Chapter 2: Beginnings of English America, 1607–1660

Religious conflict with Catholic Spain and Protestant missionary zeal drove imperial ambitions, while economic pressures including the enclosure movement and widespread poverty motivated emigration to colonial ventures. The Jamestown settlement of 1607 represents the first permanent English foothold in North America, though its early decades were marked by severe hardship, disease, and dependence on leaders like John Smith. Initial relations between English settlers and the Powhatan Confederacy shifted from pragmatic cooperation to escalating violence, particularly following the 1622 uprising that fundamentally restructured Indian-English interactions and justified intensified colonization efforts. The Chesapeake colonies developed a labor-intensive tobacco economy sustained by the headright system, indentured servitude, and eventually African bondage beginning in 1619. The establishment of the House of Burgesses created the first representative legislative assembly in English America, while Maryland emerged as a proprietary colony founded on religious principles yet eventually requiring the Act Concerning Religion to manage Protestant-Catholic tensions. In contrast, Puritan New England developed through family-based migration and town-centered communities emphasizing religious orthodoxy, moral discipline, and educational institutions. The Mayflower Compact and John Winthrop's vision of a model Christian commonwealth shaped Massachusetts Bay Colony's identity, though internal dissent emerged through figures like Roger Williams, who advocated religious separation and established Rhode Island, and Anne Hutchinson, whose theological challenges threatened clerical authority and resulted in her banishment. Conflicts with Native Americans, including the devastating Pequot War, revealed the violent dimensions of colonial expansion, while captivity narratives reinforced cultural boundaries and Puritan identity. Throughout this period, concepts of English liberty including trial by jury, habeas corpus, and property rights took on new significance in colonial contexts, even as slavery and systematic indigenous dispossession contradicted such freedoms for most inhabitants of English America.