it was during the 17th century that all but one of england's north american colonies that being georgia uh was founded and from the from the outset it was clear that english efforts at colonization was going to be different in very important ways than what the spanish the french and even the dutch were attempting in the americas now england did envy the riches that uh spain had uh pulled from the new world especially the enormous amounts of gold and silver uh and much of the wealth and much of the lands that the spanish had uh conquered and accumulated in the americas uh became the property of the kings and queens of spain as well as the conquistadors but but in contrast english colonization in the americas was actually led by churches and it was led by companies known as joint stock companies which we'll talk about a little bit later on and those seeking free seeking freedom from religious persecution both protestants and catholics uh and it was also led by those that were seeking land and wealth for their own personal ends now english settlements in america were also different because they were more compact than say the french the dutch and even the spanish england's colonies were also much more populous than these other three european powers in 1660 for example there were 58 000 colonists in new england virginia and maryland and that's compared to three thousand uh in new france and five thousand in uh dutch new netherland and by 1750 english colonists uh outnumbered the french nearly 20 to one um and so the english experiment in the new world was in many ways different than all the other european powers the english government and the people that wanted to invest in colonizing efforts had two primary goals for their colonies the first being to provide raw materials uh such as timber and tobacco and fur pelts and the other being to develop a thriving market for english manufactured goods so see it wasn't so much about conquering as it was about extending the economic influence of england so so the way we're going to approach the english colonization in north america is we're first going to briefly talk about reasons why it occurred then we'll get into some discussions about the settlement of specific regions of um north america in which the english settle we'll look at the chesapeake colonies the new england colonies the middle colonies and the southern colonies but let's start first with a good foundation meaning why would the english want to colonize the americas the principal reason was wealth england is standing by watching um spain collect all these riches and exploit the new world for all of its resources and the english became very envious of this and what we began to see happen in england is not only would the monarch of england at any given time but also just wealthy individuals in england they saw in the new world exactly what the spanish saw something that can be exploited for wealth to make themselves wealthy rich and so you're going to start to see the formation of what we're known as joint stock companies now i'm going to explain what a joint stock company is in a little bit but essentially the joint stock companies that will be created were going to be companies that were uh created by investors to start colonies in north america to generate money so you see a lot of why the english want to colonize is simply to exploit the new world it hasn't really have much to do about christianizing native americans or or anything like that it was it was mostly about making money right so wealth or this this desire to accumulate wealth was uh a big reason we begin to see english colonization take place um they got to keep up with the spanish you know and this uh desire to accumulate wealth will be seen in individuals it'll be seen in the monarchs and it'll also be seen in these joint stock companies so wealth was a big reason for english colonization another was religion uh england in the 17th century and in the 16th century was a very tumultuous kingdom uh especially when it came to religion we still had monarchs who were catholic in a nation that was increasingly protestant uh and then sometimes you would have protestant kings come to power and they would persecute catholics and then catholic kings or queens would come to power and they would persecute protestants and so you know depending on who was in power at any given time meant that from a religious standpoint you could be a target and catholics would be persecuted protestants would be persecuted they would persecute each other protestants would persecute other protestants uh and so all of this religious strife caused a lot of groups and a lot of people to just throw their hands up and say this isn't worth it and and want to go over to the new world and establish a colony to escape it all right or to uh create some society that can be replicated back in europe and so we're gonna see groups like the pilgrims right we're going to see groups like the puritans and groups like the quakers that are going to come over here and establish colonies for religious reasons so it wasn't just about wealth it was also about religion and then finally another cause for why english will actually come over here and colonize concerns your your lower class right or or lower middle class uh englishman in the 17th century we saw a agricultural reform movement taking place in england called the enclosure movement and what the enclosure movement was was where the landed elite right the people that owned the land in england uh had traditionally throughout the medieval ages allowed the peasantry in the surrounding areas to live off their land right to to use their lands to graze their animals and for the peasantry to grow things right um and then you know cutting the the landed elite in on all the profit this was known as the commons right let me show you what i mean here this is a depiction of a typical english medieval manner and and right there in the middle you see the manor house right usually a castle right if anyone's ever seen downton abbey you know that that big castle that was like that that was the that was where the lord the lord of of the lands of that specific area that's where they lived and all the people that lived in the countryside they were kind of the peasantry and they worked the land to not only support themselves but also to support the lord right and the lord kind of looked after them it was this symbiotic relationship that had existed for hundreds of years now what was happening on the on a medieval manor is there wouldn't have been any fences right the the farmlands were the commons right but beginning in 1604 you started to see the english lords start to enclose their lands to fence them up so that they could actually start grazing sheep because they realized that it was incredibly profitable to do so now once you start enclosing up the countryside you're depriving them these these peasantry of their traditional um rights to all of these commons lands right to support themselves and so a lot of the peasantry uh has no way to make a livelihood they have they they they can't remain on the lands of the lord he's kicking them off uh he's in closing up the commons and so what are a lot of these peasantry do well they they wander the countryside they they start to move into the big cities and they have no visible means to support themselves so a lot of them become vagrants right and this creates then a lot of pressure on english society added into this is england's also experiencing a population growth at the same time and so as you have an increasingly uh um larger population added in right to this enclosure movement it's generating then a great number of beggars a great number of vagrants who are just wandering across england in the late 16th century and on then in the 17th century um and these problems created a by this uprooted peasantry provided a compelling reason for not only the english government at the time but also the peasantry themselves to go somewhere else to leave england and to go to the new world so when you're trying to understand why the english actually colonized portions of north america it it was done out of religious reasons for various religious reasons as we'll see in a second it was also done primarily out of the the the desire to to generate wealth like the spanish and the french were doing but also because uh you had the displacement of millions uh or not maybe not a million but hundreds of thousands of uh peasantry that have now had to resort to begging and resort to becoming vagrants and they have they have they have nothing nothing to lose by going uh and so this is why we begin to see in the 17th century england really starting to jump into the game of uh colonization so i hope that provides a little bit of a foundation for you understanding what's going on in england and why the english will ultimately colonize portions of north america now what we want to do now is we want to just go ahead and jump into some of these specific colonies and we're going to start first with the chesapeake colonies and we're going to start with virginia virginia we're going to spend the most time on out of all of these colonies because it's by far the most important of all of the original 13 colonies ben franklin famously said one time that all of virginia or all of america was once virginia and in a way he was right out of the experiment in virginia comes so much understanding of american history in this course virginia's emergence as a colony and then later as a state put it on the map in terms of being very influential and very important to the history of this country so that's why we'll spend a lot of time talking about it we're also going to spend a lot of time talking about virginia because it is in this colony that slavery as we know it in the context of american history is born so without further ado let's talk about virginia