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For much of the 17th century, Barbados was a far more powerful economic engine than Virginia or Massachusetts. The English conquest of Jamaica in 1655 set the conditions for an even more economically dynamic model.
Dec 31, 2001 · This study is of the North American colonial economy from the middle of the seventeenth century to the American Revolution, with emphasis on the later years.
The Connecticut economy began with subsistence farming in the 17th century, and developed with greater diversity and an increased focus on production for distant markets, especially the British colonies in the Caribbean.
- Overview
- Colonization and early self-government
The American colonies were the British colonies that were established during the 17th and early 18th centuries in what is now a part of the eastern United States. The colonies grew both geographically along the Atlantic coast and westward and numerically to 13 from the time of their founding to the American Revolution. Their settlements extended from what is now Maine in the north to the Altamaha River in Georgia when the Revolution began.
Who established the American colonies?
In 1606 King James I of England granted a charter to the Virginia Company of London to colonize the American coast anywhere between parallels 34° and 41° north and another charter to the Plymouth Company to settle between 38° and 45° north. In 1607 the Virginia Company crossed the ocean and established Jamestown. In 1620 the ship the Mayflower carried about 100 Pilgrim Separatists to what is now Massachusetts, where the Plymouth colony took root.
What pushed the American colonies toward independence?
After the French and Indian War the British government determined that the colonies should help pay for the cost of the war and the postwar garrisoning of troops. It also began imposing tighter control on colonial governments. Taxes, such as the Sugar Act (1764) and the Stamp Act (1765), aimed at raising revenue from the colonies outraged the colonists and catalyzed a reaction that eventually led to a revolt.
When did the American colonies declare independence?
The opening of the 17th century found three countries—France, Spain, and England—contending for dominion in North America. Of these England, the tardiest on the scene, finally took control of the beginnings of what is now the United States. The French, troubled by foreign wars and internal religious quarrels, long failed to realize the great possibilities of the new continent, and their settlements in the St. Lawrence Valley grew feebly. The Spaniards were preoccupied with South America and the lands washed by the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. But the English, after initial failures under Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh, planted firm settlements all the way from Maine to Georgia, nourished them with a steady flow of people and capital, and soon absorbed the smaller colonizing venture of the Dutch in the Hudson Valley and the tiny Swedish effort on the Delaware River. Within a century and a half the British had 13 flourishing colonies on the Atlantic coast: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
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In a short time the colonists pushed from the Tidewater strip toward the Appalachians and finally crossed the mountains by the Cumberland Gap and Ohio River. Decade by decade they became less European in habit and outlook and more American—the frontier in particular setting its stamp on them. Their freedom from most of the feudal inheritances of western Europe, and the self-reliance they necessarily acquired in subduing nature, made them highly individualistic.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Overview. The English Establish a Foothold at Jamestown, 1606-1610. Evolution of the Virginia Colony, 1611-1624. Virginia's Early Relations with Native Americans. Establishing the Georgia Colony, 1732-1750. The American Revolution, 1763 - 1783. The New Nation, 1783 - 1815. National Expansion and Reform, 1815 - 1880.
By the late 17th century, Virginia's export economy was largely based on tobacco, and new, richer settlers came in to take up large portions of land, build large plantations and import indentured servants and slaves. In 1676, Bacon's Rebellion occurred, but was suppressed by royal officials.
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Why was Barbados a powerful economic engine in the 17th century?
So the colonial experience was one of absorbing British models of government, the economy, and religion. Over the course of about 150 years, American colonists practiced these rudimentary forms of self-government that eventually led to their decision to revolt against British rule.
