American Colonies

02/06/2021 American colonies -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
American colonies
American colonies, also called thirteen
TABLE OF CONTENTS
colonies or colonial America, the 13 British
colonies that were established during the 17th Introduction
and early 18th centuries in what is now a part Colonization and early self-
government
of the eastern United States. The colonies grew
New shapes of colonial development
both geographically along the Atlantic coast
The contest with France
and westward and numerically to 13 from the
American social and cultural
time of their founding to the American development
Revolution (1775–81). Their settlements had The bid for independence (1763–83)
spread far beyond the Appalachians and

extended from Maine in the north to the
Altamaha River in Georgia when the Revolution began, and there were at that time about 2.5
million American colonists.
The colonists were remarkably prolific. Economic

opportunity, especially in the form of readily available
land, encouraged early marriages and large families.
Bachelors and unwed women could not live very
comfortably and were relatively few. Widows and
zoom_in
English colonies in 17th-century widowers needed partners to maintain homes and rear
North America children and so remarried quickly. Accordingly, most
English colonies in 17th-century North
America. adults were married, children were numerous, and
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
families containing 10 or more members were common.
Despite heavy losses as a result of disease and hardship, the colonists multiplied. Their
numbers were also greatly increased by continuing immigration from Great Britain and from
Europe west of the Elbe River. In Britain and continental Europe the colonies were looked
upon as a land of promise. Moreover, both the homeland and the colonies encouraged
immigration, offering inducements to those who would venture beyond the ocean. The
colonies particularly welcomed foreign Protestants. In addition, many people were sent to
https://www.britannica.com/print/article/669036 1/17
America against their will—convicts, political prisoners, and enslaved Africans. The American
population doubled every generation.
In the 17th century the principal component of the population in the colonies was of English
origin, and the second largest group was of African heritage. German and Scotch-Irish
immigrants arrived in large numbers during the 18th century. Other important contributions to
the colonial ethnic mix were made by the Netherlands, Scotland, and France. New England
was almost entirely English, in the southern colonies the English were the most numerous of
the settlers of European origin, and in the middle colonies the population was much mixed, but
even Pennsylvania had more English than German settlers. Except in Dutch and German
enclaves, which diminished with the passage of time, the English language was used
everywhere, and English culture prevailed. The “melting pot” began to boil in the colonial
period, so effectively that Gov. William Livingston, three-fourths Dutch and one-fourth
Scottish, described himself as an Anglo-Saxon. As the other elements mingled with the
English, they became increasingly like them; however, all tended to become different from the
inhabitants of “the old country.” By 1763 the word “American” was commonly used on both
sides of the Atlantic to designate the people of the 13 colonies.
Colonization and early self-government
The opening of the 17th century found three countries—

France, Spain, and England—contending for dominion in
North America. Of these England, the tardiest on the
zoom_in scene, finally took control of the beginnings of what is

Pennsylvania now the United States. The French, troubled by foreign
Title page from “An accurate
description of the recently founded wars and internal religious quarrels, long failed to realize
province of Pennsylvania” by Francis
the great possibilities of the new continent, and their
Daniel Pastorius, who established the
first German settlement in the settlements in the St. Lawrence Valley grew feebly. The
colonies, 1700.
Library of Congress, Rare Book Division Spaniards were preoccupied with South America and the
lands washed by the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. But
the English, after initial failures under Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh, planted
firm settlements all the way from Maine to Georgia, nourished them with a steady flow of
people and capital, and soon absorbed the smaller colonizing venture of the Dutch in the
Hudson Valley and the tiny Swedish effort on the Delaware River. Within a century and a half
the British had 13 flourishing colonies on the Atlantic coast: Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland,
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
In a short time the colonists pushed from the Tidewater strip toward the Appalachians and
finally crossed the mountains by the Cumberland Gap and Ohio River. Decade by decade they
became less European in habit and outlook and more American—the frontier in particular
setting its stamp on them. Their freedom from most of the feudal inheritances of western
Europe, and the self-reliance they necessarily acquired in subduing nature, made them highly
individualistic.
How colonization took place
A variety of motives—political, religious, and economic—contributed to the settling of the

