From their initial settlements in the St. To create a hinterland to supply and support their relatively small coastal communities, they had founded by 1655 about forty missions in the interior and were making considerable progress in converting some twenty-five thousand Indians.įrenchmen going to the New World were interested primarily in developing commercial outposts from which they could exploit the fur trade. Augustine was the northeastern outpost of their larger colonies in Central and South America, important principally to prevent competitors from establishing themselves too close to the routes that the treasure fleets took home to Spain. Even the English men and women who emigrated to New England beginning in 1620 to create religiously based communities also searched for economic opportunity.įor the Spanish, St.
Nearly every European who came to the New World did so to make money. The English were latecomers in the race for settlements on the mainland, establishing an evanescent presence on the Outer Banks of what would become North Carolina in 1585 before managing (barely) to survive at Jamestown in Virginia after 1607. Lawrence Valley, at Quebec in 1609 and Montreal in 1611. The French established their first enduring settlements in the St. Augustine in Florida in 1565, and they exterminated their local French competitors at Fort Caroline the next year. The Spanish founded the first enduring European settlement on the eastern shore of North America at St. As they worked to impose their own agenda on the land, the Europeans courted Native allies who could help them learn how to survive in the new environment and perhaps even provide support against hostile tribes. EARLY CONFLICTSĪll European imperial powers-Spain, France, England (Britain after 1701), and the Netherlands (until 1664)-sought or were compelled to insinuate themselves into the relationships that had existed among Native American tribes before their arrival. Many of the people, places, events, and issues that were prominent during the last stages of the colonial wars also played important roles in the Revolution. Since the outcomes of the European conflicts created the circumstances within which the American Revolution and the War of American Independence occurred, it is useful to summarize the wars in eastern North America before 1775 as part of the background of the events that occurred thereafter. Competition among European imperial powers increased the scale and scope of conflict in North America.
0 kommentar(er)
