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England Ready for New World Adventures
A fluke storm, celebrated in England as the “divine wind,” annihilated Spain's large fleet. The destruction of the Spain's armada changed the course of world history. It not only saved England and secured English Protestantism, but it also opened the seas to English expansion and paved the way for England’s colonial future -
Port Royal Established
Traders established Port Royal in Acadia (Nova Scotia) in 1603 and launched trading expeditions that stretched down the Atlantic coast as far as Cape Cod. The needs of the fur trade set the future pattern of French colonization. -
Queen Elizabeth Dies
When Queen Elizabeth died, no Englishmen had yet established a permanent North American colony. -
Peace between England and Spain
King James made peace with Spain in 1604 -
Virginia Company Formed
In 1606 James I approved the formation of the Virginia Company (named after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen). -
Jamestown Settled
In April 1607 Englishmen aboard three ships—the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery—sailed forty miles up the James River in present-day Virginia and settled... The uninhabited peninsula they selected was upriver and out of sight of Spanish patrols. -
Quebec Founded
Founded in 1608 under the leadership of Samuel de Champlain, Quebec provided the foothold for what would become New France. -
Henry Hudson Commissioned to find the Northwest Passage
Sharing the European hunger for access to Asia, in 1609 the Dutch commissioned the Englishman Henry Hudson to discover the fabled Northwest Passage through North America. He failed, of course, but nevertheless found the Hudson River and claimed modern-day New York for the Dutch. There they established New Netherland, an essential part of the Dutch New World empire. -
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Jamestown Starves
Supplies were lost at sea. Relations with the Indians deteriorated and the colonists fought a kind of slow-burning guerrilla war with the Powhatan. Disaster loomed for the colony. The settlers ate everything they could, roaming the woods for nuts and berries. They boiled leather. They dug up graves to eat the corpses of their former neighbors. -
First European Settlement
Santa Fe, was the first permanent European settlement established in the Southwest. -
Jamestown: 400 Settlers Die Out
400 settlers were sent to Jamestown to settle there, but the barely established colony could not handle them. They all died in horrific ways as a result. -
Jamestown: Relations Ease with the Powhatan Tribe
The colony was reorganized, and in 1614 the marriage of Pocahontas to John Rolfe eased relations with the Powhatan, though the colony still limped along as a starving, commercially disastrous tragedy -
Jamestown: 80% of Immigrants-Dead
By 1616, 80 percent of all English immigrants who had arrived in Jamestown had perished. England’s first American colony was a catastrophe. -
Jamestown: First Tobacco Crops
In 1616 John Rolfe crossed tobacco strains from Trinidad and Guiana and planted Virginia’s first tobacco crop. -
Jamestown: Tobacco is Sent to England
The “noxious weed,” a native of the New World, fetched a high price in Europe and the tobacco boom began in Virginia and then later spread to Maryland. Within fifteen years American colonists were exporting over five hundred thousand pounds of tobacco per year. Within forty years, they were exporting fifteen million. -
Headright Policy
"Any person who migrated to Virginia would automatically receive fifty acres of land and any immigrant whose passage they paid would entitle them to fifty acres more." -
House of Burgesses Established
The Virginia Company established the House of Burgesses, a limited representative body composed of white landowners that first met in Jamestown. -
The Dutch Sell 20 Africans to Virginia Colonists
Southern slavery was born. -
European Settling Booms
The English colonies in New England established from 1620 onward were founded with loftier goals than those in Virginia. Although migrants to New England expected economic profit, religious motives directed the rhetoric and much of the reality of these colonies. -
Plymouth Colony Established
Separatist Pilgrims flee overseas away from persecution and establish a colony. -
The Dutch West India Company is Chartered
The Netherlands chartered the Dutch West India Company in 1621 and established colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. The island of Manhattan provided a launching pad to support its Caribbean colonies and attack Spanish trade. -
Powhatan Dies-Succeeded: Opechancanough
He promised to drive the land-hungry colonists back into the sea. -
Tobacco Saves Jamestown
The rise of tobacco and the destruction of the Powhatan turned the tide. Colonists escaped the deadly peninsula and immigrants poured into the colony to grow tobacco and turn a profit for the Crown. -
Opechancanough Attacks
He launched a surprise attack and in a single day killed over 350 colonists, or one third of all the colonists in Virginia. The colonists retaliated and revisited the massacres on Indian settlements many times over. The massacre freed the colonists to drive the Indians off their land. -
Coronation: King Charles I
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Manhattan Falls into Dutch Hands
Peter Minuit therefore “buys” Manhattan from Munsee Indians. -
The Dutch Turn to Slavery
Labor shortages ... crippled Dutch colonization. The patroon system failed to bring enough tenants, and the colony could not attract a sufficient number of indentured servants to satisfy the colony’s backers. In response, the colony imported eleven company-owned slaves -
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Charles I's Reign Causes Friction
Between 1629 and 1640 the absolute rule of Charles I caused considerable friction between the English Parliament and the king. -
Massachusetts Established
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The Great Migration