Atlantic seaboard. Both labour and capital in England had become fairly fluid by 1600 and
were seeking more profitable fields. A sharp rise in prices and living costs made many people
restless; the increase in sheep grazing and the fencing in of former common lands drove many
from the soil; bold young men, including younger sons of the gentry, losing in peace the
occupation which the wars with Spain had given them, looked abroad. Many Englishmen saw
that the colonization of the New World might contribute to the power and affluence of their
homeland and felt that Spain, Portugal, and other lands should face competition. Finally, the
spread of great commercial trading companies assisted in the work.
These companies were chartered by the crown to give England new outlets abroad. The
Muscovy Company, for example, founded in 1555, intended to trade with Russia; the Levant
Company controlled trade with Venice and the Near East; and the East India Company (1600)
covered the Pacific and Indian Ocean coasts. Companies were also organized for
Newfoundland, the Northwest Passage, and Bermuda. Most important for America, however,
were the two companies for which King James I granted a charter in 1606, one to colonize the
American coast anywhere between parallels 34° and 41° north and the other anywhere
between 38° and 45° north. Because members of the first company lived in London, it became
known as the Virginia Company of London (Virginia Company); as members of the second
dwelt in Plymouth, it was called the Plymouth Company. Shareholders in the companies were
to provide settlers and capital and were to control production and trade. Government, however,
was to remain in the hands of the crown, acting through councils. A guarantee was given to the
colonists of all the rights and liberties of English subjects, without any definition of their
scope. In return, the grantees were forbidden to draft any orders or make any laws contrary to
those of England.
The Virginia Company lost no time in using its powers. Before Christmas in 1606 three ships
sailed for Virginia, carrying among others Capt. John Smith, who was to take an important part
in the American story, and Bartholomew Gosnold, who had previously visited the New
England coast. In the spring of 1607 the three ships sailed to Hampton Roads, christened the
James River, landed 120 men, and founded Jamestown. Starvation, disease, and Indian warfare
ensued, and, though more ships with fresh settlers arrived, for a time the colony had but
precarious life. In the end Virginia took sturdy root: “We hope to plant a nation / Where none
before hath stood,” sang a ballad maker among the early adventurers, and they achieved their
ambition.
In these years the Virginia Company had achieved a

zoom_in broader legal basis. It obtained two new charters from the
Jamestown
Village of Jamestown, on the James crown, one in 1609 and one in 1612. These new grants
River, Virginia, c. 1615.
MPI/Archive Photos/Getty Images
practically severed it from the Plymouth Company and
confirmed to it a great belt of territory 400 miles (640
km) wide extending through the American continent to the Pacific Ocean. The Virginia
Company thus became proprietor of the colony of Virginia. At the same time it obtained large
rights of government. It could appoint the resident governor, his resident council, and other
officers and hold full control of them. The old system of joint-stock management of land and
trade was abolished, and private property in land and stores took its place. An able soldier, Sir
Thomas Dale, went to Virginia in 1611 with three ships, 300 colonists, and some livestock, and
for five years exercised statesmanlike control. During these years the colony took up the
cultivation of tobacco with great profit.
Meanwhile, the Plymouth Company had failed in an

zoom_in effort to plant a colony at the mouth of the Kennebec
Smith, John: Virginia
Map of Virginia from John Smith's The River in Maine. Nothing more was done to colonize what
Generall Historie of Virginia, New
England, and the Summer Isles, 1624.
is now New England until a group of Separatists, who
Image courtesy of Documenting the believed that the Bible was the only test of faith and
American South, The University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries revolted against all other creeds, turned to this area.
These Pilgrims placed themselves in partnership with a
group of merchants and other businessmen who agreed to finance the venture. In return for
advances of ready money, the colonists promised to labour for seven years, throwing all they
produced into a common pool; both profits and land were to remain undivided for that period.
Of two vessels dispatched, one turned back, but the other, the Mayflower, set sail on September
16 (New Style; September 6, Old Style), 1620, with about 100 passengers, and reached Cape
Cod before the year ended. After much suffering and peril courageously met, the colony at
Plymouth, Massachusetts, took root. Within 10 years it was prosperously expanding, had
separated itself from the partners in England, and had replaced the joint-stock arrangement
with private properties and private enterprise.
First steps in self-government

