apush notes chapter 17 - THE GIANT AHAP REVIEW OUTLINE...

THE GIANT AHAP REVIEW OUTLINE!
Europeans Colonize North America (1600 – 1640)
*English Interest in Colonization*
- By the sixteenth century, many countries, including
Spain, France and the Netherlands, had established
colonies in the New World. Until the foundation of
Jamestown, however, the English didn’t have any
successful permanent colonies in North America.
- Prior to Jamestown, Sir Walter Raleigh of the Sea
Dogs formed a joint stock company and received a
charter to found a colony on Roanoke Island in 1584. It
failed, and he tried again in 1585 and 1587. Both were
failures, and the fate of the 1587 colony remains a
mystery (all colonists disappeared).
- Anyhow, several factors encouraged the English to try
again with Jamestown even after their earlier failures,
and motivated people to join the expeditions. These
reasons include…

“Overcrowding” – England had experienced a
dramatic population boom, resulting in social and
economic upheaval (inflation, falling wages,
peasants losing their land b/c of the enclosure
movement, many homeless people, rapidly growing
cities).

Competition – The English government was
concerned about losing ground in the competition
with the Spanish for overall power and with the
Dutch for trading. Since they had colonies, it was
only natural that England would want them as well.
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
Religion – This applies more to the prospective
colonists than to the government. Anyhow, after
Henry VIII split from the church in 1533, he
established the Anglican Church, which was
subsequently taken over by Queen Elizabeth, who
swung it more towards the Protestant side. This led
to the formation of many English Calvinist [Puritan]
groups, who felt that reform should go further. But
under the Stuarts [the absolutists], the church went
back towards Catholicism w/o the Pope, and many
of the Puritans were forced to flee in the 1620s to
avoid persecution.
*The Founding of Virginia*
- In 1606 the Virginia Company was founded by a group
of merchants and gentry who felt they could reap great
profits from colonizing America [it could allow them to
find precious metals and new trade routes]. The Virginia
Company was a joint-stock venture [it was funded by
contributions from many small investors].
- Although joint-stock companies had worked well to
finance voyages, which quickly resulted in $, they
wouldn’t work as well for colonies b/c colonies required
enormous amounts of funding and usually failed, or at
least took a long time, to return profits. Consequently,
colonies funded by these companies were always short
of capital b/c nobody wanted to risk much $.
- Anyhow, James I decided to go ahead and charter the
company in 1606, which resulted in Jamestown being
founded in Virginia [after a failure to start a colony in
Maine] in May 1607 by 104 Englishmen.