a patent for discovery and settlement. In 1583 he perished in an effort to establish a colony in Newfoundland. His work was taken up by his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584. Between 1586 and 1603 Sir Walter made successive efforts to settle a colony in the wide territory called Virginia, in honour of Queen Elizabeth, a name of much wider significance then than in later days. His colony at Roanoke, in what is now the state of North Carolina, was unsuccessful, and after his fall his patent reverted to the crown, but the new Virginia Company carried on his schemes. In 1607 the first lasting settlement was made in Virginia, and after a period of struggle began to flourish by the cultivation of tobacco.
In 1620 another settlement was made. A small body of religious dissentients, one hundred and one men, women and children, including some who had fled to Holland to escape the discipline of the church of England, secured leave from the Virginia Company to plant themselves within its bounds. They sailed in a single ship, the “Mayflower,” and landed near Cape Cod, where they founded the colony of Plymouth, afterwards (1621) obtaining a patent from the council for New England. From these two centres, and from later settlements, arose the “Plantations” of the English, which gradually increased to the number of thirteen and were destined to become the United States of America. Two strongly contrasted types were found among them. The Virginian or southern type, which may be said to have prevailed from Maryland southward, were for the most part planters producing tobacco, Indian corn, rice, indigo and cotton, largely by the labour of negro slaves. They had no very pronounced religious leaning, though Maryland was founded as a Roman Catholic refuge, but they had a prevailing leaning to the church of England. The northern or New England element began by endeavouring to establish a Puritan theocracy which broke down. But the tendency was towards “Independency,” and the New Englanders were farmers tilling their own land, traders and seafaring men. In the middle region between them religion had a large share in promoting the formation of Pennsylvania, which was founded by the Quaker William Penn.
The English colonies, though divided by interest or character, were all alike jealous to defend, and eager to extend, their freedom of self-government, based on charters granted by, or extorted from, the crown. The settlers by degrees threw off the control of the proprietors who had received grants from the crown and had promoted the first settlements. It was a marked characteristic of the English colonists, and a strong element in their prosperity, that they were hospitable in welcoming men of other races,—Germans from the Palatinate, and French Huguenots driven out by persecution who brought with them some capital, more intelligence and an enduring hatred of Roman Catholic France. Though the British government gave, more or less unwillingly, a large measure of self-government to the Plantations, it was no less intent than the Spanish crown on retaining the whole colonial trade in British hands, and on excluding foreigners. Like the Spaniards it held that this trade should be confined to an exchange of colonial raw produce for home manufactures. Two foreign settlements within the English sphere—the Dutch colony of New Netherland, now New York, and the Swedish settlement on the Delaware—were absorbed by the growing English element.
While the English plantations were striking root along the coast, by somewhat prosaic but fruitful industry, and were growing in population with rapid strides, two other movements were in progress. To the south, the English, French and Dutch, though often in rivalry with one another, combined to break in on the monopoly of the Spaniards. They turned the maxim that “there is no peace beyond the line” against its inventors. They invaded the West Indies, seized one island after another, and formed the freebooting communities known as the Brethren of the Coast and the Buccaneers (q.v). After the renewal of the war between Spain and Holland in 1621, the Dutch invaded the Portuguese colony of Brazil, and seized Bahia. A long period of struggle followed, but, after the declaration of Portuguese independence in 1640, local opposition, and the support given to the Portuguese by the French, led to the retreat of the Dutch.
To the north, to the west and to the south of the English settlements on the mainland, a most characteristic French colonial policy was being carried out. No sooner were the wars of religion over than the French again set about making good their claim to Canada, and to whatever they could represent as arising naturally out of Canada. In 1599, under the encouragement of Henry IV., speculators began to frequent the St Lawrence in pursuit of the fur trade. Their settlements were mainly trading posts. Their colonists were not farmers but trappers, woodrangers, coureurs du bois, who married Indian women, and formed a mixed race known as the bois brulés. Not a few of the leaders, notably Samuel de Champlain (q.v.), who founded Quebec in 1608, were brave ingenious men, but the population provided no basis for a lasting colony. It was adventurous, small, scattered and unstable. The religious impulse which was so strong both in the Spanish and the English colonies was prominent in the French, but in the most fatal form. Pious people were eager to bring about the conversion of the Indians, and were zealously served by missionaries. The Jesuits, whose first appearance in New France dates from 1611, were active and devoted. Their aim was to reduce the fierce Red men to a state of childlike docility to priests, and they discouraged all colonization in their neighbourhood. It was true that the most active French colonial element, the trappers, were barbarized by the natives, and that the pursuit of the fur trade and other causes had brought the French into sharp collision with the most formidable of the native races, the confederation known as the Five (or Six) Nations. During the reign of Louis XIV., after 1660, the French government paid great attention to Canada, but not in a way capable of leading to the formation of a colony. The king was as intent as the rulers of Spain had been to keep the American possessions free from all taint of heresy. Therefore he carried on the policy of excluding the Huguenots—the only colonizing element among his subjects,—and drove them into the English plantations. A small handful of obedient peasants, priest-ridden and over-administered, formed the basis of the colony. On this narrow foundation was raised a vast superstructure, ecclesiastical, administrative and military. His priests, and his officials civil and military, gave the French king many daring explorers. While the English colonies were slowly digging their way, taking firm hold of the soil, and growing in numbers, from the sea to the Alleghanies, French missionaries and explorers had ranged far and wide. In 1682 Robert Cavelier, sieur de la Salle, who had already explored the Ohio, sailed down the Mississippi and took possession of the region at the mouth by the name of Louisiana.
The problem which was to be settled by a century of strife was now posed. On the one hand were the English plantations, populated, cultivated, profitable, stretching along the east coast of North America; on the other were the Canadian settlements, poverty-stricken, empty, over-officialled, a cause of constant expense to the home government, and, at a vast distance, those of Louisiana, struggling and bankrupt. The French remedy for an unsuccessful colony has always been to annex more territory, and forestall a possible rival. Therefore the French government strove to unite the beggarly settlements in Canada and Louisiana by setting up posts all along the Ohio and the Mississippi, in order to confine the English between the Alleghanies and the sea.
The political history of North America till 1763 is mainly the story of the pressure of the English colonies on this paper barrier. As regards Spanish America, England was content to profit by the Asiento (q.v.) treaty, which gave her the monopoly of slave-hunting for the Spanish colonies and an opening for contraband trade. In the river Plate region, where the dissensions of Spaniards and Portuguese afforded another opening, English traders smuggled. The Spaniards, with monstrous fatuity, refused to make use of the superb waterways provided by the Paraná and Paraguay, and endeavoured to stifle all trade. England’s main struggle was with France. It was prolonged by her entanglement in European disputes and by political causes, by the want of co-operation among the English colonies and their jealousy of control by the home government. The organization of the French colonies, though industrially ruinous, gave them
