In the early years of the 17th century began the great migration of Europeans to North America. A weak brook of several hundred English colonists in a little over three centuries turned into a full-flowing stream of millions of immigrants. Due to various circumstances, they left to create a new civilization on a sparsely populated continent.

The first English immigrants to settle in what is now the United States crossed the Atlantic much later than the flourishing Spanish colonies in Mexico, the West Indies, and South America. Like everyone who moved then to New World, they arrived in small, overcrowded ships. The journey took 6 to 12 weeks, food was scarce, and many settlers died of disease. Storms and storms often hit ships, people died at sea.

Most European immigrants left their homeland for greater economic opportunities, often coupled with a desire for religious freedom or a determination to escape political pressure. In 1620-1635. economic turmoil swept the whole of England. Many people lost their jobs, even skilled artisans barely made ends meet. These troubles were exacerbated by crop failures. In addition, the cloth industry that was developing in England required an increase in the supply of wool, and so that the looms would not stop, the sheep began to graze on communal lands taken from the peasants. The impoverished peasants were forced to seek their fortune overseas.

On the new land, the colonists encountered, first of all, dense forests. Indian tribes lived there, many of which were at enmity with white newcomers. However, the latter would hardly have been able to survive without friendly Indians, from whom they learned to grow local varieties of vegetables - pumpkin, squash, beans and corn. Virgin forests, stretching for almost 2 thousand km along the eastern coast of the North American continent, provided them with an abundance of game and fuel. They also provided material for the construction of houses, ships, the manufacture of household utensils, as well as valuable raw materials for export.

The first permanent English settlement in America was the fort and settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, founded in 1607. The area soon became prosperous thanks to the cultivation of tobacco, which the colonists sold in London. Although the new continent had enormous natural resources, trade with Europe was vital, since the colonists could not yet produce many goods themselves.

Gradually, the colonies became self-supporting societies with their own outlets to the sea. Each of them has become a separate, independent organism. But, despite this, the problems of trade, navigation, industrial production and finance went beyond individual colonies and required a joint settlement, which subsequently led to the federal structure of the American state.

Settlement of the colonies in the XVII century. required careful planning and management, and was also a very costly and risky undertaking. The settlers had to be transported by sea over a distance of almost 5 thousand km, supplied with household items, clothing, seeds, tools, building materials, livestock, weapons and ammunition. In contrast to the policy of colonization that was pursued by other states, emigration from England was not in charge of the government, but of private individuals whose main motive was to make a profit.

Two colonies - Virginia and Massachusetts - founded privileged companies: the "Massachusetts Bay Company" and the "London Company of Virginia". Their funds, created by contributors, were used to supply and transport the colonists. Wealthy immigrants who arrived in the New Haven colony (later part of Connecticut) paid their own way, supported their families and servants. New Hampshire, Maine, Maryland, North and South Carolina, New Jersey and Pennsylvania originally belonged to the owners of the English nobility (gentry), who populated the land granted to them by the king with tenants and servants.

The first 13 colonies that would become the United States were (from north to south): New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia .

Georgia was founded by a group of people led by James Edward Oglethorpe. They planned to send debtors from English prisons to America to create a border colony that would block the way for the Spaniards in the south of the continent. Meanwhile, the colony of New Netherland, founded in 1621 by the Dutch, in 1664 went to England and was renamed New York.

Many moved to America for political reasons. In the 1630s the despotic rule of Charles I gave impetus to migration to the New World. Then the revolution in England and the victory of the opponents of Charles I, led by Oliver Cromwell in the 1640s. forced many cavaliers - "the king's people" - to try their luck in Virginia. The despotism of the petty German princes, especially in matters of faith, and the numerous wars that took place in their possessions, contributed to the intensification of German immigration to America in the late 17th and 18th centuries.

Men and women, even if not too interested in a new life on American soil, often succumbed to the persuasion of recruiters. William Penn circulated in the press about the opportunities and benefits that awaited those wishing to move to Pennsylvania. Judges and jailers were persuaded to give the prisoners a chance to move to America instead of carrying out the sentence.

Only a few colonists could go overseas with their families at their own expense to start a new life there. Ship captains received a large reward for selling contracts but hiring the poor to work in America. In order to take more passengers on board, they did not disdain anything - from the most unusual promises and promises to kidnapping. In other cases, the costs of transporting and maintaining settlers were borne by colonization agencies such as the London Company of Virginia and the Massachusetts Bay Company. Settlers who signed a contract with the company were obliged to work for it as a laborer or contracted servant (servant) for a certain period - usually from four to seven years. At the end of the term, the servants could receive a small piece of land. Many of those who arrived in the New World on such terms soon found that, while remaining servants or tenants, they did not begin to live better than in their homeland.

Historians have estimated that about half of the colonists who lived south of New England came to America on the basis of a contract. Although the majority honestly fulfilled their obligations, some fled from the owners. Many fugitive servants, however, managed to get land and to acquire a farm - in the colony where they settled, or in neighboring ones. Bonded service was not considered shameful, and the families that began their lives in America from this half-slavish position did not sully their reputation. Even among the leaders of the colonies there were people who were servants in the past.

There was, however, a very important exception to this rule - the African slave trade. The first blacks were brought to Virginia in 1619, seven years after Jamestown was founded. In the beginning, many "black" settlers were considered indentured servants who could "earn" their freedom. However, by the 1960s In the 17th century, as the demand for workers on the plantations increased, slavery began to take hold. Blacks began to be brought from Africa in shackles - already as life-long slaves.

Most of the colonists in the XVII century. were English, but there were a small number of Dutch, Swedes and Germans in the mid-Atlantic colonies. In South Carolina and other colonies, there were French Huguenots, as well as Spaniards, Italians, and Portuguese. After 1680 England ceased to be the main source of immigration. Thousands of people fled from war-torn Europe. Many left their homeland to get rid of the poverty generated by the pressure of the authorities and large landlords who owned estates. By 1690, the American population reached 1/4 million people. Since then, it has doubled every 25 years, until it exceeded 2.5 million people in 1775.

American settlements were grouped into geographical "sections", depending on natural conditions.

New England on northeast(Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine) was an agriculturally secondary area: thin soil, poor vegetation, mountainous, uneven terrain, short summer and long winter. Therefore, its inhabitants solved other problems - they used the power of water and built mills and sawmills. The presence of timber contributed to the development of shipbuilding, convenient bays favored trade, and the sea served as a source of enrichment. In Massachusetts, the cod fishery alone immediately began to bring high profits. The Massachusetts Bay settlement played an important role in the religious development of all of New England. The 25 colonists who founded it had a royal charter and were determined to succeed. During the first 10 years of the existence of the colony, 65 Puritan priests arrived there, and due to the religious convictions of the leaders of the colonists and with their support, the power of the church was strengthened there. Formally, the churchmen did not have secular power, but in fact they led the colony.

In the south, with its warm climate and fertile soil, a largely agrarian society developed. AT mid-Atlantic colonies Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and New York - nature was more diverse: forests, valleys suitable for agriculture, bays where such large port cities as Philadelphia and New York grew up.

Society in the mid-Atlantic colonies was much more diverse and religiously tolerant than in New England. Pennsylvania and Delaware owe their success to the Quakers, who set out to attract settlers of many faiths and nationalities. Quakers dominated Philadelphia, and there were other sects in other parts of the colony. Immigrants from Germany proved to be the most skilled farmers, they also knew weaving, shoemaking, carpentry and other crafts. Through Pennsylvania, the bulk of Scottish and Irish immigrants arrived in the New World. Equally mixed was the population of the colonies of New York, which perfectly demonstrates the multilingualism of America. By 1646 along the river. The Hudson was settled by the Dutch, French, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, British, Scots, Irish, Germans, Poles, immigrants from Bohemia, Portugal, Italy. But these are only the forerunners of millions of future immigrants.

Eastern states- Virginia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, Georgia - differed greatly from New England and the mid-Atlantic colonies in their predominantly rural character. The first surviving English settlement in the New World was Jamestown, Virginia.

A distinctive feature of the first stages of colonial history was the absence of strict control from the British authorities. While the colonies were being formed, they were actually left to their own devices. The British government was not directly involved in their founding (with the exception of Georgia), and the political leadership of the colonies, it began gradually and not immediately.

Since 1651, the British government has from time to time passed ordinances regulating certain aspects economic life colonies, which in most cases was beneficial only to England, but the colonists simply ignored the laws that harmed them. Sometimes the British administration tried to force their implementation, but these attempts quickly failed.

The relative political independence of the colonies was largely due to their remoteness from England. They became more and more "American" rather than "English". This trend was reinforced by the mixing of different national groups and cultures - a process that has been going on all the time in America.

Great geographical discoveries also touched North America. The first country that began to discover and master the colonization process was Spain.