zoom_in
Bernard Gribble: Mayflower Both in Virginia and New England the colonists soon
Pilgrim Fathers boarding the
Mayflower, painting by Bernard
began to exercise a certain autonomy. In 1619 Gov.
Gribble. George Yeardley brought out to Jamestown a new plan of
Photos.com/Getty Images
government and a momentous step forward was taken. A
two-part legislature was created, one part consisting of the governor and his council, named by
the company in England, and the other a house made up of two burgesses from each
settlement. It was to legislate upon Virginian home affairs, subject to the approval of the
governor and the company. During the summer the first true legislature in continental America
met in the log church in Jamestown. A little later the Pilgrims, before leaving their ship,
adopted the Mayflower Compact. It was not a form of government but an agreement that they
would live together in orderly fashion under civil officers of their own selection. On board the
ship, John Carver was chosen governor, soon to be succeeded by William Bradford. As soon as
they had begun housing themselves, the Plymouth settlers met and consulted upon laws both
for their civil and military government resulting in the first New England town meeting.
However, a colony of sturdier individualism, with a

zoom_in bolder degree of self-government, was soon to be
Pilgrims signing the Mayflower
Compact established. In the years 1630–42 the “Great Migration”
Pilgrims signing the Mayflower
of the Puritans from England to America occurred. These
Compact, reproduction of an oil
painting, 1932. believers in a church purged of old forms and abuses, and
Prints and Photographs Division/Library
of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital. a society purified of gross evils, were unhappy under
id. cph 3g07155)
King Charles I, who in 1629 dissolved Parliament for 11
years, and under Archbishop William Laud, who
declared war upon them. Two men, John Endecott, who led a body of settlers to Salem,
Massachusetts, and John Winthrop, a country squire of great energy, showed special
leadership. The crown in 1629 gave a charter to the Massachusetts Bay Company. The
Puritans quickly obtained control of it, and Winthrop as governor persuaded the members to
decide in favour of transporting company, charter, and a large assemblage of colonists all
together to Boston, Massachusetts. At once new groups migrated to this colony of
Massachusetts Bay, with Boston as its centre. Careful estimates show that by 1641, 300 ships
had carried 20,000 settlers to America. This was an almost purely English migration, which
included a few aristocrats and many university graduates. Religious zeal animated most of the
migrants.
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Winthrop, John
John Winthrop, detail of a 19th-
century painting by G.F. Wright after a
contemporary portrait by an unknown
artist.
Courtesy of the Connecticut State
Library, Hartford
zoom_in
Massachusetts Bay
ColonyEncyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
keyboard_arrow_left keyboard_arrow_right
The result was the erection of a church state which fell far short of democracy but cherished a
passion for liberty and self-government. Each town of Massachusetts Bay had its own church,
minister, and town government and was an independent Congregational community. Voting
rights were limited to church members, and the ministers exercised a powerful authority in
civil affairs. From an early date the voting freemen elected deputies to sit in the general court,
or legislature, where they, the governor, and a small body of his assistants made laws and
levied taxes. Thus a self-sufficient commonwealth of oligarchical type sprang into being.
Governor Winthrop and others declared that it had absolute powers of self-government under
the crown and owed no allegiance or deference to the English Parliament. The dominance of
the clergy, however, and the narrowness and harshness of their government aroused great
discontent.
A combination of two impulses—the restlessness of men

