The Colonies, 1492-1750

by Reuben Gold Thwaites

CHAPTER XI.

OTHER ENGLISH NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES (1605-1750).

98. References.

Bibliographies.—Larned, Literature of American History, 430-438, 458-462; Winsor, VIII. 65-80, 175-177, 188-190, 270-291.

Historical Maps.—Nos. 2, 3, and 4, this volume (Epoch Maps, Nos. [2], [3], [4]); Winsor, MacCoun, and school histories already cited.

General Accounts.—H. Fox-Bourne, Story of our Colonies, chs. i.-xi.; Egerton, British Colonial Policy; Morris, History of Colonization; E. Payne, European Colonies; Cotton and Payne, Colonies and Dependencies.

Special Histories.—West Indies: Lucas, Historical Geography, II., secs. i., ii.; C. Eden, West Indies; J. Froude, English in West Indies (answered by J. Thomas, Froudacity); A. Kennedy, Story of West Indies; J. Rodway, West Indies and Spanish Main; J. Lefroy, Discovery and Early Settlement of Bermudas; J. Esquemeling, Buccaneers of America (and similar books by Archenholtz, Burney, and Pyle); J. Masefield, On the Spanish Main.—Newfoundland: D. Prowse, Newfoundland; also histories of the island by Hatton and Harvey, Smith, and Pedley; S. Dawson, Canada and Newfoundland; W. Greswell, Geography of Canada and Newfoundland.—Nova Scotia: J. Bourinot, Builders of Nova Scotia; T. Haliburton, Nova Scotia; B. Murdoch, Nova Scotia; E. Richard, Acadia.—Canada: see § 107.—Hudson's Bay Company: G. Bryce, Remarkable History of Hudson's Bay Company; L. Burpee, Search for the Western Sea; A. Laut, Conquest of Great Northwest; B. Willson, Great Company. Consult also publications of Royal Society of Canada, and provincial historical and antiquarian societies.

Contemporary Accounts.—Whitbourne, Discourse and Discovery of Newfoundland (1620); Mason, Brief Discourse of Newfoundland (1620); Du Tertre, Histoire Générale des Antilles (1654); Denys, Description and Natural History of Arcadia (1672); Labat, Nouveau Voyage aux Isles d'Amérique (1724); Oldmixon, British Empire in America (1741); Dobbs, Countries adjoining to Hudson's Bay (1744); Ellis, Voyage to Hudson Bay (1748); Hakluyt, Voyages. Reprints in publications of historical and antiquarian societies.

99. Outlying English Colonies.

Differences between the thirteen colonies and their English neighbors to the south and north.

It is usual to think and speak of the English colonies in North America as though they included only the thirteen which, in 1775, revolted against the mother-country. In the eyes of the home government, however, and of the colonists themselves, the relations between the mother-land and the English West India Islands, the Bermudas, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Hudson's Bay, and, after 1763, Canada, were much the same as between it and Virginia or New Hampshire or Pennsylvania. The chief differences between the colonies were of race and occupation. Nova Scotia had, before the Revolution, but a few thousand English inhabitants; the West Indies were almost exclusively sugar-producing colonies. Both on the north and on the southeast the English colonies touched elbows with the French in active commercial and territorial competition. The West Indies were the emporium for sugar and slaves, and an extensive traffic was had in both commodities with the continental colonies. This important commerce has already been frequently referred to, particularly in the treatment of New England (page [185]), whose vessels did the bulk of the colonial carrying trade.

Why those neighbors did not revolt against England.

Various causes conspired to prevent Englishmen in these outlying plantations from joining their brethren of New England, the middle colonies, and the South, in the movement for independence. The West India planters were largely aided by English capital, and in England, where many of them had summer residences, they enjoyed a profitable and exclusive market for sugar, cotton, and other tropical products. It was considered good policy by English statesmen to favor the island colonies as against the continental, for the products of the former did not compete with those of Great Britain; so that while the Navigation Acts (page [104]), restricting all colonial trade to British ports, at first bore heavily on the island planters, they were compensated in part by numerous discriminations in their favor. Many of these planters were the sons of Cavaliers who had fled to the islands of the Caribbean Sea to escape from the rule of the Commonwealth; or wealthy men who had, in times of popular disturbance, been made to feel uncomfortable in their old homes on the American mainland. In Nova Scotia and Newfoundland the ports were filled with English traders and officers; and a great belt of untraversed forest separated them from the New Englanders, with whom they had little in common. But perhaps above all was the fact that His Majesty's fleet easily commanded these outlying colonies, and revolt was not to be thought of within the reach of the guns of ships.