1519-1525 Cortes conquers the modern territories of Mexico, from which the Spaniards then send expeditions to the north, to conquer the North American continent.

Most important expedition- This is Francisco Coronar 1540-42. The Spaniards explored almost the entire southern part of the United States.

As a result, by the end of the 16th century, they found the first European colonies on the territory of the future United States. This new Mexico, almost 1 million km 2 , covers the southernmost states of the modern USA, these are Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, centered on Santa Fe, then Florida. By the end of the 18th century - California.

In the 16th century, colonization attempts were made by other European powers.

Jacques Cartier, 1534-35-36, 3 expeditions, an attempt to settle in the valley of the Saint Mauritius, this is modern Canada, Quebec. The end is not entirely successful, permanent settlements are not formed.

In the 2nd half of the 16th century, during the era of religious wars, the French Huguenots tried to settle in the territory of the modern state of Georgia. After 2 years, this colony dies under the blows of the Spaniards.

The English settlements of the last third of the 16th century on the territory of modern Carolinas (then called Virginia), the 5th expedition also do not lead to the creation of permanent settlements. They either die or return to their homeland.

In fact, colonization begins at the beginning of the 17th century.

1604 - the creation of the very first European survivor colonies. This is a huge territory from the St. Lawrence Valley, from New Foundland, Labrador, to the modern state of Colorado. This is the northern part of the USA, the southern part of Canada.

After 1603 - 11 expeditions of Lassalle leads to the founding of Canada. French possessions in Canada.

The beginning of the 18th century - the French landed in the Mississippi Delta, founded the Louisiana colony, the only agricultural colony. Port city of New Orleans.

1624 - The Dutch establish their settlement on the Atlantic coast of New Amsterdam. This is the center of the colony, which was called New Netherland.

1638 - the end of the 30-year war.

Thus, several states are actively involved in attempts to develop North America.

The most important is the English colonization flow, or the flow from the British Isles.

1607 James Town founded. This is the core of the largest southern colony of Virginia or Virginia.

In this region, the second southern colony is founded in the neighborhood of Maryland, then Carolina, which is then divided into North and South.

In the 18th century, the British in this region created a buffer between the Spanish Florida and the English settlements of the colony of Georgia in 1735.

Northern region - New England.

From 1628-29 - the foundation of Massachusetts and other small colonies that make up the New England region.

The middle of the 17th century - such a conglomerate of colonies is created.

Wars between England and the Netherlands for supremacy in trade and on the seas. These wars lead to the fact that the Dutch themselves fell victim to the blows of the British.

The reason why in the struggle for dominance, primacy goes to England. This superiority has been confirmed since the beginning of the 18th century by the War of the Spanish Succession. France was forced to defend its territories in eastern Canada and the Hudson Bay coast, and after the end of the 7-year war under the Treaty of Paris in 1763, France loses almost all of its Canadian lands, and Spain loses Florida.

Thus, by 1763, the struggle of European countries for North America ends with a crushing defeat for England's competitors.

What is the reason for the English victories? There are always many reasons. But the main thing is that the English flow of colonization turned out to be the most massive:

1610 - the number of colonists in North America, in Virginia - 500 people.

1700 - 250 thousand people (this is more than 20 times the population of all French colonies).

On the eve of the War of Independence, in the 2nd half of the 18th century, 2,600,000 people already lived in the colonies.

The reason for such mass colonization is one of the consequences of the Great English Revolution. Depeasantization of England, dispossession of land, part of the emigrants is sent to new lands, to the New World.

This Atlantic migration in the history of modern times became the most massive, longest flow of migrants.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy - he was not only president, but also a historian, writer, he wrote the book "We are a nation of migrants." There he cites data that the flow of migrants reached 70 million people by the beginning of the 18th century.

Scientists have calculated that if it were not for this migration, then the US population would grow 40% less intensively. What does this migration mean? That large masses of people went to America, and representatives of all strata and all categories of society, from the elite, nobles, merchants, wealthy owners of capital to workers.

We drove differently. A significant part went voluntarily with their own money. And half were contracted workers, or exiles, criminals, political, criminals. The exiles had to work for 10 years or more in hard labor, on farms, mines, plantations, etc. And the contracted, who did not have their own funds, went on credit, had to work off the loan from 3 to 7 years, on the same plantations and farms. The owner could teach a negligent worker with a stick.

Nevertheless, the English colonization gave great amount workers who transformed the country.

As a result, in the middle of the 18th century, this settlement, which became known as British North America, turned into one of the most prosperous and developed regions of the world. In terms of living standards, second only to England and France. In other words, by the 18th century Americans were used to living not just well, but very well. And America from this period is one of the most prosperous and economically developed regions of the world both in terms of living standards and gross domestic product.

In America, durable ships were built that sailed up to 50 years. For comparison, Russian military ships worked for up to 10 years, and then needed to be repaired. The cost of construction was 2 times lower than in Europe.

A third of the British fleet was built from American materials, by American hands. And Britain in the 18th century is the most powerful maritime power.

The next region is the Central Colonies, this is the breadbasket of the country, wheat. Much went for export. Farms, large. By the time of the war for independence, 700,000 blacks were concentrated there.

The population of the country by the middle of the 18th century was about 3 million. All strata and classes of society were represented.

Thus, the colonial, American elite was born: political, military, spiritual and religious, legal, merchants, merchants, large landowners-planters. From the middle of the 18th century, this elite began to claim to rule the country itself, without prompting from England. More and more energetically, local Americans declared their claims to the right to lead the colonies themselves.



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Colonization of America

How did the colonization of America take place?

European colonization of the Americas began as early as the 10th and 11th centuries, when western Scandinavian sailors explored and briefly settled small areas on the coast of modern Canada. These Scandinavians were Vikings who discovered and settled in Greenland, and then they sailed to the arctic region of North America near Greenland and down to neighboring Canada to explore and then settle. According to the Icelandic sagas, violent conflicts with the indigenous population eventually forced the Scandinavians to abandon these settlements.

Discovery of North American lands

Extensive European colonization began in 1492 when a Spanish expedition led by Christopher Columbus sailed west to find a new trade route to the Far East, but inadvertently landed in what became known to Europeans as " New world". Moving through the northern part of Hispaniola on December 5, 1492, which was inhabited by the Taino people since the 7th century, Europeans founded their first settlement in the Americas. This was followed by European conquest, large-scale exploration, colonization and industrial development. During his first two voyages (1492-93), Columbus reached the Bahamas and other Caribbean islands, including Haiti, Puerto Rico and Cuba. In 1497, setting out from Bristol on behalf of England, John Cabot landed on the North American coast, and a year later, on his third voyage, Columbus reached the coast of South America. As sponsor of the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Spain was the first European power to settle and colonize largest territories North America and the Caribbean to the southernmost point of South America.

Which countries colonized America

Other countries, such as France, established colonies in the Americas: in eastern North America, on a number of islands in the Caribbean, and also on small coastal parts of South America. Portugal colonized Brazil, tried to colonize the coast of modern Canada, and its representatives settled for a long period in the northwest (east bank) of the La Plata River. In the era of great geographical discoveries, the beginning of territorial expansion by some European countries was laid. Europe was occupied with internal wars, and was slowly recovering from the loss of population as a result of the bubonic plague; therefore the rapid growth of her wealth and power was unpredictable at the beginning of the 15th century.

Eventually, the entire Western Hemisphere came under the apparent control of European governments, resulting in profound changes in its landscape, population, and flora and fauna. In the 19th century, more than 50 million people left Europe alone for resettlement in North and South America. The time after 1492 is known as the period of the Columbian Exchange, a large and widespread exchange of animals, plants, culture, populations (including slaves), infectious diseases, and ideas between the American and Afro-Eurasian hemispheres, which followed Columbus's voyages to the Americas. .

Scandinavian voyages to Greenland and Canada are supported by historical and archaeological evidence. The Scandinavian colony in Greenland was established at the end of the 10th century and continued until the middle of the 15th century, with a court and parliamentary assemblies sitting in Brattalida and a bishop who was based in Sargan. The remains of a Scandinavian settlement at L'Anse-o-Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada were discovered in 1960 and have been dated around 1000 (carbon analysis showed 990-1050 AD); L'Anse-o-Meadows is the only settlement which has been widely accepted as evidence of pre-Columbian transoceanic contact. It was named object world heritage UNESCO in 1978. It should also be noted that this settlement may be related to the failed Vinland colony founded by Leif Erickson around the same time or, more broadly, to the West Scandinavian colonization of the Americas.

Colonial history of America

Early research and the conquests were made by the Spanish and the Portuguese immediately after their own final reconquest of Iberia in 1492. In 1494, by the Treaty of Tordesillas, ratified by the Pope, these two kingdoms divided the entire non-European world into two parts for exploration and colonization, from the northern to the southern border, cutting the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern part of modern Brazil. Based on this treaty and on the basis of earlier claims by the Spanish explorer Núñez de Balboa, discoverer of the Pacific in 1513, the Spaniards conquered large territories in North, Central and South America.