zoom_in seeking better land and a desire for greater independence
“A Vindication of the Government
of New-England Churches” in religion and politics—led various elements in New
Title page of “A Vindication of the
Government of New-England
England to establish other colonies. Thus Roger
Churches,” a pamphlet by Williams, a stout adherent of freedom and tolerance,
Congregational minister and
theologian John Wise, 1717. helped bring Rhode Island into existence, Thomas
"A Vindication of the Government of New-
Hooker and others founded settlements on the
England Churches" by John Wise, 1717.
Connecticut River, and the Rev. John Davenport and
others established New Haven colony, which expanded along Long Island Sound. The early
inhabitants of Maine and New Hampshire were controlled by Massachusetts Bay. All the New
Englanders until 1680 practically ruled themselves. They regarded the government in England
as sovereign but passed their own laws, traded under their own regulations, and raised their
own forces for defense. Their tie with England was one of sentiment, not force, and they
developed themselves in full freedom.
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Roger Williams
Roger Williams.
The Print Collector/Heritage-Images
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Hooker, Thomas
Thomas Hooker and his followers
settling Hartford, Connecticut, 1636.
© North Wind Picture Archives
Particularly during the years of the Civil War and Commonwealth in England, the colonies
profited from the preoccupation of the mother country with its own affairs. The Massachusetts
legislature boldly asserted that the laws of the English Parliament did not reach New England.
Under Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth, Virginia was permitted to elect its own
governor and council as well as burgesses. During the period of civil strife in England, the four
colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven in 1643 formed the
New England Confederation, which lasted for a full generation. Its primary purpose was
defense against Native Americans, the French, and the Dutch, but it also dealt with boundary
controversies and provided “mutual advice” on various questions.
Land policy in New England and Virginia
The New England colonies grew by a process of group settlement. The general courts of the
various colonies, most notably that of Massachusetts Bay, would make a grant of land to a
migrating group, fixing its boundaries carefully. This group would then establish a new town.
Its common lands, fencing, grazing practices, and the mode of apportionment of farms were
regulated by the general court or legislature, but each town then took control of land allotments
and management. The legislature determined who should be admitted to the town as settlers
and freeholders. The town meetings, or boards of town proprietors, laid out the land of each
settlement as house lots, common fields, meadow and pasture, and ultimately divided it among
owners. Inhabitants of each town commonly dwelt together for society and protection and
traveled from the town centre to till their acres. The typical town was thus closely akin to an
English manor, but with no lord of the manor at its head. The town was, of course, the church
centre, and its pastor was the community leader. Militia service, elections, and taxation were
based on the town.
In Virginia, settlement followed an entirely different pattern. There the colonists spread out
widely up the creeks and rivers, soon moving westward as far as the falls of the James River,
where the city of Richmond now stands. Partly because tobacco rapidly impoverished the soil,
they tilled land in much larger units, known as plantations, with almost no village centres, and
they made much greater use of servants—and, significantly, slaves—than did New England.
This pattern was unfavourable to social life, cooperation, and communal activities, but it
created a spirit of independence equal to that existing farther north. Throughout the 17th
century the planters preferred white indentured servants to African slaves, and for a time as
many as 1,500 arrived every year. They were mainly English, along with some Scotch and
Irish, and in general bound themselves, in return for transportation and support, to work
without wages for four to six years. This indenture or redemptioner system became a highly
efficient aid to colonization. When they had worked out their terms, the servants moved up the
streams, took land, began shipping tobacco from their own wharves, and thus became in turn
independent planters or freehold farmers.
The natural political units in Virginia were parishes and counties. Parish institutions were
chiefly ecclesiastical, but under the English system they included education; every minister
kept a school and the vestry saw to it that all poor children could read and write. Children of
prosperous families usually had private tutors. The counties increased in number to keep pace
with the steady spread of population. By 1652 Virginia had 13 counties, of which 9 lay on the
James River and 2 on the York. The county courts held large powers of local government and
tended to come under the control of a few influential families. Until 1636 the House of
Burgesses was practically elected on manhood suffrage; thereafter the vote was restricted, and,
when Sir William Berkeley became governor under the Restoration, he kept a compliant house
in power for 15 years.
Founding of the middle colonies
Henry Hudson’s voyage of 1609 to what is now New York Bay was intended to serve trade
rather than colonization. The Dutch wished for cargoes of fur, lumber, and tobacco. However,
in 1621 the Netherlands government chartered the Dutch West India Company with power to
build forts, to establish a government, and to colonize the land over wide areas, including the
American coast. Two years later the heads of the company sent a vessel with 30 families of
Walloons, Protestant refugees from the southern provinces of the Netherlands, to the mouth of
the Hudson River, where they established the first permanent settlement on the island of
Manhattan. More settlers arrived, and in 1626 Peter Minuit “purchased” the island from Indian
sachems (variously characterized by historians as having belonged to the Lenape, Delaware,
Munsee, or Algonquin people) and founded New Amsterdam as the seat of government for a
colony. Fort Orange (now Albany) had been planted up the Hudson two years earlier as a fur
trading post. New Amsterdam quickly became a cosmopolitan town, attracting people of
various nations and faiths. It had the self-reliant lawless atmosphere of a seaport, full of
privateers, smugglers, tavern keepers, and roistering sailors.
zoom_in
Henry Hudson
A colour lithograph based on a
painting done by American artist
Frederic A. Chapman depicting the
1609 voyage of Henry Hudson's ship
while Native Americans watch from
the nearby shore.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
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Henry Hudson
Henry Hudson.
© North Wind Picture Archives
zoom_in
The Purchase of Manhattan Island, by
Alfred Fredericks, c. 1910.
Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
For several reasons New Netherland did not grow as vigorously as the English colonies. The
Dutch West India Company was at first much more interested in preying on Spanish commerce
in the Caribbean and Atlantic than in finding permanent settlers. It was also anxious to develop
the fur trade and to share in the tobacco trade. When it turned to settlement in earnest, it
adopted an unfortunate method. Beginning in 1629, it granted any patroon who brought out 50
families a great estate on which to settle them as tenants, with certain monopolies, as of
milling, in the hands of the owner. This kind of feudalism gave a few great families an
unhealthy share of wealth and power. Some small farmers did establish independent farms or
boweries here and there, as did interloping Puritans from New England who sifted into
Westchester and the northern reaches of Long Island, but they were not numerous. Finally, the
governors and councils appointed by the Dutch West India Company, who ruled without any
such popular assemblies as Virginia and New England possessed, were harsh, autocratic, and
blundering. Far from gaining any popular following, they were generally disliked. The most
famous of the governors, Peter Stuyvesant, was also the most headstrong and shortsighted.
It was impossible for England to permit a Dutch colony to