Facing growing persecution, the Puritans began the Great Migration, during which about twenty thousand people traveled to New England. -
Connecticut Established
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Rhode Island Esbalbished
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Pequot War
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Religious Tensions in England
Political and economic conflicts between Parliament and the Crown merged with long-simmering religious tensions, made worse by a king who seemed sympathetic to Catholicism. -
Conflict Erupts
Conflict erupted in 1640 when a Parliament called by Charles refused to grant him subsidies to suppress a rebellion in Scotland. -
First African Dutch Families
Fears of racial mixing led the Dutch to import enslaved women, enabling the formation of African Dutch families. The colony’s first African marriage occurred in 1641 -
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Governor Kieft’s War
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English Civil War
Strained relations between Charles and Parliament led to civil war in England. In 1649 Parliament won, Charles I was executed, and England became a republic and protectorate under Oliver Cromwell. -
African Women Pushed to Heavy Labor
A law was passed in Virginia that made African women “tithable.” -
Charles I Executed
This split the colonies in their Loyalty to the Crown. -
Navigation Act Passed
This compelled merchants in every colony to ship goods directly to England in English ships. Parliament sought to bind the colonies more closely to England and prevent other European nations, especially the Dutch, from interfering with its American possessions. -
France Criminalizes Protestantism
Few Frenchmen traveled to the New World to settle permanently. In fact, few traveled at all. Many persecuted French Protestants (Huguenots) sought to emigrate after France criminalized Protestantism in 1685, but all non-Catholics were forbidden in New France.6 -
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Esopus Wars
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Slave Lives Worsen
New laws gave legal sanction to the enslavement of people of African descent for life. The permanent deprivation of freedom and the separate legal status of enslaved Africans facilitated the maintenance of strict racial barriers. -
Virginia Law Enslaves Children
A 1662 Virginia law stated that an enslaved woman’s children inherited the “condition” of their mother; other colonies soon passed similar statutes. This economic strategy on the part of planters created a legal system in which all children born to slave women would be slaves for life, whether the father was white or black, enslaved or free. -
Charleston-Largest Slave Town
Charleston, South Carolina, became the leading entry point for the slave trade on the mainland. The founding of Charleston in 1670 was viewed as a serious threat by the Spanish in neighboring Florida, who began construction of Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine as a response. -
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Native Americans Enslaved
Historians estimate that between 24,000 and 51,000 Native Americans were forced into slavery throughout the southern colonies between 1670 and 1715. -
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King Charles II Tightens Control on America
King Charles II tightened English control over North America and the West Indies through the creation of new colonies, the imposition of new Navigation Acts, and the establishment of a new executive council called the Lords of Trade and Plantations. -
Bacon's Rebellion
In New England an uprising was led by the Wampanoag leader Metacom, or King Philip as the English called him. Indian conflicts helped trigger the revolt against royal authorities known as Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia the following year. -
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King Philip’s War
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Dominion of New England
The Dominion consolidated the New England colonies, New York, and New Jersey into one administrative unit to counter French Canada, but colonists strongly resented the loss of their individual provinces. -
The Dominion Drafts Colonists
The Dominion’s governor, Sir Edmund Andros, did little to assuage fears of arbitrary power when he forced colonists into military service for a campaign against the Maine Indians in early 1687. Impressment into military service was a long-standing grievance among English commoners that was transplanted to the colonies. -
Monarchy Overthrown (Again!)
The monarchy was restored with Charles II, but popular suspicions of the Crown’s Catholic and French sympathies lingered. Charles II’s suppression of the religious and press freedoms that flourished during the civil war years demonstrated the Crown’s desire to reimpose order and royal rule. But it was the openly Catholic and pro-French policies of his successor, James II, that once again led to the overthrow of the monarchy. -
Hostilities Between the Colonists and Imperials Escalate
After the 1688 invasion by the Protestant William of Orange, James fled to France. When colonists learned imperial officials in Boston and New York City attempted to keep news of the Glorious Revolution secret, simmering hostilities toward provincial leaders burst into the open. -
English Bill of Rights
This curtailed the power of the monarchy and cemented Protestantism in England. For English colonists, it was indeed a “glorious” revolution as it united them in a Protestant empire that stood counter to Catholic tyranny, absolutism, and French power. -
Decree of Sanctuary
The Spanish king issued the Decree of Sanctuary, which granted freedom to slaves fleeing the English colonies if they converted to Catholicism and swore an oath of loyalty to Spain. -
Europeans Embrace Racism
More and more Europeans embraced the notions that Europeans and Africans were of distinct races.