The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortes conquered the Aztec kingdom and Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca empire. As a result, by the mid-16th century, the Spanish crown had gained control of much of western South America, Central America, and southern North America, in addition to the early Caribbean territories it had conquered. During the same period, Portugal took over land in North America (Canada) and colonized much of the eastern region of South America, naming it Santa Cruz and Brazil.

Other European countries soon began to challenge the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas. England and France tried to establish colonies in the Americas in the 16th century, but failed. England and France succeeded in establishing permanent colonies in the next century along with the Dutch Republic. Some of these were in the Caribbean, which had already been repeatedly conquered by the Spanish, or depopulated by disease, while other colonies were in eastern North America, north of Florida, that had not been colonized by Spain.

Early European possessions in North America included Spanish Florida, Spanish New Mexico, the English colonies of Virginia (with their North Atlantic offshoot, Bermuda) and New England, the French colonies of Acadia and Canada, the Swedish colony of New Sweden, and the Dutch colony of New Netherland. In the 18th century, Denmark-Norway revived their former colonies in Greenland, while the Russian empire was entrenched in Alaska. Denmark-Norway later made several claims to land ownership in the Caribbean starting in the 1600s.

As more countries gained interest in colonizing the Americas, the competition for territory became more and more fierce. The colonists often faced the threat of attacks from neighboring colonies, as well as native tribes and pirates.

Who paid for the expeditions of the discoverers of America?

The first phase of a well-funded European activity in the Americas began with the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by Christopher Columbus (1492-1504), financed by Spain, whose original purpose was to try to find a new route to India and China, then known as the "Indies". He was followed by other explorers such as John Cabot, who was funded by England and reached Newfoundland. Pedro Alvarez Cabral reached Brazil and claimed it on behalf of Portugal.

Amerigo Vespucci, working for Portugal on voyages from 1497 to 1513, established that Columbus had reached new continents. Cartographers still use a Latinized version of their first name, America, for the two continents. Other explorers: Giovanni Verrazzano, whose voyage was financed by France in 1524; the Portuguese João Vaz Cortireal in Newfoundland; João Fernández Lavrador, Gaspar and Miguel Corte-Real and João Alvarez Fagundes in Newfoundland, Greenland, Labrador and Nova Scotia (from 1498 to 1502, and in 1520); Jacques Cartier (1491-1557), Henry Hudson (1560-1611), and Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635) who explored Canada.

In 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and led the first European expedition to see Pacific Ocean from the western coast of the New World. In fact, sticking to the previous history of conquest, Balboa claimed that the Spanish crown laid claim to the Pacific Ocean and all adjacent lands. This was before 1517, before another expedition from Cuba visited Central America, landing on the Yucatan coast in search of slaves.

These explorations were followed, in particular by Spain, by a stage of conquest: the Spaniards, having just completed the liberation of Spain from Muslim domination, were the first to colonize the Americas, applying the same model of European administration of their territories in the New World.

colonial period

Ten years after the discovery of Columbus, the administration of Hispaniola was transferred to Nicolás de Ovando of the Order of Alcantara, founded during the Reconquista (liberation of Spain from Muslim domination). As on Iberian Peninsula, the inhabitants of Hispaniola received new landowners-owners while religious orders led the local administration. Gradually, an encomienda system was established there, which obliged European settlers to pay tribute (having access to local labor and taxation).

A relatively common misconception is that a small number of conquistadors conquered vast territories, bringing only epidemics and their powerful caballeros there. In fact, recent archaeological excavations have suggested the existence of a large Spanish-Indian alliance numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Hernán Cortés finally conquered Mexico with the help of Tlaxcala in 1519-1521, while the Inca conquest was carried out by about 40,000 traitors of the same people, led by Francisco Pizarro, between 1532 and 1535.

How did the relations between the European colonists and the Indians develop?

A century and a half after the voyages of Columbus, the indigenous population of North and South America dropped sharply by about 80% (from 50 million in 1492 to 8 million people in 1650), mainly due to outbreaks of diseases of the Old World.

In 1532, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, sent a viceroy to Mexico, Antonio de Mendoza, to prevent the independence movement that had arisen during the reign of Cortés, who finally returned to Spain in 1540. Two years later, Charles V signed the New Laws (which replaced the Laws of Burgos of 1512) banning slavery and repartimiento, but also claiming ownership of American lands and considering all the people inhabiting these lands to be his subjects.

When in May 1493 Pope Alexander VI issued the bull "Inter caetera", according to which the new lands were transferred to the Kingdom of Spain, in exchange he demanded the evangelization of the people. So, during the second journey of Columbus, Benedictine monks accompanied him along with twelve other priests. Because slavery was forbidden among Christians, and could only be applied to prisoners of war who were not Christians, or to men already sold as slaves, the debate over Christianization was particularly heated during the 16th century. In 1537, the papal bull "Sublimis Deus" finally recognized the fact that Native Americans possessed souls, thereby forbidding their enslavement, but did not end the discussion. Some argued that the natives, who rebelled against the authorities and were captured, could still be enslaved.

Later, a debate was held in Valladolid between the Dominican priest Bartolome de las Casas and another Dominican philosopher, Juan Gines de Sepúlveda, where the former argued that Native Americans were creatures with souls, like all other human beings, while the latter argued the opposite and justified their enslavement.

Christianization of Colonial America

The process of Christianization was brutal at first: when the first Franciscans arrived in Mexico in 1524, they burned the places dedicated to the pagan cult, chilling relations with much of the local population. In the 1530s they began to adapt Christian practices to local customs, including the building of new churches on the sites of ancient places of worship, which led to the mixing of Old World Christianity with local religions. The Spanish Roman Catholic Church, in need of native labor and cooperation, preached in Quechua, Nahuatl, Guarani and other Indian languages, which contributed to the expansion of the use of these indigenous languages ​​and provided some of them with writing systems. One of the first primitive schools for Native Americans was one founded by Fray Pedro de Gante in 1523.

In order to encourage their troops, the conquistadors often gave away Indian cities for the use of their troops and officers. Black African slaves replaced local labor in some places, including in the West Indies, where the native population was close to extinction on many islands.

During this time, the Portuguese gradually moved from the original plan of establishing trading posts to extensive colonization of what is now Brazil. They brought millions of slaves to work their plantations. The Portuguese and Spanish royal governments intended to manage these settlements and receive at least 20% of all treasures found (in Quinto Real, collected by the Casa de Contratación government agency), in addition to collecting any taxes they might have levied. By the end of the 16th century, American silver accounted for one-fifth of Spain's total budget. In the 16th century, about 240,000 Europeans landed at American ports.

Colonization of America in search of wealth

Inspired by the wealth derived by the Spaniards from their colonies based on the conquered lands of the Aztecs, Incas, and other large Indian settlements in the 16th century, the early English began to settle permanently in America and hoped for the same rich discoveries when they established their first permanent settlement. at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. They were financed by the same joint-stock companies, such as the Virginia Freight Company, funded by wealthy Englishmen, who exaggerated the economic potential of this new land. The main purpose of this colony was the hope of finding gold.

It took strong leaders like John Smith to convince the Jamestown colonists that in their search for gold they needed to put aside their basic needs for food and shelter, and the Biblical principle "He who does not work shall not eat". to an extremely high death rate was very unfortunate and a cause for despair among the colonists.Many supply missions were organized to support the colony.Later, thanks to the work of John Rolfe and others, tobacco became a commercial export crop, which ensured the sustainable economic development of Virginia and the neighboring colony of Maryland .

From the beginning of the Virginia settlements in 1587 until the 1680s, the main source of labor was most of immigrants, in search of a new life, arrived in foreign colonies to work under a contract. During the 17th century, wage laborers made up three-quarters of all European immigrants in the Chesapeake region. Most of the hired workers were teenagers, originally from England, with poor economic prospects in their homeland. Their fathers signed documents that gave these teenagers the opportunity to come to America for free and get unpaid work until they reach adulthood. They were provided with food, clothing, housing and training in agricultural work or household services. American landowners needed workers and were willing to pay for their passage to America if these workers served them for several years. By exchanging a passage to America for unpaid work for five to seven years, after this period they could begin an independent life in America. Many migrants from England died within the first few years.

Economic advantage also prompted the creation of the Darien Project, the ill-fated venture of the Kingdom of Scotland to establish a colony on the Isthmus of Panama in the late 1690s. The Darien project had as its object the control of trade through that part of the world, and thereby was to assist Scotland in strengthening her strength in world trade. However, the project was doomed due to poor planning, low food supplies, poor leadership, lack of demand for trade goods, and a devastating disease. The failure of the Darien Project was one of the reasons that led the Kingdom of Scotland to enter into the Act of Union in 1707 with the Kingdom of England, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and giving Scotland commercial access to the English, now British, colonies.

