as their first priority,v[l]
French officials encouraged traders to live among the Native Americans,
learning their ways and teaching them French ways. Many traders married
Native American women. French missionaries also did their best to spread
French Catholic culture. Both priests and nuns learned Native American
languages and customs. As Father Ragueneau, a Jesuit priest, warned, "One
must be very careful before condemning a thousand things among their
customs, which greatly offend minds brought up and nourished in another
world."vi[li]
English Colonialism
English colonization was more haphazard than that of the French and Dutch.
Like the Dutch government, the English Crown preferred not to risk its own
money on colonization ventures. Instead, it granted royal charters to private
English companies to establish the first settlements. Also, unlike France, for
many years the English government was happy to see dissidents and
troublemakers leave for the colonies, often encouraging such migration to rid
the country of disruptive elements. With such loose royal control, private
companies soon established the first English colonies along the North

American coast.
Settlement for profit. The first permanent colony was established at
Jamestown in Virginia by the London Company in 1607, to find gold or other
precious metals. As John Smith, one of the leaders, put it, "There was no talk,
no hope, no work, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load gold." vii[lii]
When no gold was found, however, the company turned to tobacco to recover
its costs.viii[liii] Tobacco had become popular in Europe. Although King
James described smoking as "a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the
nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs,"ix[liv] England imported 3
million pounds of the "noxious weed" in 1638 alone. With huge profits from
tobacco, the Virginia colony began to grow.
To attract new sources of labor, company officials offered people free passage
to the colony in exchange for a set number of years of work, a system known
as indentured servitude. The company also encouraged women to
immigrate, since "the plantation can never flourish till families be planted,
and the respect of their wives and children fix [keep] the people on the
soil."x[lv] Free Africans were among the early indentured servants, but as
labor demands rose the colonists resorted to importing African slaves.
Virginia's success encouraged others. By 1732 three coloniesNorth
Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgiawere organized along similar
economic lines. Some of the new settlers came from the West Indies, bringing
with them their knowledge of plantation farmingand their African slaves.
Along the coast and in the interior, colonists established large plantations and
small farms. Besides tobacco, they grew export crops such as indigo, for blue
dye, and rice, which they learned to cultivate from West African slaves. The
forests provided wood and naval stores such as tar and pitch.xi[lvi]
Religious colonization. The search for wealth was not the sole motivation for
European colonization. As the Reformation and Counter Reformation
continued to disrupt peoples lives in Europe, many saw the Americas as a
haven where they could worship as they liked. The first such religious
colonists to arrive were the Pilgrims, who settled Plymouth in 1620. A larger
colony was established in 1630 around present-day Boston by the
Massachusetts Bay Company. The company had been formed by English
Puritans as part of the Great Migration, in which some 60,000 Puritans left
England to escape the "corrupt" English society of Charles I.
The Puritans of Massachusetts hoped one day to return to England. In the
meantime, as John Winthrop, first governor of the colony, put it, they had
come to the new world to establish a city on a hill as an example for all.
Only church members could participate in the colony's government, and

religious conformity was strictly enforced.

As more and more people migrated to the colony, land pressures and
internal disagreements led some Puritans to establish new settlements of their
own. In 1636 Thomas Hooker and his followers settled in what became
Connecticut. Others left Massachusetts because they could not bring
themselves to conform to the strict religious rule. For example, Roger
Williams challenged the religious government of the colony and was
banished. He and a few followers fled south, establishing the first settlement
in Rhode Island. Williams was outspoken in his support of religious toleration
for all. His colony soon became a haven for another dissenter, Anne
Hutchinson.
[BIOGRAPHY] Born in Alford, England in 1591, Hutchinson was raised in
a strict Puritan family. Like many Puritan families, in 1634 the Hutchinsons
migrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Inspired by the teachings of the
Puritan minister John Cotton, Hutchinson held weekly meetings in her home
to discuss his sermons and to present her own interpretations of the Bible.
Rejecting the concept of original sin, she insisted that people could
communicate directly with God. xii[lvii]
Hutchinson soon began to speak out against ministers in the colony who
interpreted the Bible literally.xiii[lviii] By suggesting that people should follow
their own consciences in matters of faith, however, many thought Hutchinson
was undermining the authority of the communitys religious government. Her
attacks quickly brought the combined force of church and state against her.
Eventually, Governor Winthrop ordered her to stop preaching or suffer
banishment.xiv[lix] Hutchinson replied:
You have no power over my body, neither can you do me any harm. . . . No
further do I esteem of any mortal man. . . . I fear none but the great
Jehovah [God], . . . and I do verily believe that he will deliver me out of
your hands. . . . Therefore, take heed how you proceed against me.xv[lx]
When Hutchinson claimed to have heard Gods voice directly, however, the
shocked colonists denounced her for heresy. In 1638 she moved with her
family to Rhode Island. After her husband died, she moved to New
Netherland, where Native Americans killed her in 1643.
The same search for religious tolerance that had motivated Williams and
Hutchinson also inspired the founding of several other colonies. In the 1630s
Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, established a haven for English
Catholics in his colony of Maryland. Accepting the principle of religious
tolerance, Lord Baltimore eventually opened the colony to anyone. Farther
north the Quaker leader William Penn established Pennsylvania on a similar

basis of tolerance in the 1680s.