It is worth our while briefly to review the history of these British American dependencies which for one reason or another did not enter the struggle that was soon to rend the empire in twain at the moment it had reached its greatest extent.

100. Windward and Leeward Islands (1605-1814).

Settlement of Barbados.

Barbados, the easternmost of the Windward Islands, was first visited by a party of English adventurers in 1605, since which time it has been an English possession. But it was not until 1625 that a colony was planted on the island. Its plan of government was much the same as that of the mainland colonies.

Refuge for loyalists.

During the Puritan uprising in England, Barbados was a place of refuge for loyalists, who were disposed, till the appearance of a parliamentary force (1651), to hold the island for the king. Under Cromwell's rule many prisoners of war were sent to the island, thus increasing the royalist population. The Restoration was promptly proclaimed.

Warfare.

The colony made rapid progress, although now and then checked by the fact that its exposed position made it in time of war a favorite point of attack by enemies of England. The numerous harbors along the coast were, in such troublous periods, infested by privateers, who seriously interfered with the commerce of the island. In the war between Great Britain and France, commencing in 1756, the West Indies was the theatre of a prolonged conflict, into which the Barbadians entered with zeal, supplying money and troops to the English side, and oftentimes suffering from reverses.

Commerce.

Before the Navigation Acts (page [104]), by which England sought to compel all her colonists to trade with her alone, the Dutch were good customers for Barbados sugar; after that, English merchants having a monopoly of the traffic, the planters had much reason to complain. Nevertheless, the majority were stanch Tories, and remained so throughout the Revolutionary war. Many Barbadians settled from time to time upon the mainland, particularly in the Carolinas. We have seen that Sir John Yeamans, a Barbados planter, led several hundred of his fellow-islanders thither (1664), and founded a town on Cape Fear river (page [89]).

St. Vincent.

St. Vincent, a hundred miles west of Barbados, although discovered by Columbus in 1498 was unclaimed until 1627, when it was granted to the Earl of Carlisle by Charles I., along with others of the Windward group. In 1722, the Duke of Montagu came into possession of it; and then immigrants were introduced, who exported sugar, rum, molasses, and arrowroot.

Other Windward islands.

St. Lucia was settled by the English in 1639; its ownership was long passed back and forth by France and England, but in 1794 the latter secured permanent possession. The English flag was raised over Tobago in 1580, but the island was alternately held by English and Dutch until 1814, since which date the proprietorship of the former has been undisputed. Grenada and the Grenadines, colonized by the French, first came into English possession under the treaty of 1763. Trinidad, the southernmost of the chain of islands and one of the most valuable, was occupied by the Spanish until 1797, when it was yielded up to Great Britain, under show of force; to-day it is one of the most progressive of the smaller English dependencies.

Early settlement.

Upon the Leeward, or northern, islands of the Caribbean group are the colonies of Antigua, Montserrat, St. Christopher (St. Kitts), Nevis, Dominica, and the Virgin Islands. Antigua, the seat of the present colonial government, is the most important. English families settled there in 1632, and again in 1663. Ravaged by France three years later (1666), it was soon after restored to the English under the treaty of Breda. Montserrat, the healthiest |Changes in ownership.| island in the West Indies, was also colonized by the English in 1632, and remained in their possession except for two brief terms (1664-1668 and 1782-1784), when the French were in control. St. Christopher and Nevis form a united English colony which traces its history back to 1628. Dutch buccaneers intrenched themselves on the rocky islets of the Virgin group as early as 1648, but were driven out by English pirates in 1666, since which date the archipelago has been the property of Great Britain; a better class of settlers came in with the eighteenth century. Dominica, the largest of the Leeward Isles, was included in Carlisle's patent (1627); but the French were already in possession, living on friendly terms with the native Caribs, just as their compatriots in New France were with the more warlike Algonkins. Ceded by France to England in 1763, Dominica was several times recaptured, and not finally relinquished to the latter until 1814.

101. Bermudas (1609-1750) and Bahamas (1522-1783).

Early settlement.

The fertile Bermudas, or Somers's Islands,—"still vex'd Bermoothes" of Shakespeare,—lie about six hundred miles east of South Carolina. They bear the names of two navigators who were cast away upon them,—Juan Bermudez, a Spaniard (1522), and an Englishman, Sir George Somers (1609); the latter being on his way to Virginia to administer the affairs of that colony. Somers founded the first settlement.