In the French colonial regions, sugar plantations in the Caribbean were the backbone of the economy. The fur trade was very important in Canada. local residents. About 16,000 French men and women became colonizers. The vast majority became farmers, settling along the St. Lawrence River. With favorable conditions for health (no disease) and plenty of land and food, their numbers grew exponentially to 65,000 by 1760. The colony was ceded to Great Britain in 1760, but there were few social, religious, legal, cultural and economic changes in a society that remained true to the newly formed traditions.

Religious immigration to the New World

Roman Catholics were the first major religious group to immigrate to the New World, as the settlers of the colonies of Spain and Portugal (and later, France) belonged to this faith. The English and Dutch colonies, on the other hand, were more religiously diverse. The settlers of these colonies included Anglicans, Dutch Calvinists, English Puritans and other nonconformists, English Catholics, Scottish Presbyterians, French Huguenots, German and Swedish Lutherans, as well as Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, Moravians, and Jews of various ethnicities.

Many groups of colonists went to America in order to gain the right to practice their religion without persecution. The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century broke the unity of Western Christendom and led to the formation of numerous new religious sects, which were often persecuted by state authorities. In England, many people came to the question of the organization of the Church of England towards the end of the 16th century. One of the main manifestations of this was the Puritan movement, which sought to "purify" the existing Church of England of its many residual Catholic rites, which they believed had no mention in the Bible.

A firm believer in the principle of government based on divine right, Charles I, King of England and Scotland, persecuted religious dissenters. Waves of repression led about 20,000 Puritans to migrate to New England between 1629 and 1642, where they established several colonies. Later in the same century, the new colony of Pennsylvania was given to William Penn as a settlement of the king's debt to his father. The government of this colony was established by William Penn about 1682, primarily to provide a refuge for persecuted English Quakers; but other residents were also welcome. Baptists, Quakers, German and Swiss Protestants, Anabaptists flocked to Pennsylvania. Very attractive were the good opportunity to get cheap land, freedom of religion and the right to improve their own lives.

The peoples of the Americas before and after the start of European colonization

Slavery was a common practice in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans, as different groups American Indians were captured and held as slaves from other tribes. Many of these captives were subjected to human sacrifice in Native American civilizations such as the Aztecs. In response to some cases of enslavement of the local population in the Caribbean during the early years of colonization, the Spanish crown passed a series of laws prohibiting slavery as early as 1512. A new, stricter set of laws was passed in 1542 called the New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Protection of the Indians, or simply the New Laws. They were created to prevent the exploitation of indigenous peoples by encomenderos or landowners by severely limiting their power and dominance. This helped to greatly reduce Indian slavery, although not completely. Later, with the arrival of other European colonial powers in the New World, the enslavement of the native population increased, as these empires did not have anti-slavery legislation for several decades. Indigenous populations declined (mainly due to European diseases, but also from forced exploitation and crime). Later, the indigenous workers were replaced by Africans brought in through the large commercial slave trade.

How were blacks brought to America?

By the 18th century, the overwhelming number of black slaves was such that Native American slavery was much rarer. The Africans who were taken on board the slave ships sailing to North and South America were mostly supplied from their African home countries by the coastal tribes, who captured them and sold them. Europeans bought slaves from local African tribes who took them prisoner in exchange for rum, weapons, gunpowder and other goods.

Slave trade in America

An estimated 12 million Africans were involved in the total slave trade in the islands of the Caribbean, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States. The vast majority of these slaves were sent to the sugar colonies in the Caribbean and Brazil, where life expectancy was short and the number of slaves had to be constantly replenished. At best, about 600,000 African slaves were imported into the US, or 5% of the 12 million slaves exported from Africa. Life expectancy was much higher in the US (because of better food, fewer diseases, easier work, and better medical care), so the number of slaves rose rapidly from birth to death, reaching 4 million by 1860 according to the census. From 1770 to 1860, the natural growth rate of North American slaves was much higher than the population of any country in Europe, and was almost twice as fast as that of England.

Slaves imported into thirteen colonies/USA in a given time period:

• 1619-1700 - 21.000
• 1701-1760 - 189.000
• 1761-1770 - 63.000
• 1771-1790 - 56.000
• 1791-1800 - 79.000
• 1801-1810 - 124.000
• 1810-1865 - 51.000
• Total - 597.000

Indigenous losses during colonization

The European way of life included long history direct contact with domesticated animals such as cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, and various domesticated birds, from which many diseases originally arose. Thus, unlike the indigenous peoples, the Europeans accumulated antibodies. Large-scale contact with Europeans after 1492 brought new microbes to the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Epidemics of smallpox (1518, 1521, 1525, 1558, 1589), typhoid (1546), influenza (1558), diphtheria (1614) and measles (1618) swept America after contact with Europeans, killing between 10 million and 100 million people, up to 95% of the indigenous population of North and South America. Cultural and political instability accompanied these losses, which together greatly contributed to the efforts of various colonists in New England and Massachusetts to gain control of the great wealth in land and resources commonly enjoyed by the indigenous communities.

Such diseases have added human mortality to an undeniably enormous severity and scale - and it is pointless to try to determine its full extent with any degree of accuracy. Estimates of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas vary greatly.

Others have argued that the large population differences after pre-Columbian history are the reason for treating the largest population count with caution. Such estimates may reflect historical population highs, while indigenous populations may have been at levels slightly below these highs, or at a time of decline just prior to European contact. Indigenous peoples reached their ultimate lows in most areas of the Americas in the early 20th century; and in some cases growth has returned.

List of European colonies in the Americas

Spanish colonies

• Cuba (until 1898)
• New Granada (1717-1819)
• Captaincy General of Venezuela
• New Spain (1535-1821)
• Nueva Extremadura
• Nueva Galicia
• Nuevo Reino de Leon
• Nuevo Santander
• Nueva Vizcaya
• California
• Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico
• Viceroyalty of Peru (1542-1824)
• Captaincy General of Chile
• Puerto Rico (1493-1898)
• Rio de la Plata (1776-1814)
• Hispaniola (1493-1865); the island, now included in the islands of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, was under Spanish rule in whole or in part from 1492- to 1865.

English and (after 1707) British colonies

• British America (1607- 1783)
• Thirteen Colonies (1607-1783)
• Rupert's Land (1670-1870)
• British Columbia (1793-1871)
• British North America (1783-1907)
• British West Indies
• Belize

Courland

• New Courland (Tobago) (1654-1689)

Danish colonies

• Danish West Indies (1754-1917)
• Greenland (1814-present)

Dutch colonies

• New Netherland (1609-1667)
• Essequibo (1616-1815)
• Dutch Virgin Islands (1625-1680)
• Burbice (1627-1815)
• New Walcheren (1628-1677)
• Dutch Brazil (1630-1654)
• Pomerun (1650-1689)
• Cayenne (1658-1664)
• Demerara (1745-1815)
• Suriname (1667-1954) (After independence, still part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands until 1975)
• Curaçao and Dependencies (1634-1954) (Aruba and Curaçao are still part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Bonaire; 1634-present)
• Sint Eustatius and dependencies (1636-1954) (Sint Maarten is still part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Sint Eustatius and Saba; 1636-present)

French colonies

• New France (1604-1763)
• Acadia (1604-1713)
• Canada (1608-1763)
• Louisiana (1699-1763, 1800-1803)
• Newfoundland (1662-1713)
• Ile Royale (1713-1763)
• French Guiana (1763–present)
• French West Indies
• Saint Domingo (1659-1804, now Haiti)
• Tobago
• Virgin Islands
• Antarctic France (1555-1567)
• Equatorial France (1612-1615)

Order of Malta

• Saint Barthelemy (1651-1665)
• Saint Christopher (1651-1665)
• St. Croix (1651-1665)
• Saint Martin (1651-1665)

Norwegian colonies

• Greenland (986-1814)
• Danish-Norwegian West Indies (1754-1814)
• Sverdrup Islands (1898-1930)
• Land of Eric the Red (1931-1933)

Portuguese colonies

• Colonial Brazil (1500-1815) became a Kingdom, the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves.
• Terra do Labrador (1499/1500-) claimed territory (occupied periodically, from time to time).
• Corte Real Land, also known as Terra Nova dos Bacalhaus (Land of the Cod) - Terra Nova (Newfoundland) (1501) claimed territory (occupied periodically, from time to time).
• Portuguese Cove Saint Philip (1501-1696)
• Nova Scotia (1519 -1520) claimed territory (occupied periodically, from time to time).
• Barbados (1536-1620)
• Colonia del Sacramento (1680-1705 / 1714-1762 / 1763-1777 (1811-1817))
• Sisplatina (1811-1822, now Uruguay)
• French Guiana (1809-1817)

Russian colonies

• Russian America (Alaska) (1799-1867)

Scottish colonies

• Nova Scotia (1622-1632)
• Darien Project on the Isthmus of Panama (1698-1700)
• City of Stuarts, Carolina (1684-1686)

Swedish colonies

• New Sweden (1638-1655)
• St. Barthelemy (1785-1878)
• Guadeloupe (1813-1815)

American museums and exhibitions of slavery

In 2007 the National Museum American history the Smithsonian Institution and historical society of Virginia (VHS) co-hosted a traveling exhibit to recount the strategic alliances and bitter conflicts between European empires (English, Spanish, French) and the indigenous peoples of the American North. The exhibition was presented in three languages ​​and from different points of view. Artifacts on display included rare surviving local and European artifacts, maps, documents, and ritual objects from museums and royal collections on both sides of the Atlantic. The exhibition opened in Richmond, Virginia on March 17, 2007 and closed at the Smithsonian International Gallery on October 31, 2009.

