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- Us history to 1877
- Us history to 1877
- Ch. 2 when cultures collide (1
Northern encounters
France turned its attention to the northern regions of North America and began sending explorers into modern-day Canada and the upper Midwest (like Wisconsin and Michigan) in the 1520s, establishing trading posts and developing working relationships with many Indian tribes. The Dutch were next to establish colonies in North America. They settled New Amsterdam in what is today New York City. The Dutch empire, called New Netherlands, stretched from Fort Orange (today called Albany) into modern day New Jersey. In other words, the Spanish had the southern part of the American east coast, the French controlled the northern part, and the Dutch controlled the mid-Atlantic region. There was not much land remaining for the English to establish colonies. Well, the first English expedition was led by the Genovese captain John Cabot, who reached Labrador Canada in 1497. Inspired by this, the French king authorized Jacques Cartier, in 1534, to try to find the "Northwest Passage." The Northwest Passage was the fabled sea going link between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans -something that Colon believed he had discovered. While Cartier failed to find the Northwest Passage, he did explore the St. Lawrence Rive and the Great Lakes region. Cartier's expeditions from 15354 to 1541 established France's claim on Canada and the upper Midwest. The French explorers were focused on obtaining beaver pelts. The European beaver was nearly extinct and so the price of beaver pelts was tremendously high, beyond the reach of your average Englishman. However, like the Spanish, the French introduced massive waves of epidemics that killed an untold number of Native Americans and endemic warfare transpired among Indians over access to beaver hunting grounds. What really pushed England into exploration was the Protestant Revolution. A German cleric, Martin Luther, initiated a wave of unrest throughout Europe against the Catholic Church in Rome. The English king, Henry VIII, used this unrest to completely break away from Rome and thus created a new church, the Church of England, and placed himself as the secular and religious ruler of England. Now religion played a major part in England's interest abroad. Spain remained true to the Catholic Church, so too did France and so it looked to the Anglican English that all of North America would be controlled by Catholic countries. Again, it was not English, but rather French peple who first attempted to establish a colony in present-day America. In 1560, a group of French Protestants, the Hugenots, established a colony on Parris Island, off the coast of what became South Carolina. The colonists nearly starved and were forced into cannibalism. The survivors were rescued by a passing English ship. French Protestants established a new colony along the St. Johns River in Florida. Spain was alarmed by Protestant attempts to create colonies in the Americas, so Spain began building colonies in Florida. The first Spanish colony was named St. Augustine, then their leader, Don Pedro Menendez, led a military attack against the Protestants, killing 500 in the process.
English encounters
English movement across the Atlantic was tied to developments at home. Rents were fixed by custom, yet landowners sought new ways to raise their incomes so many converted their fields to grazing pastures for sheep (you could make money in the wool business than in growing wheat). Much of the agricultural land in England became off limits to the peasant-farmers, thus they migrated from the country side to the cities seeking employment. Cities burst at the seems. So after England left the Catholic church, in 1534 King Henry VIII sent many of the peasant-farmers to live in Ireland as a way of trying to dilute the Catholic majority on that island. Actually, it was not as much as a population movement as it was an outright military attack against the Irish, led by Walter Raleigh. In 1562, England began operating in the slave trade when John Hawkins transported a boat of African slaves into the Caribbean. Hawkins was not an agent for the English king, rather they were private pirates called privateers. In fact, English privateers also laid siege against Spanish colonies. "He that commands the sea, commands the trade," said Walter Raleigh who by 1567 had become a "Sea Dog" (English privateer). Henry VIII died and was replaced by one of his daughters, Elizabeth I. Elizabeth began to openly support the Sea Dogs, such as Raleigh. One of Elizabeth's advisers, Richard Hakluyt, wrote a paper stating now was the time to begin colonization of the Americas, which included moving England's entire population of what he called "loiterers and idle vagabonds" to America. Martin Frobisher led several expeditions near Newfoundland (Canada) but all that resulted was the expedition of British fishing for cod in the North Atlantic. It was Walter Raleigh who first decided to create a colony in the southern Atlantic region of the Americas. He called his new colony Roanoke and it lasted from 1584 to 1587. The colony was located on an island off the coast of present-day North Carolina. Roanoke was a failure and the people just disappeared scrawling mystic messages like the word "Croatan"on a tree. We don't know what they met. Croatan was the name on an Indian tribe in the area. Did the message mean that the colonists moved to the Croatan village? Were they taken as prisoners? We do not know. But, England's first colony, Roanoke, ended in utter failure. Meanwhile, in 1588, the Spanish king, Phillip II, sent what he called his Invincible Armada to invade England and force England to return to the Catholic fold. Two problems occurred for the Spanish: first, the English boats were smaller and thus more highly maneuverable, and second, a massive storm whipped through the English Channel. Half of the Armada was sunk, and the survivors were captured and killed. The defeat of the Spanish Armada meant that there was no navy left to get in England's way. In 1590, John White went back to Roanoke only to find the colony deserted and the word "Croatan" apparent. The English needed a better strategy if their colonization efforts were to bear fruit.
Source:
OpenStax, Us history to 1877. OpenStax CNX. Jan 20, 2013 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11483/1.1
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