zoom_in break the line of its possessions on the Atlantic seaboard for
Peter Stuyvesant.
The Print Collector/Heritage-Images long. In 1664 a small English naval force obtained the
surrender of the New Netherland without firing a shot. The
7,000 inhabitants of the area accepted the new regime without protest. Charles II appointed his
brother James, the duke of York, ruler and proprietor of the colony of New York, a domain
stretching from the Connecticut River to the Delaware. At once a more liberal regime began.
The proprietor sent over a governor with instructions to treat the Dutch inhabitants generously,
to permit them to keep their lands, and to make no interference with their language or religion.
Immigration was encouraged and settlements thickened. In 1683 Gov. Thomas Dongan
summoned a representative assembly for the province of New York.
One of the greatest of all colonial figures presided over

zoom_in the founding of what became Pennsylvania and
The Surrender of Nieuw
Amsterdam in 1664 Delaware. William Penn, son of the prominent English
Peter Stuyvesant and Dutch soldiers
leaving New Amsterdam (Manhattan)
admiral Sir William Penn, had been converted to the
after ceding it to the English, as Society of Friends, or Quakers, in 1667, in his early 20s.
depicted in The Surrender of Nieuw
Amsterdam in 1664, etching by He aspired to establish a colony where every race and
Charles Harris, 1908.
every sect could find both political and religious
(LC-DIG-pga-01466) freedom. His friendship with the duke of York, and the
fact that the king owed a large unpaid debt to Admiral
Penn, enabled William Penn to gain control of a great part of the imperial domain assigned to
the duke. When the crown gave him a proprietary charter in 1681, he immediately began to
advertise for settlers. Publishing a description of Pennsylvania in four languages, he offered
newcomers land on very liberal terms: 50 acres free, larger farms at a purely nominal rent, and
5,000 acres for £100. Penn visited his “holy experiment” in 1682. And in that year he laid
down a charter of government which provided for a small elective council, to sit with himself
as governor and initiate laws, and a larger elective assembly to pass or reject the proposed
laws. Within a few years the assembly gained much larger powers and itself proposed
legislation. In 1701 Penn granted a new charter that lasted until the American Revolution.
It is not strange that Pennsylvania flourished beyond other colonies.

zoom_in Immigrants flocked in large numbers, from England and Germany
Penn, William
William Penn. especially, to enjoy the religious freedom, the humane criminal
Photos.com/Getty Images
legislation, the easy terms for gaining fertile land, and the
opportunities for trade and manufacture. Penn had hoped that Philadelphia, his “city of
brotherly love,” would always be “a green country town,” with gardens surrounding every
house, and it did become a beautiful as well as a prosperous city. Quakerism, softened from its
originally somewhat rigid outlines, gave the colony a special atmosphere. It was in
Pennsylvania that a number of institutions on which America later prided itself found their first
full-scale trial: complete religious freedom, the distribution of land to actual settlers at very
low cost, the encouragement of a melting pot of peoples, and the establishment of excellent
schools open to all. Because of the high intellectual and moral standards of the Quakers, the
cultural level of Pennsylvania soon became one of unusual elevation. It was noted for its
libraries, its refined homes, its interest in science, and its architectural taste. When it was only
10 years old, it had the first printing press to be established outside of New England.
Before Penn died, he bought from the duke of York three

