2.1 Contextualizing Period 2

By 1607 Spain had ruled a huge American empire for nearly a century, from Mexico and the Caribbean to Peru, with outposts like St. Augustine in Florida and new settlements in New Mexico. Other European powers wanted a share of American wealth and land.

England, France and the Netherlands now had the money, ships and motivation to compete. England had defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, and English and Dutch investors were pooling money in joint-stock companies to pay for overseas ventures. The Protestant Reformation also divided Europe, so religion and imperial rivalry went hand in hand: Protestant England and the Netherlands saw themselves as rivals of Catholic Spain and France.

Historians explain migration with push factors, which drive people out of their home, and pull factors, which draw them to a new place.

In England, push factors included a growing population, rising prices, fewer jobs as landowners fenced off common land for sheep (a process called enclosure), and religious conflict that left Puritans, Quakers and Catholics at odds with the Church of England. Pull factors included the chance to own land, make a profit, or worship as one chose.

Many people who crossed the Atlantic did not choose to. Most migrants to the Americas in this period were enslaved Africans, and many Europeans came as indentured servants who traded years of labor for their passage.

• Different colonial models: Spain conquered and converted, France and the Netherlands traded, and England sent large numbers of settlers who wanted land (2.2).
• Regional variety within British America: New England, the Middle Colonies, the Chesapeake, and the southern colonies and West Indies developed different economies and societies (2.3).
• An Atlantic economy tied the colonies to Europe, Africa and the Caribbean (2.4).
• Native nations both fought and allied with Europeans (2.5).
• Slavery grew into a hereditary, race-based system across British America (2.6).
• Colonists became more British in culture and also more used to governing themselves (2.7).

By 1754 the British colonies held more than a million people and were growing fast. Colonists were proud to be British subjects, but their elected assemblies had grown used to controlling local taxes and laws while Britain largely left them alone. When Britain tried to tighten control after 1763, that habit of self-government set up the conflicts of Period 3.

Imperial rivalry also continued. Britain and France fought a series of wars between 1689 and 1748, and their competition for the Ohio River Valley led to the war that opens Period 3.