The colonial period

By the 18^th century, the English dominated the Caribbean and North America's eastern coast, where the thirteen colonies were established and developed. The colonies developed differently forming four distinct regions with peculiar life, population and settlement patterns: the Chesapeake, New England, the South and the Middle Colonies. These regions were shaped by different factors including geographical settings, the motives for white immigration and the number of enslaved Africans.

The Chesapeake Settlements

In the 1580s, Queen Elizabeth I approved the idea of colonizing North America and the first attempt to start a permanent settlement was made. The first colonial planners thought that England would follow the Spanish colonial model and the English colonists would be able to exploit the native people for the benefit of their nation. In 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh sent 117 colonists to the territory he named Virginia (for Elizabeth, the "Virgin Queen") to establish a settlement on Roanoke Island. The supply ship, which came three years later, could not find the colonists, who vanished completely.

This unsuccessful attempt hampered planting colonies in the New World for nearly two decades. Only at the beginning of the 17^th century, the English tried to found colonies of a new type – they sent big number of families to set up agriculturally based colonies in the New World. After the failure of the Roanoke colony the question of financing new colonies was raised – neither the Crown nor Parliament agreed to spend money on colonies, and many people attributed Roanoke's failure to poor financing. The way out of the situation was found in joint-stock companies.

Joint-stock companies became popular in England during the 16^lh century as a mechanism for pooling the resources of a large number of small investors through the sale of stock. In 1606, the group of merchants and wealthy gentry set up a joint-stock company named the Virginia Company to plant colonies in America.

In 1607, the Virginia Company dispatched 144 men and boys to North America to start the colony following a Spanish model. In April, the colonists founded a settlement called Jamestown (in King James I's honor). The resources of a joint-stock company did not allow equipping the colonists well, besides many colonists were not prepared to survive in the new environment, so by January 1608, many of them died of diseases and malnutrition. The colony was saved from collapse by Captain John Smith, who imposed military discipline.

Smith also established diplomatic relations with the Powhatan Confederacy – the colonists signed a treaty with the Algonquian Indians of the Powhatan Confederacy and started trading with them. The treaty was sealed in traditional fashion – Pocahontas, the daughter of the tribes' leader Powhatan was married to John Rolfe, one of the most prominent residents in the colony.

The conditions later improved and by 1619, there were eleven settlements in Virginia. Further success of the Virginia Company began with the spread of tobacco cultivation. The first crop was planted in 1611 and by 1620 Virginians exported 40,000 pounds of cured leaves.

Tobacco trade required the land cultivation and led to the growth of English settlements. These settlements were founded at some distance from one another; more and more land was taken for tobacco plantations. In 1677, the Indians of the Powhatan Confederacy, angry with encroaching of their lands, attacked the settlements and killed 347 colonists – one quarter of the population. The colony survived and after new series of attacks made the Indians accept a treaty formally subordinating them to English authority.

In 1624, the Virginia colony was made a royal colony, where the landowning men from the major settlements could elect representatives to the legislature called the House of Burgesses and control their local government. It was the beginning of self-government in the future United States.

In 1632, English King James I gave a charter to Lord Baltimore of the Calvert family to found Maryland – the colony that aimed to protect Roman Catholics persecuted in England. The first settlements in Maryland (named in honor of England's Queen Henrietta Maria) were quite successful as the Calverts took into account Virginia's early history.

However, Maryland did not become a Catholic settlement – from the very beginning Protestants formed a majority of the population there. Though the Protestant majority dominated the colony, many Catholics became large landowners and serious religious problems emerged in 1642. As the antagonism progressed, Lord Baltimore drafted the Act of Religious toleration passed by the local assembly a year later. The act became America's first law offering to prospective settlers freedom of religion. In that respect Maryland was different from Virginia, where the Church of England was the only officially recognized religion.

As both colonies were situated in Chesapeake Bay, they are often called "the Chesapeake". The Chesapeake colonies differed in terms of religion, but in other ways had much in common. Like Virginia colonists, inhabitants of Maryland had their legislature – the House of Delegates (established in 1635). In both colonies acted governors and governors' councils that were parts of legislature, the colonies' highest courts and executive advisors to the governor. In the 17^th century, Chesapeake most property-owning white males could vote.

In both colonies tobacco was a chief source of profit and tobacco plantations shaped settlement patterns – instead of towns small isolated farms were established along the banks of the rivers that served for tobacco transportation. As harvesting of tobacco required great labor supply, the Chesapeake colonists invited English migrants as indentured servants, in 1619, the first twenty blacks were brought to Virginia. That was a first step to the institution of slavery later established in the southern colonies.