Question

Once England decided to create an overseas empire, it did so with impressive speed. Explain the motives behind English expansion to the North American continent to the North American continent, including the Great Migration.

Answer 1

Due to the growth of self-government which marked the early political development of the colonies, English colonies differed from other European settlings. Two reasons stemmed from the growth of self-government. First, most English colonies were founded as private corporate undertakings called proprietary undertakings, and some time passed before direct controls were imposed on them by the English Government. Second, at home, many English colonists had taken part in government, and they carried this tradition to America.

England began its colonies in the 17th century when Parliament, the principal legislative body of the nation, increased its powers at the expense of the crown. Most English settlers in America supported Parliament and the idea of representative government during those struggles over constitutional control. Representative government formed in the British colonies into three distinct colonial types: royal colonies governed by a king-appointed governor, proprietary colonies owned and controlled by English shareholders, and corporate colonies that chose their own governors and political leaders.

As settlers set up their American colonies, the Puritan or English Revolution, a major political and religious dispute, started in England around 1640, and lasted twenty years. Revolutionaries began an armed uprising, and they deposed and executed King Charles I after two civil wars. They then established a Republican Commonwealth, eventually led by Oliver Cromwell, a Puritan and military hero of the rebellion. There were no new settlements in North America during those two decades of political unrest in Britain. The seven existing colonies largely self-governed and firmly founded the representative institutions that their charters required.

Millions of indigenous peoples perished before and after these conquests, since they lacked immunity to European diseases like measles and smallpox. Thousands of Spanish migrants settled on Native American lands and used local people to raise wheat and livestock, and mine gold and silver as laborers. All of these products have been returned to Europe or sold for enrichment of Spain. The Spanish forced the indigenous peoples to convert to Catholicism too.

Each European country's colonial holdings developed in a distinctive manner. In Mesoamerica the Spanish established an authoritarian regime and imposed strict controls on the indigenous peoples. In North America the French and the Dutch established fur-trading empires in which the indigenous peoples maintained their lands and political autonomy. The English established settler-colonies, which were mainly inhabited by European migrants and African slaves. British colonists excluded Native American peoples and pushed them ever further to the west.