An outline, era by era

British, French, and Dutch colonies in North America and the Caribbean

Early Modern Era · ~1500 – ~1800

From the early 1600s, England, France and the Dutch Republic founded colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America, along the St Lawrence River, and on the islands of the Caribbean. The English settled Virginia, New England and the Caribbean island of Barbados. The French built New France around Quebec and later claimed the Mississippi valley, while also settling Caribbean islands such as Martinique and Guadeloupe, and Saint-Domingue, a colony in the western part of Hispaniola, the island it shared with Spanish Santo Domingo. The Dutch founded New Netherland on the Hudson River and held Caribbean islands such as Curaçao.

These colonies grew from trading posts, farming settlements and plantations. Their economies relied on the fur trade, tobacco, and above all sugar, grown by hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans brought across the Atlantic. Colonists also met, traded with, fought and depended on Native nations, whose lands were taken over a long period. Rivalry among the European powers led to repeated wars, and the British took New Netherland in 1664 and much of New France in 1763. The colonies shaped the political and cultural world of the modern Americas.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. Jamestown, the first lasting English colony

    Event

    What happened

    In May 1607 about a hundred English colonists, sent by the Virginia Company of London, land on the James River and build a fort named Jamestown. Disease, hunger and conflict with the Powhatan people kill most of them in the early years. From about 1612 John Rolfe grows a sweeter tobacco variety that sells well in England.

    The rest is history

    Tobacco gave Virginia a profitable export and drew in more settlers. In 1619 the colony's first representative assembly, the House of Burgesses, met, and in the same year the first recorded Africans, taken from a Portuguese slave ship, arrived in Virginia. The Crown made Virginia a royal colony in 1624. Jamestown became the base for English settlement in the Chesapeake.

    Sources

    1. BookKupperman, Karen Ordahl. The Jamestown Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
    2. BookMorgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975.

  2. Champlain founds Quebec

    Event

    What happened

    In 1608 Samuel de Champlain founds a fur-trading post at Quebec on the St Lawrence River for France. He allies with the Algonquin, Innu and Huron-Wendat against their Haudenosaunee rivals, and joins a fight against Mohawk warriors in 1609. The colony stays very small for decades.

    The rest is history

    The alliances gave France a vast fur trade through the Great Lakes and rivers. Population grew slowly until the Crown took direct control of New France in 1663 under Louis XIV. The colony also stirred lasting conflict with the Haudenosaunee, who were allied with the Dutch and later the English. New France lasted until the British conquest of 1759 to 1760.

    Sources

    1. BookTrudel, Marcel. The Beginnings of New France, 1524-1663. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973.
    2. BookEccles, W. J. The French in North America, 1500-1765. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998.

  3. New Netherland and New Amsterdam

    Event

    What happened

    After Henry Hudson explores the river that now bears his name in 1609, Dutch traders set up posts on it, and the Dutch West India Company, founded in 1621, takes charge of the colony of New Netherland. In 1624 settlers arrive at Fort Orange (now Albany), and in 1626 Director Peter Minuit secures Manhattan for the town of New Amsterdam. The colony trades furs and has a mixed population of Dutch, other Europeans and enslaved Africans.

    The rest is history

    In August 1664 an English fleet sailed into the harbour and Director Peter Stuyvesant surrendered without a fight. New Amsterdam became New York, named for the Duke of York. The Dutch briefly retook it in 1673 and gave it back in 1674 by treaty. Dutch law, place names and a diverse population left a lasting mark on the region.

    Sources

    1. BookShorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World. New York: Doubleday, 2004.

  4. Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay Colony

    Event

    What happened

    In November 1620 the Mayflower reaches Cape Cod carrying about a hundred Separatists and other passengers. Before landing they sign the Mayflower Compact, agreeing to obey laws made for the colony, and they settle at Plymouth. In 1630 a much larger Puritan migration led by John Winthrop founds the Massachusetts Bay Colony around Boston.

    The rest is history

    Thousands of Puritans emigrated in the 1630s, building towns with church congregations and local self-government. The Wampanoag leader Massasoit made a treaty with Plymouth in 1621, but relations with New England nations later broke down, notably in the Pequot War of 1636 to 1637 and King Philip's War of 1675 to 1676. New England's towns, churches and schools shaped a distinct regional culture. Plymouth was merged into Massachusetts in 1691.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryBradford, William. Of Plymouth Plantation. Manuscript history written 1630-1651.
    2. BookPhilbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. New York: Viking, 2006.

  5. Sugar and slavery in Barbados

    Event

    What happened

    English settlers claim uninhabited Barbados in 1627. In the 1640s planters, helped by Dutch merchants and credit, switch from tobacco to sugar cane. They move from indentured servants to enslaved Africans to work the cane fields and mills.

    The rest is history

    By the 1660s Barbados was one of the richest English colonies, and its enslaved majority outnumbered whites. In 1661 its assembly passed a slave code that served as a model for other colonies, including Jamaica, England's conquest from Spain in 1655, and South Carolina. The sugar and slave system spread across the French and Dutch islands too. Over the whole period of the Atlantic slave trade millions of Africans were carried to the Caribbean.

    Sources

    1. BookDunn, Richard S. Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.
    2. BookBeckles, Hilary McD. A History of Barbados. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

  6. French expansion down the Mississippi

    Event

    What happened

    In 1673 Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette travel down the Mississippi from the Great Lakes. In 1682 René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle follows the river to its mouth and claims the basin for Louis XIV, naming it Louisiana. In 1718 the French found New Orleans.

