American Colonies: The Settling of North America

Sixteenth-century England was in a difficult position socially and culturally. Unlike the purely monarchical societies of France and Spain, England’s royalty co-ruled with Parliament, a bicameral system of aristocrats (House of Lords) and gentry (House of Commons). Incursion of England’s powerful noble class on the land of the lower classes (enclosure) displaced thousands, leading to a rise in crime, violence, and hunger (120). To solve this issue the earliest English colonial promoters, the West Country men, proposed expanding outward and making the Americas a workhouse for the disenfranchised. In 1606 wealthy investors incorporated the Virginia Company, which James I chartered to colonize the mid-Atlantic seaboard between Florida and Acadia, then called Virginia. This type of colony, which belonged to private interests rather than the Crown, was called a proprietary colony. Colonies owned by the Crown were called royal colonies.

Since the French settled in Canada and the Spanish in the south, Virginia was still available for colonization. But early English settlements did not fare well. Poor choices of location, logistical failures in the delivering of supplies, and a preference for plundering valuable metals over establishing agricultural roots led to the failure of Roanoke (123-24) and the early foundering of Jamestown (129-31).