zoom_in counties on the Delaware River which became the
Free Public Library, Philadelphia
Free Public Library, Philadelphia, province and state of that name. Though they shared their
1799.
governor with Pennsylvania, from 1702 they had their
own elective assembly. The other middle colonies also
began under proprietors. Maryland had a history of special interest because of its initial status
as a refuge for Roman Catholics. Charles I granted the district between the Potomac River and
the 40th parallel in 1632 to George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, who was much interested in
colonization. His son, Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, almost immediately succeeded
to the grant and resolved to establish a colony where his fellow Roman Catholics could find
peace. Early in 1634 the first shipload of Roman Catholic settlers chose a site at St. Marys on a
tributary of the Potomac near its mouth. Actually, Protestants soon constituted a majority of
the settlers, for the Roman Catholics preferred to stay in England. To meet this situation,
Cecilius Calvert persuaded the assembly which he called to pass an act of religious toleration
in 1649. Unfortunately, this act was repealed before many years.
zoom_in
Maryland
Map dating from about 1700 showing
Maryland and surrounding colonies.
zoom_in
Calvert, George, 1st Baron
Baltimore
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore.
British Autography, by John Thane; 1819
Though Maryland profited from the proximity to Virginia, which gave it protection and trade,
it had a troubled history. The Protestant settlers were irked by Calvert’s bestowals of land,
offices, and favours on his relatives and Roman Catholic friends. They were also irritated by
the very limited authority that he allowed his assembly. Friction over religious and economic
questions culminated in hostilities in 1654, the Protestant small farmers finally winning their
main objectives. When William and Mary came to the throne in England in 1689, the Calverts
lost control of Maryland; however, when a new Lord Baltimore embraced Protestantism in
1715, the family regained its rights.
Meanwhile, the future New Jersey had undergone some

zoom_in confusing and unprofitable changes of name and
Virginia, Maryland, and the
“improved parts” of Pennsylvania jurisdiction. The duke of York, the original proprietor,
and New Jersey
had given the lands between the Hudson and Delaware
Map of Virginia, Maryland, and the
“improved parts” of Pennsylvania and rivers to two friends, Lord John Berkeley and Sir George
New Jersey, 1685.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Carteret, as the province of Nova Cesaria, or New Jersey.
Geography and Map Division
To bring in more settlers, they drew up a charter or set of
“concessions and agreements” which largely anticipated
Penn’s liberal ideas. That is, they offered generous terms for acquiring land, complete freedom
of conscience, and a popular assembly. In 1674 Berkeley sold his half share to two Quakers,
who took the southwestern part of the future state. In 1680 Carteret’s widow sold the
northeastern half to a new body of proprietors. Ultimately, in 1702, the crown took over both
sections.
The Carolinas and Georgia

zoom_in
Carteret, Philip The lands south of Virginia were also colonized under
Philip Carteret arriving at the colony of
New Jersey in 1665 to serve as its
royal grants to great proprietors. Under Charles II a
governor, from a 19th-century group of eight men obtained a grant of all North America
coloured engraving.
The Granger Collection, New York between the 31st and 36th parallels. Two segments of this
great domain were developed in very different ways. Sir
John Colleton and Anthony Ashley Cooper, who later became Lord Shaftesbury, founded
Charleston, South Carolina, in 1670 with settlers from England and overcrowded Barbados.
Groups of French Huguenots and Scots at once migrated to South Carolina, giving it by the
year 1700 a population, including black slaves, of about 5,000. At first the colony was based
on exports of foodstuffs to the West Indies and of turpentine, tar, and furs to Europe. Then rice
was introduced from Madagascar, and the South Carolinians developed large plantations
which grew rice and indigo very profitably. The area to the north, meanwhile, was settled in
moderate-sized farms by a variety of immigrants: English, Germans, drifters from Virginia,