    The rest is history

    Louisiana linked French Canada to the Gulf of Mexico by a chain of forts and trading posts, and relied on Native allies. It never attracted many settlers, but it blocked English expansion west of the Appalachians. Its claims clashed with British colonists, a rivalry that led to the Seven Years' War. In the Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1762 France secretly agreed to transfer western Louisiana to Spain, and the Treaty of Paris in 1763 confirmed the loss of the territory east of the Mississippi to Britain.

    Sources

    1. BookEccles, W. J. France in America. Rev. ed. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1990.
    2. BookWhite, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

  7. The Seven Years' War and the fall of New France

    Event

    What happened

    Fighting between Britain and France begins in the Ohio valley in 1754, and the wider Seven Years' War follows from 1756 as a worldwide conflict. In September 1759 a British army under James Wolfe defeats the French under Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec, and Montreal surrenders in 1760. By the Treaty of Paris of 1763 France cedes Canada and land east of the Mississippi to Britain, and keeps Guadeloupe and Martinique.

    The rest is history

    Britain now ruled most of eastern North America, and the French colonists of Canada came under British rule. The Quebec Act of 1774 later let them keep French civil law and the Catholic faith. Britain's large war debt led it to tax the colonies, raising tensions with its American colonists. Those tensions helped lead to the American Revolution, which began in 1775.

    Sources

    1. BookAnderson, Fred. Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
    2. PrimaryTreaty of Paris. Treaty between Britain, France and Spain, signed 10 February 1763.

  8. The Navigation Acts and the English Atlantic economy

    Event

    What happened

    From 1651 the English Parliament passes Navigation Acts, and Charles II's Parliament expands them in 1660 and 1663. They restrict colonial trade to English-owned ships with mostly English crews, a category that included colonial vessels, and require that valuable goods such as sugar and tobacco go first to England. The Dutch, who had dominated Atlantic shipping, fight three wars against England between 1652 and 1674.

    The rest is history

    The laws tied the colonies more closely to the English economy and hampered Dutch carrying trade, though Dutch merchants kept trading through smuggling and other channels. They aimed to enrich the home country, an approach later called mercantilism. Colonists often evaded the rules by smuggling, but the system lasted until the 1840s. Resentment of trade and tax regulation was one of the grievances of the later American Revolution.

    Sources

    1. BookPincus, Steven. 1688: The First Modern Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
    2. BookIsrael, Jonathan I. Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585-1740. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

  9. The Dutch buy Manhattan for 24 dollars

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Peter Minuit is said to have bought Manhattan Island from the Native people in 1626 for trinkets worth 24 dollars. The tale is told as an example of a bargain, or of European trickery.

    The rest is history

    The only contemporary record is a 1626 letter by Pieter Schaghen, which says the Dutch had 'bought' the island for 60 guilders. The 24 dollar figure is a much later conversion, made in the 1840s. The Lenape who dealt with the Dutch probably understood the exchange as a gift to share use of the land, not a permanent sale. Which group received the goods is also uncertain. The Schaghen letter survives in the Dutch national archives in The Hague.

    Sources

    1. PrimarySchaghen, Pieter. Letter to the States General of the Dutch Republic, 5 November 1626. Nationaal Archief, The Hague.
    2. BookShorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World. New York: Doubleday, 2004.

  10. Pocahontas and John Smith

    Popular belief

    The legend

    John Smith, captured by the Powhatan, is about to be killed when the chief's young daughter Pocahontas throws herself over him and saves his life. The two are often told of as lovers.

    The rest is history

    Smith first wrote about his capture in 1608 and did not mention a rescue. The dramatic account appears in his Generall Historie of 1624, years after Pocahontas had become famous in England. Some historians think the event was a Powhatan ritual of adoption, or that it never happened as told. Pocahontas was about ten or eleven in 1607, so a romance is unlikely. She married John Rolfe in 1614, visited England, and died at Gravesend in 1617.

    Sources

    1. PrimarySmith, John. The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. London, 1624.
    2. BookTownsend, Camilla. Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004.

  11. The first Thanksgiving

    Popular belief

    The legend

    In 1621 the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Wampanoag sit down together for a harvest feast that becomes the model for American Thanksgiving. The meal is imagined as a peaceful, founding event.

    The rest is history

    A harvest celebration did take place in autumn 1621, described in a letter by Edward Winslow. About ninety Wampanoag men joined about fifty colonists for three days. The Pilgrims did not call it Thanksgiving, and Days of Thanksgiving in New England were religious fasts or thanks for particular events. The national holiday took its modern form in the 1860s, when Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it in 1863 after campaigning by the writer Sarah Josepha Hale.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryWinslow, Edward. Letter in Mourt's Relation: A Relation or Journall of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth. London, 1622.
    2. BookPhilbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. New York: Viking, 2006.

  12. The Salem witches burned at the stake

    Popular belief

    The legend

    In 1692 the Puritans of Salem, Massachusetts, are said to have burned witches at the stake in a wave of religious fanaticism.

    The rest is history

    No one was burned in Salem. Nineteen people were hanged, and Giles Corey was pressed to death for refusing to plead. Others died in jail. The trials began in early 1692 after girls in Salem Village accused neighbours of witchcraft, and a special court sat from June. Governor William Phips ended it in late 1692 and 1693, and the colony later apologised and paid compensation. The court records survive, and the witch trials of Europe, where burning was common, were a different practice.

    Sources

    1. BookBoyer, Paul, and Stephen Nissenbaum. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974.
    2. BookNorton, Mary Beth. In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

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