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Port Royal
French colonization developed through investment from private trading companies. French traders established Port Royal in Acadia (Nova Scotia) in 1603 and launched trading expeditions that stretched down the Atlantic coast as far as Cape Cod. -
Jamestown
In April of 1607, the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery sailed forty miles up the James River in present-day Virginia and established the first permanent English colony in present-day United States -- Jamestown. -
Quebec
Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in 1608. Quebec was the foothold for what would become New France. -
Hudson River
Englishman Henry Hudson was commissioned by the Dutch and discovered the Fabled Northwest Passage through North America in 1609. It turned out that he had discovered the Hudson River, not the Northwest Passage. -
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Starving Time
All but 60 settlers died during the winter of 1609-1610. George Percy recalled the colonists’ desperation during these years, when he served as the colony’s president: “Having fed upon our horses and other beasts as long as they lasted, we were glad to make shift with vermin as dogs, cats, rats and mice...as to eat boots shoes or any other leather..nothing was spared to maintain life and to doe those things which seam incredible, as to dig up dead corpses out of graves and to eat them.” -
Santa Fe
The Spaniards established the first permanent European settlement in the Southwest, Santa Fe, in 1610. -
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Smallpox
A lethal pandemic of smallpox during the 1610s swept away as much as 90 percent of Chesapeake's Native American population. Many survivors welcomed the English as potential allies against rival tribes who had escaped the catastrophe. The relatively healthy environment allowed the New England population to grow to 91,000 people by 1700 from only 21,000 immigrants. -
Wedding
John Rolfe married Pocahontas in 1614, slightly easing the colony's relationship with Powhatan. -
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Tobacco
In 1616 John Rolfe crossed tobacco strains from Trinidad and Guiana and planted Virginia’s first tobacco crop. In 1617 the colony sent its first cargo of tobacco back to England. In forty years, American colonists were exporting fifteen million pounds of tobacco every year. -
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Thirty Years' War
Mostly a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics. It gradually involved most European powers, becoming one of the largest wars of the time. -
Birth of Slavery
In 1619, a Dutch slave ship sold twenty Africans to the Virginia colonists. Southern slavery was born. -
Pilgrims
The Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts is established by Pilgrims from England. -
Massacre
Opechancanough, Powhatan's successor, promised to drive the land-hungry colonists back into the sea. He launched a surprise attack and in a single day (March 22, 1622) killed over 350 colonists, or one third of all the colonists in Virginia. -
New Amsterdam
The Dutch West India Company formed New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in 1625. -
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King Charles I
King Charles I, who reigned from 1625 to 1649, implemented unbearable persecution on the Puritans, which lead to further colonization of the New World. -
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Great Migration
Facing growing persecution, the Puritans began the Great Migration, during which about twenty thousand people traveled to New England between 1630 and 1640. They believed that they were only decamping in North America to form a godly community in American that would be a "City on a Hill." -
Maryland
In 1632, Charles I set a tract of about 12 million acres of land at the northern tip of the Chesapeake Bay aside for a second colony in America. Named for the new monarch’s queen, Maryland was granted to Charles’s friend and political ally, Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore. Calvert hoped to gain additional wealth from the colony, as well as to create a haven for fellow Catholics. -
Providence
Roger Williams founded the settlement called Providence in 1636. The colony was granted a charter by Parliament eight years later. -
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Pequot War
The Pequot War took place in New England between the Pequot tribe and an alliance of the colonists of the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook colonies and their allies from the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes. After this war, Massachusetts Bay colonists sold hundreds of North American Indians into slavery in the West Indies. -
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English Civil War
In 1642, strained relations between Charles and Parliament led to civil war in England. In 1649 Parliament won, Charles I was executed, and England became a republic and protectorate under Oliver Cromwell. These changes redefined England’s relationship with its American colonies, as the new government under Cromwell attempted to consolidate its hold over its overseas territories. -
Embargo of 1650
Charles’s execution in 1649 challenged American neutrality. Six colonies, including Virginia and Barbados, declared allegiance to the dead monarch’s son, Charles II. Parliament responded with an act in 1650 that leveled an economic embargo on the rebelling colonies, forcing them to accept Parliament’s authority. -
Navigation Act of 1651
Parliament issued the Navigation Act of 1651, which compelled merchants in every colony to ship goods directly to England in English ships. Parliament sought to bind the colonies more closely to England and prevent other European nations, especially the Dutch, from interfering with its American possessions. -
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Enslavement for Life
The 1660s marked a turning point for black men and women in English colonies like Virginia in North America and Barbados in the West Indies. New laws gave legal sanction to the enslavement of people of African descent for life. The permanent deprivation of freedom and the separate legal status of enslaved Africans facilitated the maintenance of strict racial barriers. -
Slave Mother Law
In 1662, Virginia passed a law stating that an enslaved woman's children inherit the "condition" of their mother. -
New York
In 1664, the English wrested control of New Amsterdam and renamed it New York. -
Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina
The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina was coauthored by the philosopher John Locke in 1669 and explicitly legalized slavery from the very beginning. -
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Tightened English Control
In the 1670s and early 1680s, King Charles II tightened English control over North America and the West Indies through the creation of new colonies, the imposition of new Navigation Acts, and the establishment of a new executive council called the Lords of Trade and Plantations. As imperial officials attempted to curb colonists’ autonomy, threats from Native Americans and New France on the continent led many colonists to believe that Indians and Catholics sought to destroy English America. -
Bacon's Rebellion
Bacon's Rebellion began with an argument over a pig. However, the argument quickly escalated. It soon became an armed rebellion led by Nathaniel Bacon against the rule of Governor William Berkeley. -
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King Philip's War
An huge number of Indian slaves were captured during King Philip’s War, a pan-Indian uprising against the encroachments of the New England colonies. Hundreds of Indians were bound and shipped into slavery. -
Glorious Revolution
The openly Catholic and pro-French policies of James II led to the overthrow of the monarchy in 1688. In that year a group of bishops and Parliamentarians offered the English throne to the Dutch Prince William of Holland and his English bride, Mary, the daughter of James II. This relatively peaceful coup was called the Glorious Revolution. -
Paper Money
In 1690, Massachusetts became the first colony to issue paper money. -
North Carolina
In Carolina, the Lords Proprietor allowed for slaves to be counted as members of the family. This encouraged the creation of large rice and indigo plantations along the coast of Carolina. Because of the size of Carolina, the authority of the Lords Proprietor was especially weak in the northern reaches on Albemarle Sound. As a result, the Lords Proprietor founded the separate province of North Carolina in 1691. -
Witches
Beginning in early 1692 and culminating in 1693, Salem Town, Salem Village, Ipswich, and Andover all tried women and men as witches. Paranoia swept through the region, and fourteen women and six men were executed. Five other individuals died in prison. -
Decree of Sanctuary
The Native Americans were granted freedom by the Decree of Sanctuary issued by the Spanish King if they 1) converted their faith to Catholicism and 2) swore their loyalty to Spain.