and adventurous New Englanders. A settlement of Swiss at New Bern added one especially
prosperous element.
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A London Magazine engraving of
Charleston, S.C., 1762.
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Swiss settlers of New Bern, North
Carolina
Swiss settlers arriving in the New
World and establishing New Bern in
present-day North Carolina.
Prints and Photographs Division/Library
of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg no.
LC-USZ62-7342)
The “Fundamental Constitutions” which John Locke helped Shaftesbury draw up for the
Carolinas, providing for a hereditary landed nobility bearing bizarre titles, was totally unsuited
to the American scene and never went into real effect. The proprietors gave each colony
instead a simple workable form of government with a governor, council, and assembly. In the
Carolinas, as in Virginia, the population spread widely over the land. Although Charleston
became an opulent and fashionable little city, other towns were few and small. In social and
economic character the two colonies differed sharply. North Carolina found that its tobacco
and naval stores, shipped from poor harbours, offered much less revenue than South Carolina’s
staples. It had no merchants and ship captains to match those of Charleston, and it had very
few great planters. Its populace tended to be poorer and less-educated, and only a few coastal
centres could boast of the aristocratic atmosphere that was emerging in the southern colonies.
In South Carolina many planters accumulated wealth at their country estates, where they lived
most of the year. They had fine town houses in Charleston, where in the hottest summer
months they kept up a pleasant social life with rich traders and a robust professional class.
They gave the commons house, which they called the assembly, an English tone. North
Carolina’s white population grew at a faster rate, however, and its slave population was
smaller than its southern neighbour’s.
Georgia, the last of the 13 colonies to be founded, was the creation of a group of British
philanthropists. These proprietors, obtaining a grant of lands between the Savannah and
Altamaha rivers, hoped to give debtors and other deserving poor people a new start in life In
1733 they sent over Gen. James Oglethorpe with 100 settlers to establish the town of
Savannah. Some of the regulations imposed by the trustees were more idealistic than realistic.
Slavery was prohibited; the importation of rum, brandy, and other strong drink was forbidden;
and, to prevent the growth of large estates, every charity colonist was restricted to 50 acres (20
hectares) of land, which he might transmit only to a male heir. This benevolent paternalism
retarded the growth of Georgia. The settlers quickly found that they needed larger units of land
for economic tillage and that slave labour would be advantageous. They wanted to exchange
their lumber for importations of rum from the West Indies. The trustees gradually liberalized
their rules, while in 1751 they allowed the colonists to elect an assembly. The following year,
when their tenure of the proprietorship lapsed, they made no effort to renew it but allowed the
crown to take over Georgia.
As a crown colony it still remained so weak that it

zoom_in needed constant subsidies. Its agriculture became more
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah, Georgia, 1734. and more like that of South Carolina, and it developed a
Library of Congress, Geography and Map
Division, Washington, D.C. (g3924s
society of slave-owning planters in the lowlands,
pm001305). merchants in Savannah, and small farmers in the uplands.
But the philanthropists had accomplished three valuable
results: they had saved a considerable number of neglected and abused people, they had
maintained a buffer between the other southern colonies and Spanish Florida, and they had laid
the foundations for one of the greatest of the southern states.
Citation Information
Article Title:
American colonies
Website Name:
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher:
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published:
02 March 2020
URL:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/American-colonies
Access Date:
June 02, 2021

American Colonies

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02/06/2021 American colonies -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

spread far beyond the Appalachians and

The colonists were remarkably prolific. Economic

Colonization and early self-government

The opening of the 17th century found three countries—

zoom_in scene, finally took control of the beginnings of what is

How colonization took place

A variety of motives—political, religious, and economic—contributed to the settling of the

In these years the Virginia Company had achieved a

Meanwhile, the Plymouth Company had failed in an

First steps in self-government

However, a colony of sturdier individualism, with a

A combination of two impulses—the restlessness of men

Land policy in New England and Virginia

Founding of the middle colonies

It was impossible for England to permit a Dutch colony to

One of the greatest of all colonial figures presided over

It is not strange that Pennsylvania flourished beyond other colonies.

Before Penn died, he bought from the duke of York three

Meanwhile, the future New Jersey had undergone some

The Carolinas and Georgia

moderate-sized farms by a variety of immigrants: English, Germans, drifters from Virginia,

As a crown colony it still remained so weak that it

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