Colonization of English AmericaTrevor BurnardLAST REVIEWED: 14 April 2021LAST MODIFIED: 10 March 2015DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0013IntroductionEngland was a latecomer in the colonization of the Americas. It drew heavily on the example of Spain for its early colonization efforts in North America and the West Indies. It also drew on its experience in subduing the inhabitants of the Celtic peripheries of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland in shaping relations with Native Americans. The advent of Atlantic history has been decisive in considering 17th-century colonization in comparative context. More effort is deployed now than previously to see English settlement as an encounter with peoples of an Old World rather than as a discovery of a New World by Englishmen and Englishwomen. English America refers to those areas settled by the English on the eastern seaboard of mainland North America (extending from Newfoundland in the north to the Carolinas in the south) and in the West Indies (including islands in the Lesser Antilles, such as Barbados and the Leeward Islands, and Jamaica in the Greater Antilles). Show
General OverviewsThe best general survey, with an excellent bibliography up until 1988, is Greene 1988, supplemented by the comparative analysis of Elliott 2006 and the essays in Canny 1998. Armitage and Braddick 2002 is especially suggestive as to how English America fits into Atlantic history. A major problem for all historians is that before 1776 and certainly before 1700 there was no geographical construct known as English America. Another issue is that a multitude of teleological accounts that pre-suppose English America becoming the United States provide support to an ideology of American exceptionalism that Atlantic history is intended to undermine. For the historical geography of the English Atlantic world, the first chapters in Meinig 1986 are stimulating, but see also Hornsby 2004 for a different idea of how regions in early America should be grouped. Classic works that are still useful are Andrews 1934 and Miller 1971.
Textbooks and SurveysAtlantic history suffers from an absence of good textbooks. Egerton, et al. 2007 is the first textbook specifically devoted to Atlantic history. Lots of textbooks, however, deal with colonial British America. Sarson 2005 adopts an Atlantic perspective. Vickers 2003 and Breen and Hall 2004 provide historiographical surveys with a comparative Atlantic dimension. DuVal and DuVal 2009, Clemens 2008, and Rushforth and Mapp 2009 are excellent collections of source materials. Calloway 1994 provides the view from Native America.
BibliographiesBibliographies, databases, and web sources are abundant for the study of 17th-century colonization, but the content of such scholarly resources can be patchy. Few of these works deal solely with pre-1700 history. For bibliographies, Irwin 2000–2007 and Ammerman and Morgan 1989 provide excellent summaries of earlier work. The Royal Historical Society Bibliography is good on books connected to early English imperialism and is constantly updated.
JournalsThere is no journal devoted to the colonization of English America as a specific subject. Most journals consider colonization along with early American history generally. Important articles on the subject can be found in general-purpose journals. But the best articles are to be found in the William and Mary Quarterly, a distinguished journal devoted to early American history in general. It is sponsored by the Omohundro Institute, whose website provides a wealth of information. Common-place, Early American Studies, and Journal of Early American History are newly established but exciting sources where work on colonization is often found.
Maps and IllustrationsMaps are a useful way to understand the conceptual world of the English before and after arrival in the Americas. Some collections, such as Black 1970–1975, were designed for metropolitan officials. Others, like McCorkle 2001 and Stephenson and McKee 2000, offer a guide to how colonists saw important regions. Englishmen also responded to visual descriptions of Native Americans, as seen in Sloan 2007 and Kraemer 1996. Both works are visually stunning and ethnographically important evocations of how Native Americans were represented to the English in the first period of contact.
Letters and Narrative AccountsThe documentary evidence for early America is abundant but also variable: We have much more information on New England and Virginia than on other areas of settlement. The listed works are a small selection from a larger body of work, but all are important sources for major areas of English colonization: Buisseret 2008 on Jamaica; Lawson 1984 on the Carolinas; Forbes, et al. 1929 on Massachusetts; Hakluyt 1965 on colonization generally; Smith 1986 on Virginia and New England; and Ralegh 1997 on the West Indies.
Document CollectionsAs with letters and narrative accounts, what is noted here is an idiosyncratic selection from a larger body of materials. Hadfield 2001 and Haile 1998 are collections of early travel literature, showing early representations of landscapes and peoples in English America. Jehlen and Warner 1997 and Krise 1999 are excellent selective guides to early American literature. Kupperman, et al. 2000 and Kingsbury 2005 are good starters for explorations in major archives in Britain (especially the National Archives) and in North America. The Early American Imprint, Series I: Evans, 1639–1800, which lists all works published in what became the United States before 1800, is indispensable for serious scholarship. It should be supplemented by access to Early English Books Online, which, although not primarily about early America, and thus not listed in this bibliography, has digital copies of many works published in Britain that touch on Atlantic America. Plymouth Colony Archive Project is an excellent example of how to use documentary sources to place a specific geographic area in an Atlantic context.