A linked online exhibition is dedicated to the international origins of the societies of Canada and the United States, and to the 400th anniversary of the three permanent settlements at Jamestown (1607), Quebec (1608), and Santa Fe (1609). The site is available in three languages.

Colonization of America by Europeans (1607-1674)

English colonization of North America.
Difficulties of the first settlers.
Reasons for the colonization of America by Europeans. Relocation conditions.
The first Negro slaves.
Mayflower Compact (1620).
Active expansion of European colonization.
Anglo-Dutch Confrontation in America (1648-1674).

Map of the European colonization of North America in the XVI-XVII centuries.

Map of the expeditions of the discoverers of America (1675-1800).

English colonization of North America. The first English settlement in America appeared in 1607 in Virginia and was named Jamestown. The trading post, founded by members of the crews of three English ships under the command of Captain K. Newport, served at the same time as an outpost on the path of the Spanish advance to the north of the continent. The first years of the existence of Jamestown were a time of endless disasters and hardships: diseases, famine and Indian raids took the lives of more than 4 thousand of the first English settlers of America. But already at the end of 1608, the first ship sailed to England, on board of which there was a cargo of wood and iron ore. In just a few years, Jamestown turned into a prosperous village thanks to the extensive plantations of tobacco previously cultivated only by the Indians laid there in 1609, which by 1616 became the main source of income for the inhabitants. Tobacco exports to England, which in 1618 amounted to 20 thousand pounds in monetary terms, increased by 1627 to half a million pounds, creating the necessary economic conditions for population growth. The influx of colonists was greatly facilitated by the allocation of a 50-acre plot of land to any applicant who had the financial ability to pay a small rent. Already by 1620 the population of the village was approx. 1000 people, and in all of Virginia there were approx. 2 thousand people. In the 80s. 17th century exports of tobacco from two southern colonies - Virginia and Maryland (1) rose to 20 million pounds.

Difficulties of the first settlers. The virgin forests, which stretched for more than two thousand kilometers along the entire Atlantic coast, abounded with everything necessary for the construction of dwellings and ships, and the rich nature satisfied the needs of the colonists for food. The increasingly frequent calls of European ships into the natural bays of the coast provided them with goods that were not produced in the colonies. The products of their labor were exported to the Old World from the same colonies. But the rapid development of the northeastern lands, and even more so the advancement into the interior of the continent, beyond the Appalachian mountains, was hampered by the lack of roads, impenetrable forests and mountains, as well as the dangerous neighborhood with Indian tribes hostile to aliens.

The fragmentation of these tribes and the complete lack of unity in their sorties against the colonists became the main reason for the displacement of the Indians from the lands they occupied and their final defeat. The temporary alliances of some Indian tribes with the French (in the north of the continent) and with the Spaniards (in the south), who were also worried about the pressure and energy of the British, Scandinavians and Germans advancing from the east coast, did not bring the desired results. The first attempts to conclude peace agreements between individual Indian tribes and the English colonists who settled in the New World turned out to be ineffective (2).

Reasons for the colonization of America by Europeans. Relocation conditions. European immigrants were attracted to America by the rich natural resources of a distant continent, which promised a rapid provision of material prosperity, and its remoteness from European strongholds of religious dogmas and political predilections (3). Not supported by governments or official churches of any country, the exodus of Europeans to the New World was financed by private companies and individuals, driven primarily by an interest in generating income from the transportation of people and goods. Already in 1606, the London and Plymouth companies were formed in England, which actively engaged in the development of the northeast coast of America, including the delivery of English colonists to the continent. Numerous immigrants traveled to the New World with families and even entire communities at their own expense. A significant part of the new arrivals were young women, whose appearance was met with sincere enthusiasm by the unmarried male population of the colonies, paying the cost of their "transportation" from Europe at the rate of 120 pounds of tobacco per head.

Huge, hundreds of thousands of hectares, plots of land were allocated by the British crown to the representatives of English nobility as a gift or for a nominal fee. Interested in the development of their new property, the English aristocracy advanced large sums for the delivery of their recruited compatriots and their arrangement on the lands received. Despite the extreme attractiveness of the conditions existing in the New World for newly arriving colonists, during these years there was a clear lack of human resources, primarily for the reason that cruise only a third of the ships and people embarking on a dangerous journey overcame 5 thousand kilometers - two-thirds died on the way. Was not hospitable and new earth, which met the colonists with unusual frosts for Europeans, severe natural conditions and, as a rule, the hostile attitude of the Indian population.

The first Negro slaves. At the end of August 1619, a Dutch ship arrived in Virginia, bringing the first black Africans to America, twenty of whom were immediately bought by the colonists as servants. Negroes began to turn into lifelong slaves, and in the 60s. 17th century slave status in Virginia and Maryland became hereditary. The slave trade became a regular feature of commercial transactions between East Africa and the American colonies. African chieftains readily traded their men for textiles, household items, gunpowder, and weapons imported from New England (4) and the American South.

Mayflower Compact (1620). In December 1620, an event took place that went down in American history as the beginning of the purposeful colonization of the continent by the British - the Mayflower ship arrived on the Atlantic coast of Massachusetts with 102 Calvinist Puritans, who were rejected by the traditional Anglican Church and did not later find sympathy in Holland. These people, who called themselves Pilgrims (5), considered the only way to preserve their religion to move to America. While still aboard a ship crossing the ocean, they entered into an agreement between themselves, called the Mayflower Compact. It reflected in the most general form the ideas of the first American colonists about democracy, self-government and civil liberties. These notions were developed later in similar agreements reached by the colonists of Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, and in later documents of American history, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America. Having lost half the members of their community, but surviving in a land they had not yet explored in the harsh conditions of the first American winter and the subsequent crop failure, the colonists set an example for their compatriots and other Europeans, who arrived in the New World already prepared for the hardships that awaited them.

Active expansion of European colonization. After 1630, at least a dozen small towns arose in Plymouth Colony, the first colony of New England, which later became the colony of Massachusetts Bay, in which the newly arrived English Puritans settled. Immigration wave 1630-1643 Delivered to New England ca. 20 thousand people, at least 45 thousand more, chose the colonies of the American South or the islands of Central America for their residence.

Over the course of 75 years after the appearance in 1607 on the territory of the modern United States of the first English colony of Virginia, 12 more colonies arose - New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Northern Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. The credit for founding them did not always belong to subjects of the British crown. In 1624, on the island of Manhattan in Hudson Bay [named after the English captain G. Hudson (Hudson), who discovered it in 1609, was in the Dutch service], Dutch fur traders founded a province called New Netherland, with the main city of New Amsterdam. The land on which this city developed was bought in 1626 by a Dutch colonist from the Indians for $24. The Dutch never managed to achieve any significant socio-economic development of their only colony in the New World.

Anglo-Dutch Confrontation in America (1648-1674). After 1648 and up to 1674, England and Holland fought three times, and during these 25 years, in addition to hostilities, there was a continuous and fierce economic struggle between them. In 1664, New Amsterdam was captured by the British under the command of the king's brother Duke of York, who renamed the city New York. During the Anglo-Dutch War of 1673-1674. The Netherlands managed to restore their power in this territory for a short time, but after the defeat of the Dutch in the war, the British again took possession of it. From then until the end of the American Revolution in 1783 from r. Kennebec to Florida, from New England to the Lower South, the Union Jack flew over the entire northeast coast of the continent.

(1) New British colony was named by King Charles I in honor of his wife Henrietta Maria (Mary), sister of the French King Louis XIII.

(2) The first of these treaties was concluded only in 1621 between the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Wampanoag Indian tribe.

(3) Unlike most Englishmen, Irishmen, Frenchmen, and even Germans, who were forced to move to the New World primarily by political and religious oppression in their homeland, Scandinavian settlers were attracted to North America primarily by its unlimited economic opportunities.

