Foundations Of The Atlantic World - New England

COLONIZATION AND ECONOMIC EXPANSION HIST 1301 | History New England William Bradford headed a group of Puritan Separatists that left Plymouth, England in 1620 on the Mayflower and established a colony in what is now Boston, Massachusetts, that they named Plymouth. The Separatists desired to leave England in order to avoid the corrupt Church of England, whose reading of the Bible they believed to be lenient. Their leaders pledged to create a colony for "the glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country" when they signed the Mayflower Compact prior to landing. The Mayflower Compact was not only a religious agreement; its endorsement of direct democracy and the creation of governments that represented popular desire had a significant political consequence. The Separatists battled to make ends meet in their new houses, just as the English settlers in Virginia, far to the south. During the harsh winter of 1620–1621, around half of them perished from sickness, famine, malnourishment, and the elements. The colony as a whole eventually came to rely only on the seven who were well enough to work when many of the survivors were too frail to do so. There were political controversies and a near-collapse of the first English colony in New England. Indians chose to assist Plymouth at the exact moment when it appeared to be lost. Among them were Samoset, an Abenaki who had been living with the Wampanoag tribe, and Tisquantum, also known as Squanto, a Pawtuxet tribal member who had picked up some English from fishermen who frequented the shore prior to the Separatists' arrival. Tisquantum was sold into slavery in Spain after being abducted by English adventurer Thomas Hunt, but he was able to flee to England. He returned to North America in 1619 and joined the Newfoundland business, another English joint stock business, there. Friendly Native Americans like Samoset and Tisquantum assisted the English in negotiating treaties with neighbouring tribes and showed them how to cultivate maize, which turned into the colony's primary food supply. However, as the colonists started taking Indigenous lands, a relationship that could have started out as a benign gesture to feed starving strangers swiftly turned into hostility. In 1630, a bigger Puritan group established the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In a speech titled "A Model of Christian Charity," their leader John Winthrop shared his hopes that the Puritan community in the Americas would embrace the twin objectives of establishing a "City upon a Hill" that would serve as a beacon of hope for the entire world and a centre of economic prosperity. Religious dissenters such as Roger Williams, who supported religious tolerance, and Anne Hutchinson, who questioned the all-male church leadership, were banished from the Puritan colonies, which were also hotbeds of violence. The puritan leaders who murdered nineteen individuals for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials in 1692 may have been the darkest period in the history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In spite of these disputes, the Puritan colonies eventually developed into self-sufficient societies that mostly succeeded in advancing the Puritan theological doctrine and creating a robust economy. The Puritan colonists believed that a robust economy would support the growth of their colony, draw in new members, and demonstrate God's favour. They derived their economic theories from mercantilism, just like a lot of other Europeans in the 1600s and 1700s. In many colonial endeavours, like Jamestown, Virginia, the major reason was the desire to amass economic prosperity; in more ideologically motivated towns, such as those established by the Puritans, this ambition served as a secondary motivator.