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American Colonies: V. 1: the Settlement of North America to 1800 Pdf FREE AMERICAN COLONIES: V. 1: THE SETTLEMENT OF NORTH AMERICA TO 1800 PDF Alan Taylor | 544 pages | 31 Jul 2003 | Penguin Books Ltd | 9780142002100 | English | London, United Kingdom The 13 Colonies: Map, Original States & Regions | HISTORY - HISTORY In the three centuries following the voyages of Christopher Columbus — to the Americas, the world was transformed by a massive transoceanic movement of peoples, the largest in human history up to that time. The migration of several million Europeans to the Americas during this period was fundamental to the formation of New World society. European settlement and diseases devastated indigenous populations and led to a scramble for lands on a continental scale that resulted in a checkerboard of Euro-American societies from the Hudson Bay in northern Canada to Tierra del Fuegoan island group off the southern tip of South America. From the Atlantic ports of Europe—principally of Britain, Spain, and Portugal—wave after wave of settlers, rich and poor, took ship seeking their fortune "beyond the seas. Between andapproximately 2. Across the period, slightly less than half of all migrants were British, 40 percent were Spanish and Portuguese, 6 percent were from Swiss and German states, and 5 percent were French. In terms of sheer numbers, other nationalities —Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and Finnish, for example—although contributing to the heterogeneity of Euro-American society, were negligible. Annual rates of emigration climbed steadily across the three centuries, from 2, annually beforeto 8, per year in the second half of the seventeenth century, and between 13, and 14, per year in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Three principal phases of movement can be identified. The first century and a half was dominated by Spanish and American Colonies: v. 1: The Settlement of North America to 1800 emigrants, who made up 87 percent of thesettlers leaving Europe between and The second phase, lasting from tosaw a three-fold increase in numbers of emigrants. During this period, 1. Many of the British, French, Swiss, and German settlers who immigrated during this period arrived under labor contracts that typically obliged them to work between four and seven years in return for the cost of their passage, board, and lodging, and certain payments called "freedom dues. The final phase of early modern immigration, from towas once again dominated by free settlers and witnessed an enormous surge of British migrants to North America and American Colonies: v. 1: The Settlement of North America to 1800 United States. These British migrants made up more than 70 percent of all emigrants who crossed the Atlantic in these years. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the decision by Spanish and Portuguese monarchs to take possession of the New World and establish colonies governed by the crown required the transfer of large settler populations. In the long run, however, the most important development that encouraged large-scale immigration of settlers from western Europe was not so much the pillage of Indian civilizations and the discovery of precious minerals as the production of consumables in high demand in Europe, notably sugar and to a lesser extent tobacco. In the Americas, Portuguese Brazil specifically the northeastern provinces of Pernambuco and Bahia emerged as the epicenter of the world's sugar production byfollowed a half century later by a new sugar plantation complex founded by the English and French supported by Dutch merchants and planters on the islands of Barbados, Saint ChristopherMartinique, and Guadeloupe in the West Indies. Meanwhile in Chesapeake, the English colonies of Virginia and Maryland had begun to rapidly expand output of tobacco during the s and s. In Spanish and British America alike, plantation colonies absorbed the great majority of white and black enslaved immigrants. Most of theEnglish migrants who crossed the Atlantic during the seventeenth century, for example, ended up in the West Indiesand ChesapeakeEnglish immigration represented the transfer of a massive labor force to America, which was essential for the development of staple agriculture—sugar and tobacco—in the West Indies and Chesapeake. Gentlemen hildagos in Spanishgovernment officials, merchants, servants, filles du roy French maidsartisans, soldiers, planters, and farmers were among the tide of Europeans who embarked for the Americas in the early modern period. One vital distinction between them was whether they arrived free or were under some form of contractual labor obligation. Convicts and political prisoners contributed anotherbound immigrants. In addition, an indeterminate number of men and women who were servants for example, Spanish criados in the service of an official, priest, or gentleman, and who might themselves American Colonies: v. 1: The Settlement of North America to 1800 of relatively high social rank, made their way to the New World. It is impossible to be precise about the proportion of those who arrived in America as unfree laborers. Across the entire period, certainly no less than 25 percent were servants, convicts, and prisoners. During the peak years of servant emigration in the second half of the seventeenth century, the figure was closer to 50 percent. Indentured servants made up between 70 and 85 percent of settlers who emigrated to the Chesapeake and British West Indies between and In British and French North Americacheap white labor was crucial to the early development of colonial economies and predated the adoption of enslaved African labor by several generations. Servants came from a broad cross section of lower-class society, embracing child paupers and vagrants, unskilled laborers, those employed in low-grade service trades, domestic and agricultural servants, and poor textile workers. The great majority were young between sixteen and twenty-five years of agemale, and single. Among sixteenth-century Spanish emigrants, women never made up more than 30 percent of the total. More than three-quarters of servants who left England in the seventeenth century were men and boys, rising to over 90 percent between and Servant emigration was generally a two-stage process shaped by American Colonies: v. 1: The Settlement of North America to 1800 same social and economic forces that influenced broader patterns of lower-class movement. Indentured servants were a subset of a much larger group of young, single, and poor men and women who moved from village to village and town to city in search of greater American Colonies: v. 1: The Settlement of North America to 1800 than were to be had at home. Cities and ports throughout Europe attracted the surplus labor of the surrounding countryside and market towns, as well as from further afield. London, for example, was a magnet for the poor, who poured into the capital and took up residence in the burgeoning slums outside the ancient city walls. According to a contemporary, they included "soldiers wanting wars to employ them,… serving-men whose lords and masters are dead, … masterless men whose masters have cast them off, [and] idle people, as lusty rogues and common beggars. Free emigrants—those able to fund their own transportation to American Colonies: v. 1: The Settlement of North America to 1800 an equally diverse group. Hundreds of thousands of independent farmers and tenants emigrated to set up farms and plantations. Alongside them from all parts of Europe was a steady flow of lesser gentry, professional men, and artisans—merchants, factors, teachers, doctors, priests, clergymen, accountants, ministers, weavers, smiths, carpenters, and others—in continual demand as the colonies expanded and matured. What distinguished them from servants was not only the possession of some capital to set themselves up in America but also personal or political connections. Free migrants tended to be older than those who arrived under labor contracts, and they were more likely to arrive with their families, kin, or friends. Such family or kinship connections were of paramount importance in stimulating movement from Extremadura in Spain to the New World, for example, and also influenced to a lesser degree free emigration from Britain and parts of Germany. As mentioned above, free migration was the dominant form of white movement during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and in the period after A key characteristic of the second half of the eighteenth century was the increasing numbers of skilled and independent migrants opting to leave Europe against a background of growing prosperity and trade. As American commerce flourished and channels of communication were strengthened, the cost of passage fell and colonies became increasingly attractive and accessible. Whether free or unfree, emigration from Europe to America was intensely regional. During the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries, the origins of Spanish emigrants were heavily skewed toward the southwest. Andalusia alone contributed between one-third and one-half of all migrants from Spain. In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the character of Spanish emigration changed dramatically, with far higher numbers of people moving from the poorer provinces of the north coast, the east, and from the Balearic and Canary Islands. The eighteenth century, by contrast, saw large-scale movements from northern England, Ulster, southern Ireland, the western districts of the Scottish Borders and Lowlands, the Highlands, and Hebrides. Motives for leaving Europe—religious,
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