(4) This region of the northeastern part of the continent was first mapped in 1614 by Captain J. Smith, who gave it the name "New England."

(5) From Italian. peltegrino- literal, foreigner. Wandering pilgrim, pilgrim, wanderer.

Sources.
Ivanyan E.A. History of the USA. M., 2006.

There are many legends and more or less reliable stories about brave sailors who visited North America long before Columbus. Among them are Chinese monks who landed in California around 458, Portuguese, Spanish and Irish travelers and missionaries who allegedly reached America in the 6th, 7th and 9th centuries.

It is also believed that in the X century. Basque fishermen fished on the Newfoundland shallows. The most reliable, obviously, is information about Norwegian navigators who visited North America in the 10th-14th centuries, getting here from Iceland. It is believed that the Norman colonies were not only in Greenland, but also on the Labrador Peninsula, Newfoundland, New England, and even in the Great Lakes region. However, the settlements of the Normans already in the XIV century. fell into disrepair, leaving no discernible traces in relation to the links between the cultures of the northern part of the American and European continents. In this sense, the discovery of North America began anew in the 15th century. This time, the British reached North America before other Europeans.

English expeditions in North America

English discoveries in America begin with the voyages of John Cabot (Giovanni Gabotto, or Cabbotto) and his son Sebastian, Italians in the service of the English. Cabot, having received two caravels from the English king, had to find sea ​​route To China. In 1497, he apparently reached the shores of Labrador (where he met the Eskimos), and also, possibly, Newfoundland, where he saw Indians painted with red ocher.

It was the first in the 15th century. meeting of Europeans with the "redskins" of North Akhmerica. In 1498, the expedition of John and Sebastian Cabot again reached the shores of North America.

The immediate practical result of these voyages was the discovery of the richest fish hops off the coast of Newfoundland. Entire fleets of English fishing boats were drawn here, and their number increased every year.

Spanish colonization of North America

If the English sailors reached North America by sea, then the Spaniards moved here by land from the southern regions, as well as from their island possessions in America - Cuba, Puerto Rico, San Domingo, etc.

The Spanish conquerors captured the Indians, plundered and burned their villages. The Indians responded with stubborn resistance. Many invaders have found death on land they have never conquered. Ponce de Leon, who discovered Florida (1513), was mortally wounded in 1521 by the Indians while landing in Tampa Bay, where he wanted to establish a colony. In 1528, the Indian gold hunter, Narvaez, also died. Cabeza de Vaca, the treasurer of the Narvaez expedition, wandered for nine years in the southern part of the North American continent among the Indian tribes. At first he fell into slavery, and then, freed, he became a merchant and healer. Finally, in 1536, he got to the shores of the Gulf of California, already conquered by the Spaniards. De Vaca told a lot of wonderful things, exaggerating the wealth and size of the Indian settlements, especially the "cities" of the Pueblo Indians, which he happened to visit. These stories aroused the interest of the Spanish nobility in the regions north of Mexico, and gave impetus to the search for fabulous cities in the southwest of North America. In 1540, Coronado's expedition set out from Mexico in a northwestern direction, consisting of a detachment of 250 horsemen and foot soldiers, several hundred allied Indians and thousands of Indians and Negro slaves enslaved. The expedition passed through the waterless deserts between the Rio Grande and Colorado rivers, capturing with the cruelty usual for the Spanish colonialists the "cities" of the Pueblo Indians; but neither the expected gold nor precious stones were found in them. For further searches, Coronado sent detachments to different sides, and he himself, after wintering in the Rio Grande Valley, moved north, where he met the Prairie Pawnee Indians (in the current state of Kansas) and got acquainted with their semi-nomadic hunting culture. Finding no treasure, disappointed Coronado turned back and. having collected the remnants of his troops along the way, in 1542 he returned to Mexico. After this expedition, the Spaniards became aware of a significant part of the mainland within the current states of Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas and the southern parts of the states of Utah and Colorado, discovered the Grand Canyon of Colorado, received information about the Pueblo Indians and prairie tribes.

At the same time (1539-1542), the expedition of de Soto, a member of Pizarro's campaign, was equipped in the southeast of North America. As soon as the stories of Cabez de Vac reached him, de Soto sold his property and equipped an expedition of a thousand people. In 1539 he sailed from Cuba and landed on the west coast of Florida. De Soto and his army wandered for four years in search of gold across the vast territory of the present US states: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and southern Missouri, sowing death and destruction in the country of peaceful farmers . As his contemporaries wrote about him, this ruler was fond of killing Jews like a sport.

In northern Florida, de Soto had to deal with the Indians, who since the time of Narvaes and vowed to fight the newcomers not for life, but for death. The conquerors had a particularly difficult time when they reached the lands of the Chicasawa Indians. In response to the excesses and violence of the Spaniards, the Indians once set fire to de Soto's camp, destroying almost all food supplies and military equipment. Only in 1542, when de Soto himself died of a fever, did the miserable remnants (about three hundred people) of his once richly equipped army on makeshift ships barely reach the coast of Mexico. This ended the Spanish expeditions of the 16th century. deep into North America.

By the beginning of the XVII century. Spanish settlements occupied a fairly large territory both on the Atlantic coast of North America (in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina) and on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. In the west, they owned California and areas that roughly corresponded to the current states of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. But in the same XVII century. Spain began to push France and England. The French colonies in the Mississippi Delta separated the possessions of the Spanish crown in Mexico and Florida. To the north of Florida, further penetration of the Spaniards was blocked by the British.

Thus, the influence of Spanish colonization was limited to the southwest. Shortly after the Coronado expedition, missionaries, soldiers, and settlers appeared in the Rio Grande Valley. They forced the Indians to build forts and missions here. San Gabriel (1599) and Santa Fe (1609), where the Spanish population was concentrated, were among the first to be built.

The steady weakening of Spain, especially with late XVI century, the fall of its military, and above all, naval power, undermined its position. The most serious contenders for dominance in the American colonies were England, Holland and France.

The founder of the first Dutch settlement in America, Henry Hudson, in 1613 built huts for storing furs on the island of Manhattan. The city of New Amsterdam (later New York) soon arose on this site, which became the center of the Dutch colony. The Dutch colonies, half the population of which were British, soon passed into the possession of England.

The beginning of French colonization was laid by entrepreneurs-fishermen. As early as 1504, Breton and Norman fishermen began to visit the Newfoundland shallows; the first maps of the American shores appeared; in 1508, an Indian was brought to France "for show". Since 1524, the French king Francis I sent navigators to the New World with the aim of further discoveries. Particularly noteworthy are the voyages of Jacques Cartier, a sailor from Saint-Malo (Brittany), who for eight years (1534-1542) explored the vicinity of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, climbed the river of the same name to the island, which he named Mont Royal (Royal Mountain; now , Montreal), and called the land along the banks of the river New France. We owe him the earliest news about the Iroquois tribes of the river. St. Lawrence; very interesting is the sketch and description he made of the fortified Iroquois village (Oshelaga, or Hohelaga) and the dictionary of Indian words he compiled.

In 1541, Cartier founded the first agricultural colony in the Quebec region, but due to a lack of food, the colonists had to be taken back to France. This was the end of the French colonization of North America in the 16th century. They resumed later - a century later.

Founding of French colonies in North America

The main driving force behind the French colonization for a long time there was a pursuit of valuable furs, the seizure of land did not play a significant role for the French. The French peasants, although burdened with feudal duties, remained, unlike the dispossessed English yeomen, landowners, and there was no mass flow of immigrants from France.

The French began to gain a foothold in Canada only at the beginning of the 17th century, when Samuel Champlain founded a small colony on the Acadia Peninsula (southwest of Newfoundland), and then the city of Quebec (1608).

By 1615, the French had already reached the lakes of Huron and Ontario. Open territories were given by the French crown to trading companies; the lion's share was taken by the Hudson's Bay Company. Having received a charter in 1670, this company monopolized the purchase of furs and fish from the Indians. Along the banks of rivers and lakes, posts of the company were set up on the path of Indian nomads. They turned the local tribes into "tributaries" of the company, entangling them in networks of debts and obligations. The Indians were soldered, corrupted; they were robbed, exchanging precious furs for trinkets. The Jesuits who appeared in Canada in 1611 diligently converted the Indians to Catholicism, preaching humility before the colonialists. But with even greater zeal, keeping up with the agents of the trading company, the Jesuits bought furs from the Indians. This activity of the order was no secret to anyone. Thus, the governor of Canada, Frontenac, informed the government of France (70s of the 17th century) that the Jesuits would not civilize the Indians, because they wished to keep their guardianship over them, that they were concerned not so much about the salvation of souls, but about the extraction of all good, missionary but their activities are an empty comedy.