Native AmericaAccounts and analyses of the encounters between the English and Native Americans are best divided into sources dealing with (1) pre-contact America, (2) the initial interaction between the two groups, and (3) the subsequent conflict. Pre-ContactThe key factor causing power to shift toward the English was, as Jones 2004 shows, the devastating effect of disease on Native Americans. The effect of disease preceded contact and meant that the Native Americans who first encountered the English had, as Rountree 2005 and Trigger and Washburn 1996 argue, already been affected by European presence even before meeting Europeans.
ContactRecent studies of interactions between Native Americans and the English suggest that one way of making sense of early contact is to view it through a developmental lens. As Chaplin 2001 and Merrell 1989 explain, relations changed between the English and Native Americans as the balance of power shifted between the two peoples. Richter 2001, which asks us to see America first as “Indian” country and then “English” country, is indicative of how most of the authors cited in this section see Native American and English interactions. Witgen 2012 applies this analysis to the area of the Great Lakes in North America, modifying the established concept of the Middle Ground. This interpretation works best for North America. The story of Native American–English interactions in the West Indies is quite different and is more strongly shaped than on the mainland by the previous century of contact between the Spanish and Caribbean Native Americans.
ConflictAfter an initial period of wary friendliness, the shift in power toward the English usually led, as Lepore 1998 and Jennings 1975 insist, to violence. Nevertheless, we should not assume that relations between Native Americans and the English inevitably ended up as being defined by violence. Gleach 1997 and Oberg 1999 are good surveys of cultural interactions and conflict between Europeans and Indians in the South (although Oberg also looks at other areas), and Pulsipher 2006 is excellent on New England. White 1991 is extremely important in providing a framework within which conflict between Europeans and Native Americans can be understood. See, however, DuVal 2006 for a gloss on this “middle ground” argument, as well as an important forum in the William and Mary Quarterly critiquing the influence and efficacy of the “middle ground” approach.
Ideology of ColonizationColonization as a process of thought and as a strategy of government was not new in English history before the late 16th century, as Davies 2000 shows in his analysis of England as a medieval imperial power. Nevertheless, imagining an overseas empire outside the British archipelago and Europe was hard for the English to contemplate, even with the example of the Iberian nations’ colonizing efforts in the 16th century as a model. Armitage 2000, MacMillan 2006, and Mancall 2007 detail the ideological underpinnings necessary before the English felt able to move overseas. As Mancall shows, English colonization was very much a private rather than a state affair, with the major promoters of colonization being concerned with trade as much as with geopolitics. Armitage places the birth of empire within the context of developing political thought, while MacMillan emphasizes the role of law in shaping colonization schemes. The essays in Kupperman 1995 place English colonization within a wider Atlantic context, which includes the important fact that England was an aggressively Protestant nation with a clear sense of its national and imperial mission at a time when most of Western Europe was Catholic. Of course, colonization did not occur in a vacuum. To the ideological context needs to be added, as in Andrews 1984, an appreciation that settlement was intended to weaken Spanish hegemony in the Americas.
English Imperial Expansion in ContextEnglish movement across the Atlantic Ocean in the late 16th and early 17th centuries was part of a wider process of Western European expansion. Cañizares-Esguerra 2006 shows how English expansion can be usefully compared to Iberian colonization. Macinnes and Williamson 2006 provides a useful counterpoint to English colonization schemes by addressing how Scots were involved in the 17th-century Atlantic. The English also were involved in opening their horizons to other parts of the world besides the Atlantic, as Canny 2001 shows for Ireland, Richardson and Doran 2005 shows for Europe, Ogburn 2007 shows for Asia, Baker 1994 shows for the far North Atlantic, and Hair 1997 demonstrates for West Africa. “Forum: Beyond the Atlantic” addresses Atlantic colonization as a whole in a wider context, posing the question (which it leaves unanswered) of the precise relationship between Atlantic history and world history.
back to top How did British colonization of North America differ from that of Spain and Portugal?Whereas the Spanish and Portuguese administered their colonies directly, British colonies in North America were largely autonomous. As long as they paid taxes and followed British trading laws, the colonies were free to make their own decisions.
Who colonized North America?Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands established colonies in North America. Each country had different motivations for colonization and expectations about the potential benefits.
Who Colonised America first?Five hundred years before Columbus, a daring band of Vikings led by Leif Eriksson set foot in North America and established a settlement.
How did the British colonize North America?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.
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The colonization of which region was similar to britains earlier colonization of north america?
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