A Clash of Cultures
Although neither the French nor the Dutch were particularly interested in
conquering the Native Americans, the foreign presence nevertheless brought
enormous changes to the Native Americans way of life. Some Native
American leaders understood the implications of cultural interaction, and
worried about its effects. As one Native American leader told Champlain in
1633:
You will build a house that is a fortress, then you will build another
house . . . and then we will be nothing but dogs that sleep outdoors. . . .
You will grow wheat, and we will no longer look for our sustenance in the
woods; we will be no better than vagabonds. . . . You pinch our arms, and
we will tremble.xvi[lxi]
Changes did occur, particularly as the Native Americans adapted to the fur
trade.
Most of the tribes between the Hudson Bay in the north and the Great Lakes
and the St. Lawrence in the south became involved in the French fur trade. In
the early 1600s the Huron tribe north of Lake Ontario organized a trading
empire with the Ottawa and Nipissing tribes of Lake Huron. The Huron
traded agricultural products of their own for furs gathered by tribes farther
north and west. Carrying the furs to Montreal or Quebec, the Huron traded
them for European-made knives, axes, cloth, and other merchandise.
Returning west, they used some of the European goods to get more furs from
their Native American suppliers. Farther south, the Iroquois League became
similarly involved with Dutch fur traders.xvii[lxii]
As the European demand for furs continued to increase, some tribes over
hunted the beaver in their own territories. Such ecological catastrophes could
upset local balances of power. The Iroquois League, for example, having
trapped out their own territory in the 1640s, decided to capture the trade of
the Huron. The subsequent vicious conflict nearly destroyed many tribes
around Lake Erie. Such wars became even more common as the Native
Americans various European allies also fought each other over trade and
land, drawing their tribal allies into the fighting.
The worst conflicts, however, developed between Native Americans
and Europeans over land. Violent land disputes underlay the Dutch decision
to restrict immigration and stick to fur trading as the basis for the New
Netherland colony. Such disputes were even more common between local

Native Americans and English colonists in search of free land.

As more and more European settlers arrived in North America, they
soon outnumbered the Native Americans, whose population had been
severely reduced by disease brought by settlers. English settlers often
interpreted the great epidemics as signs of God's blessing on their own
settlement. Edward Johnson, an early settler in Puritan New England,
expressed this view when he described the catastrophic death rate of the
Indians just before the Puritans arrived:
"There befell a great mortality among them; the greatest that ever the
memory of father or son took notice of, desolating chiefly those places
where the English afterward planted; sweeping away whole families, but
chiefly young men and children, the very seeds of increase. . . . Their
wigwams lie full of dead corpses. . . . By this means, Christ, whose great
and glorious works throughout the earth are all for the benefit of his
churches and chosen, not only made room for his people to plant, but also
tamed the hearts of these barbarous Indians."xviii[lxiii]
With conflicting ideas about how to use the land, English settlers and Native
Americans pursued ways of living that were often at odds. Eventually, the
technology and greater numbers of the colonists prevailed. Despite
considerable resistance, Native American peoples were driven off their lands,
and often destroyed altogether. European settlers eventually drove out even
the farming tribes of the Southeast, who tried to adapt to European methods.
With more land coming under cultivation, European settlers,
especially in southern colonies, soon found themselves in need of workers. As
the Spanish and Portuguese had done under similar circumstances in Central
and South America, now the North American colonists turned to Africa to
provide slave laborers. It was a fateful development that would affect three
continents and the fate of millions of people.

Section 3 Review
IDENTIFY and explain the significance of the following:
Northwest Passage
John Cabot
Jacques Cartier

Samuel de Champlain
Ren-Robert de La Salle
Henry Hudson
Dutch West India Company
Peter Minuit
indentured servitude
Great Migration
Anne Hutchinson
John Winthrop
LOCATE and explain the importance of the following:
St. Lawrence River
Quebec
Louisiana
Manhattan Island
New Netherland
Jamestown
Plymouth
1. Main Idea What was France's motive in establishing overseas colonies?
2. Main Idea How did the Dutch establish their American colony?
3. Geography: Movement What geographic features determined the
exploration and settlement of New France and Louisiana?
4. Synthesizing How did the settlement of Europeans in North America
affect Native American populations In your answer, consider the situation
in New France, New Netherland, and English America.

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