The beginning of English colonization and the first permanent English colonies of the 17th century.

The French colonizers of Canada very soon had competitors in the person of the British. The British government considered Canada to be a natural extension of the British crown's possessions in America, based on the fact that the Canadian coast had been discovered by Cabot's English expedition long before Jacques Cartier's first voyage. Attempts to establish a colony in North America by the British took place as early as the 16th century, but all of them were unsuccessful: the British did not find gold in the North, and the seekers of easy money neglected agriculture. Only at the beginning of the XVII century. the first real agricultural English colonies arose here.

The beginning of the mass settlement of the English colonies in the XVII century. opened a new stage of the colonization of North America.

The development of capitalism in England was associated with the success foreign trade and the creation of monopoly colonial trading companies. For the colonization of North America, by subscription to shares, two trading companies were formed, which had large funds: London (South., or Varginskaya) and Plymouth (Northern); royal charters placed at their disposal the lands between 34 and 41 ° N. sh. and unlimitedly inland, as if these lands belonged not to the Indians, but to the government of England. The first charter to found a colony in America was given to Sir Hamford D. Kilbert. He made a preliminary expedition to Newfoundland and was wrecked on the way back. Gilbert's rights passed to his relative, Sir Walter Reilly, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. In 1584, Reilly decided to establish a colony in the area south of the Chesapeake Bay and named it Virginia in honor of the "virgin queen" (lat. virgo - girl). The following year, a group of colonists set off for Virginia, settling on Roanoke Island (in the current state of North Carolina). A year later, the colonists returned to England, as the chosen place turned out to be unhealthy. Among the colonists was the famous artist John White. He made many sketches of the life of the local Algokin Indians 1 . The fate of the second group of colonists who arrived in Virginia in 1587 is unknown.

At the beginning of the XVII century. Walter Reilly's project to create a colony in Virginia was carried out by a commercial Virginia company, which expected large profits from this enterprise. The company, at its own expense, delivered settlers to Virginia, who were obliged to work off their debt within four to five years.

The place for the colony (Jamstown), founded in 1607, was chosen unsuccessfully - swampy, with many mosquitoes, unhealthy. In addition, the colonists very soon turned the Indians against them. Disease and skirmishes with the Indians in a few months claimed two-thirds of the colonists. Life in the colony was built on a military basis. Twice a day, the colonists were collected by drumming and formation, sent to the fields to work, and every evening they also returned to Jamestown for lunch and for prayer. Since 1613, the colonist John Rolfe (who married the daughter of the leader of the Powhatan tribe - the "princess" Pocahontas) began to cultivate tobacco. From that time on, tobacco became for a long time an item of income for the colonists and, even more so, for the Virginia Company. Encouraging immigration, the company gave the colonists land plots. The poor, who worked off the cost of the journey from England to America, also received an allotment, for which they made payments to the owner of the land in a fixed amount. Later, when Virginia became royal colony(1624), and when its management passed from the company into the hands of the governor appointed by the king, in the presence of qualified representative institutions, this duty turned into a kind of land tax. The immigration of the poor soon increased even more. If in 1640 there were 8 thousand inhabitants in Virginia, then in 1700 there were 70 thousand of them. planters, big businessmen.

Both colonies specialized in growing tobacco and therefore depended on imported English goods. Basic labor force on the large plantations of Virginia and Maryland, the poor were taken out of England. Throughout the 17th century "indentured servants", as these poor people were called, obliged to work off the cost of the journey to America, made up the majority of immigrants to Virginia and Maryland.

Very soon, the labor of indentured servants was replaced by the slave labor of Negroes, who began to be imported into the southern colonies from the first half of XVII in. (the first large batch of slaves was delivered to Virginia in 1619),

Since the 17th century free settlers appeared among the colonists. The English Puritans, the "Pilgrim Fathers", some of whom were sectarians who fled from religious persecution in their homeland, went to the northern, Plymouth colony. In this party there were settlers adjoining the Brownist sect 2 . Leaving Plymouth in September 1620, the May Flower ship with pilgrims arrived at Cape Cod in November. In the first winter, half of the colonists died: the settlers - mostly townspeople - did not know how to hunt, cultivate the land, or fish. With the help of the Indians, who taught the settlers how to grow corn, the rest in the end not only did not die of starvation, but even paid the debts for their passage on the ship. The colony founded by the Plymouth sectarians was called New Plymouth.

In 1628, the Puritans, who had suffered oppression during the years of the Stuarts, founded the colony of Massachusetts in America. The Puritan Church enjoyed great power in the colony. The colonist received the right to vote only if he belonged to the Puritan church and had a good reputation as a preacher. Under this arrangement, only one-fifth of the adult male population of Massachusetts had the right to vote.

During the years of the English Revolution, emigrant aristocrats (“cavaliers”) began to arrive in the American colonies, who did not want to put up with the new, revolutionary regime in their homeland. These colonists settled mainly in the southern colony (Virginia).

In 1663, eight courtiers of Charles II received a gift of land south of Virginia, where the Carolina colony was founded (subsequently divided into South and North). The culture of tobacco, which enriched the large landowners of Virginia, spread to neighboring colonies. However, in the Shenandoah Valley, in western Maryland, and also south of Virginia, in the wetlands of South Carolina, there were no conditions for growing tobacco; there, as in Georgia, they cultivated rice. The owners of Carolina made plans to make a fortune on breeding sugar cane, rice, hemp, flax, the production of indigo, silk, i.e., scarce goods in England, imported from other countries. In 1696, the Madagascar variety of rice was introduced into the Carolinas. Since then, its cultivation has become the main occupation of the colony for a hundred years. Rice was bred in riverine swamps and on the seashore. Hard work under the scorching sun in the malarial swamps was shouldered by black slaves, who in 1700 made up half the population of the colony. In the southern part of the colony (now the state of South Carolina) more than in Virginia, slavery took root. Large slave planters, who owned almost all the land, had rich houses in Charleston, the administrative and cultural center of the colony. In 1719 the heirs of the first owners of the colony sold their rights to the English crown.

North Carolina was of a different character, populated mainly by Quakers and refugees from Virginia - small farmers who were hiding from debts and unbearable taxes. There were very few large plantations and Negro slaves there. North Carolina became a crown colony in 1726.

In all these colonies, the population was mainly replenished by immigrants from England, Scotland and Ireland.

Much more motley was the population of the colony of New York (formerly the Dutch colony of New Netherland) with the city of New Amsterdam (now New York). After the capture of this colony by the British, it was received by the Duke of York, brother of the English king Charles II. At that time, there were no more than 10 thousand inhabitants in the colony, who, however, spoke 18 various languages. Although the Dutch were not in the majority, Dutch influence in the American colonies was great, with wealthy Dutch families enjoying great political weight in New York. Traces of this influence remain to this day: Dutch words entered the language of the Americans; Dutch architectural style left its mark on the appearance of American cities and towns.

The English colonization of North America was carried out on a large scale. America was presented to the poor in Europe as a promised land, where they could find salvation from the oppression of large landowners, from religious persecution, from debt.

Entrepreneurs recruited immigrants to America; not limited to this, they staged real raids, their agents soldered people in taverns and sent drunk recruits to ships.

English colonies arose one after another. Their population increased very rapidly. The agrarian revolution in England, accompanied by the mass dispossession of the peasantry, drove out of the country many robbed poor people who were looking for an opportunity to get land in the colonies. In 1625, there were only 1,980 colonists in North America; in 1641, there were 50,000 immigrants from England alone 2 . According to other sources, in 1641 there were only 25,000 colonists in the English colonies 3 . In 50 years the population grew to 200,000 4 . In 1760 it reached 1,695,000 (including 310,000 Negro slaves), 5 and five years later the number of colonists almost doubled.

The colonists waged a war of extermination against the owners of the country - the Indians, taking away their land. In just a few years (1706-1722), the tribes of Virginia were almost completely exterminated, despite the "family" ties that connected the most powerful of the leaders of the Virginian Indians with the British.

In the north, in New England, the Puritans resorted to other means: they acquired land from the Indians through "trade deals." Subsequently, this gave reason to official historiographers to assert that the ancestors of the Anglo-Americans did not encroach on the freedom of the Indians and did not seize, but bought their lands, concluding agreements with the Indians. For a handful of gunpowder, a drop of beads, etc., one could "buy" a huge plot of land, and the Indians, who did not know private property, usually remained in the dark about the essence of the deal concluded with them. In the Pharisaic consciousness of their legal "rightness", the settlers expelled the Indians from their lands; if they did not agree to leave the land chosen by the colonists, they were exterminated. The religious fanatics of Massachusetts were especially ferocious.

The church preached that the beating of the Indians was pleasing to God. Manuscripts of the 17th century it is reported that a certain pastor, having heard about the destruction of a large Indian village, from the church pulpit praised God for the fact that six hundred pagan "souls" were sent to hell that day.

