Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The first European-founded (and oldest continuously settled) city in North America
was St Augustine, Florida, where the Spanish set up shop in 1565. Up the coast in 1607,
a group of English noblemen established that country's first permanent North American
settlement at Jamestown. Earlier English settlements had ended badly, and Jamestown al-
most did, too: the noblemen chose a swamp, planted their crops late and died from dis-
ease and starvation. Local tribes gave the settlement enough aid to survive.
For Jamestown and America, 1619 proved a pivotal year: the colony established the
House of Burgesses, a representative assembly of citizens to decide local laws, and it re-
ceived its first boatload of 20 African slaves. The next year was equally momentous, as a
group of radically religious Puritans pulled ashore at what would become Plymouth,
Massachusetts. The Pilgrims were escaping religious persecution under the 'corrupt'
Church of England, and in the New World they saw a divine opportunity to create a new
society that would be a religious and moral beacon. The Pilgrims signed a 'Mayflower
Compact,' one of the seminal texts of American democracy, to govern themselves by
consensus.
The New World
(2005), directed by Terrence Malick, is a brutal but passionate film that
retells the tragic story of the Jamestown colony and the pivotal peacemaking role of
Pocahontas, a Powhatan chief's daughter.
Capitalism & Colonialism
For the next two centuries, European powers competed for position and territory in the
New World, extending European politics into the Americas. As Britain's Royal Navy
came to rule Atlantic seas, England increasingly profited from its colonies and eagerly
consumed the fruits of their labors - tobacco from Virginia, sugar and coffee from the
Caribbean. Over the 17th and 18th centuries, slavery in America was slowly legalized in-
to a formal institution to support this plantation economy. By 1800, one out of every five
persons was a slave.
Meanwhile, Britain mostly left the American colonists to govern themselves. Town
meetings and representative assemblies, in which local citizens (that is, white men with
property) debated community problems and voted on laws and taxes, became common.
By the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, Britain was feeling the strains of running an
empire: it had been fighting France for a century and had colonies scattered all over the
world. It was time to clean up bureaucracies and share financial burdens.
The colonies, however, resented English taxes and policies. Frustrations came to a
head with the Boston Tea Party in 1773, after which Britain clamped down hard, shutting
Boston's harbor and increasing its military presence. In 1774, representatives from 12