The shameful page of the colonial policy in North America was the scalp bounty (“scalp bounty”). As shown by historical and ethnographic studies (Georg Friderici), the philistine opinion that the custom of scalping has long been very widespread among the Indians of North America is completely wrong. This custom was previously known only to a few tribes. eastern regions, but they were used relatively rarely. It was only with the advent of the colonialists that the barbarian custom of scalping really began to spread more and more widely. This was primarily due to the strengthening internecine wars, fueled by the colonial authorities; wars, with the introduction of firearms, became much more bloody, and the spread of iron knives made it easier to cut off the scalp (wooden and bone knives were previously used). The colonial authorities directly and directly encouraged the spread of the custom of scalping, appointing bonuses for the scalps of enemies - both Indians and whites, of their rivals in colonization.

The first prize for scalps was awarded in 1641 in the Dutch colony of New Netherland: 20 m of wampum 1 for each scalp of an Indian (a meter of wampum was equal to 5 Dutch guilders). Since then, for more than 170 years (1641-1814), the administration of individual colonies has repeatedly appointed such bonuses (expressed in British pounds, in Spanish and American dollars). Even Quaker Pennsylvania, famous for its relatively peaceful policy towards the Indians, in 1756 appropriated £60,000. Art. especially for Indian scalp prizes. The last premium was offered in 1814 in the Indiana Territory.

As mentioned above, Pennsylvania, a colony founded in 1682 by a wealthy Quaker, the son of an English admiral, William Penn, was a certain exception to the cruel policy of destroying the Indians for his like-minded people persecuted in England. Penn sought to maintain friendly relations with the Indians who continued to live in the colony. However, when wars began between the English and French colonies (1744-1748 and 1755-1763), the Indians, who had made an alliance with the French, became involved in the war and were forced out of Pennsylvania.

In American historiography, the colonization of America is most often presented as if the Europeans colonized "free lands", that is, territories that were not actually inhabited by Indians 1 . In fact, North America, and its eastern part in particular, was, under the terms economic activity Indians, populated quite densely (in the 16th century, about 1 million Indians lived on the territory of the present USA). The Indians, who were engaged in hunting and slash-and-burn agriculture, needed large land areas. Driving the Indians off the land, "buying" land from them, the Europeans doomed them to death. Naturally, the Indians resisted as best they could. The struggle for land was accompanied by a number of Indian uprisings, of which the so-called "war of King Philip" (the Indian name is Metakom), a talented leader of one of the coastal Algonquin tribes, is especially famous. In 1675-1676. Metacom raised many tribes of New England, and only the betrayal of a group of Indians saved the colonists. By the first quarter of the XVIII century. the coastal tribes of New England and Virginia were nearly wiped out.

The relations of the colonists with the locals - the Indians were not always hostile. Simple people- poor farmers very often maintained good neighborly relations with them, adopted the experience of the Indians in agriculture, learned from them to adapt to local conditions. So, in the spring of 1609, the colonists of Jamestown learned from captive Indians how to grow corn. The Indians set fire to the forest and planted corn interspersed with beans between the charred trunks, fertilizing the soil with ash. They carefully looked after crops, spudded corn and destroyed weeds. Indian corn saved the colonists from starvation.

The inhabitants of New Plymouth were no less obliged to the Indians. After spending the first hard winter, during which half of the settlers died, in the spring of 1621 they cleared the fields left by the Indians and sowed in the form of an experiment 5 acres of English wheat and peas and 20 acres - under the direction of one Indian - corn. Wheat failed, but corn sprouted, and has been the main agricultural crop in New England ever since throughout the colonial period. Later, the colonists achieved good harvests wheat, but it did not displace corn.

Like the Indians, the English colonists stewed meat with grains and vegetables, roasted corn kernels, and ground grain into flour using Indian wooden chairs. Traces of many borrowings from Indian cuisine are reflected in the language and food of Americans. Yes, in American language there are a number of names for corn dishes: poon (corn tortilla), hominy (hominy), maga (cornmeal porridge), heisty pudding (“improvised” flour custard pudding), hald korn (hulled corn), sakkotash (a dish of corn, beans and pork) 2 .

In addition to corn, European colonists borrowed from the Indians the culture of potatoes, peanuts, pumpkins, squash, tomatoes, some varieties of cotton and beans. Many of these plants were taken by Europeans from Central and South America in the 17th century. to Europe and from there to North America. So it was, for example, with tobacco.

The Spaniards, the first of the Europeans to adopt the custom of smoking tobacco from the Indians, assumed the monopoly of its sale. The colonists of Virginia, as soon as the food problem was solved, began to experiment with local varieties of tobacco. But since they were not very good, they sowed all the comfortable lands in the colony free from crops of corn and other cereals with tobacco from the island of Trinidad.

In 1618 Virginia shipped £20,000 worth of tobacco to England. Art., in 1629 - for 500 thousand. Tobacco in Virginia served as a medium of exchange during these years: taxes and debts were paid with tobacco, the first thirty suitors of the colony paid for brides brought from Europe with the same "currency".

Three groups of English colonies

But according to the nature of production and economic structure, the English colonies can be divided into three groups.

In the southern colonies (Virginia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, Georgia), plantation slavery developed. Here arose large plantations belonging to the landed aristocracy, more connected by origin and economic interests with the aristocracy of England than with the bourgeoisie of the northern colonies. Most of all goods were exported to England from the southern colonies.

The use of Negro slave labor and the labor of "indentured servants" is most widespread here. As is known, the first Negro slaves were brought to Virginia in 1619; in 1683 there were already 3,000 slaves and 12,000 "indentured servants" 1 . After the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), the British government gained a monopoly on the slave trade. Since that time, the number of Negro slaves in the southern colonies has been ever increasing. Before the Revolutionary War, South Carolina had twice as many blacks as whites. AT early XVIII in. in all the English colonies of North America there were 60 thousand, and by the beginning of the war for independence - about 500 thousand Negro slaves 2 . Southerners specialized in the cultivation of rice, wheat, indigo and, especially in the early years of colonization, tobacco. Cotton was also known, but until the invention of the cotton gin (1793), its production played almost no role.

Next to the vast lands of the planter, tenants settled, renting land on the basis of sharecropping, mining, or for money. The plantation economy demanded vast lands, and the acquisition of new lands proceeded at an accelerated pace.

In the northern colonies, united in 1642, in the year of the beginning of the civil war in England, into one colony - New England (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut), Puritan colonists prevailed.

Located along the rivers and near the bays, the New England colonies remained isolated from each other for a long time. Settlement went along the rivers connecting the coast with the interior parts of the mainland. All large territories were captured. The colonists settled in small settlements organized on a communal basis, initially with periodic redistribution of arable land, then only with a common pasture.

In the northern colonies, small-scale farming took shape, and slavery did not spread. Shipbuilding, trade in fish and timber were of great importance. Maritime trade and industry developed, the industrial bourgeoisie grew, interested in freedom of trade, constrained by England. The slave trade became widespread.

But even here, in the northern colonies, the rural population was the overwhelming majority, and the townspeople kept cattle for a long time and had vegetable gardens.

In the middle colonies (New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania) on fertile lands developed farming, which produced crops or specialized in raising livestock. In New York and New Jersey, more than in others, large-scale land ownership was widespread, and land owners leased it out in plots. In these colonies, the settlements were of a mixed nature: small towns in the Hudson Valley and Albany and large land holdings in Pennsylvania and in parts of the colonies of New York and New Jersey.

Thus, several ways of life coexisted in the English colonies for a long time: capitalism in the manufacturing stage, closer to English than, for example, to Prussian or Russian of the same time; slavery as a way of manufacturing capitalism until the 19th century, and then (before the war between the North and the South) - in the form of plantation slavery in a capitalist society; feudal relations in the form of survivals; a patriarchal way of life in the form of small-owner farming (in the mountainous western regions of the North and South), among which, although with less force than among the farming of the eastern regions, capitalist stratification took place.

All processes of development of capitalism in North America proceeded in the peculiar conditions of the presence of significant masses of free farming.

In all three economic regions, into which the English colonies were divided, two zones were created: the eastern one, inhabited for a long time, and the western, bordering the Indian territories, the strip - the so-called "border" (frontier). The frontier receded continuously to the west. In the 17th century it passed along the Allegheny Ridge, in the first quarter of the 19th century. - already on the river. Mississippi. The inhabitants of the "border" led a life full of dangers and a hard struggle with nature, which required great courage and solidarity. These were “bonded servants” and farmers who fled from the plantations, oppressed by large landowners, urban people who fled taxes and the religious intolerance of sectarians. Unauthorized seizure of land (squatterism) was a special form of class struggle in the colonies.