In the possession of Virginia.

Under the third patent to the Virginia Company in 1612 (page [72]), the Bermudas and all islands within three hundred leagues of the Virginia shore were ceded to that corporation. Except Nova Scotia, therefore, the Bermudas are the only present English colony which ever formed an integral part of any of the present States or Territories of the United States. The Virginia Company afterwards (1616) parted with its right to the Bermuda Company, which carried thither a considerable company of Virginians. During the Commonwealth, the Bermudas, like Barbados, were a refuge for royalists from England. Representative government, similar to that of the mainland colonies, was established in 1620, and has been ever since maintained. Tobacco was the staple of the colony until about 1707, when a salt-making industry sprang up and soon became the chief interest.

Strategic importance.

The Bermudas were from the earliest times recognized as an important marine station. During the Revolutionary war Washington wrote: "Let us annex the Bermudas, and thus possess a nest of hornets to annoy the British trade." But the place was undisturbed, and remained loyal to the king.

The landfall of Columbus.

The first American soil trod by Columbus was an island in the fruitful Bahama group. "This country," he wrote, "excels all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendor." The natives were numerous; "their conversation is the sweetest imaginable; their faces always smiling; and so gentle and so affectionate are they that I swear to your highness there is not a better people in the world." Yet (commencing in 1509) the Spaniards almost depopulated the islands; forty thousand of these innocent aborigines were carried away to a wretched death in the mines of Cuba.

Spanish and French opposition to English settlement.

In 1629, an English colony was planted on New Providence, in the then deserted archipelago. But the French and Spanish persisted in harrying the settlement, which was frequently the scene of stormy conflicts. At last, in 1718, the English government drove out the pirates who had come to resort there in great numbers, resettled the islands, and an era of progress opened.

Americans capture the colony.

During the Revolutionary war many wealthy Tories went from the continental colonies to the Bahamas and opened up large plantations, with slave labor. The colony was captured by the Americans (1776),—the only conquest of British territory during the Revolution, except the Canadian campaign of 1775 and the occupation of the Northwest by Virginia troops in 1778. The Spanish took it in 1782, but it was soon retaken by the English (1783). Three quarters of a century later the islands became famous as the point of departure for blockade-runners bound into Confederate ports.

102. Jamaica (1655-1750).

England captures the island.

Jamaica was under Spanish control until 1655, when an English fleet under Admirals Penn and Venables—the former, father of the founder of Pennsylvania—compelled the surrender of the island to the Commonwealth. The opposition of the Spanish planters and their negro slaves—the latter were called Maroons—long made English government difficult; the Spaniards were finally driven off, but the Maroons, fleeing to the mountains, were troublesome until the close of the eighteenth century. Much annoyance was also suffered in the seventeenth century from the buccaneers, who infested the Jamaica coast and preyed indiscriminately on all West Indian commerce; they were suppressed with great difficulty. In 1728, English laws and statutes became applicable to the island.

The Tory element.

Like other islands in the West Indies, Jamaica was resorted to by many Tory planters from the continental colonies, and apparently had no sympathy with the struggle of the latter for independence. It was a colony having a large slave population, and after the separation of the continental colonies became, to some degree, a competitor with them. The abolition of slavery in the island (1830-1837) had a great influence on the slavery conflict in the United States.

103. British Honduras (1600-1798).

Lawless character of English settlers.

Belize, or British Honduras, on the eastern shore of the Yucatan peninsula, was not occupied by Englishmen until after the suppression of freebooting in the Spanish main,—about the opening of the eighteenth century. At that time parties of English dyewood and mahogany cutters, many of whom had been pirates, established themselves at Belize. Their holdings were frequently beset by rival Spanish logging companies, but in 1798 the latter were expelled.

English rights questioned.

Since that day Belize has existed as a prosperous Crown colony, although England's legal right to the country is still questioned by some authorities, and in 1846 this fact gave rise to serious diplomatic difficulties with the United States.

104. Newfoundland (1497-1783).

Early settlements.

Newfoundland is the oldest of the colonial possessions of Great Britain. We have seen (page [25]) that John Cabot discovered it in 1497, that Cortereal was there for the Portuguese in 1500, and that by 1504 fishermen from Normandy, Brittany, and the Basque provinces were regularly engaged on its shores. It was the nucleus for both French and English occupation of the mainland, and from the first an important fishery station.

Not until 1583 did the English take formal possession, and it was much later before any of their numerous colonizing schemes attained any great measure of success.

By the treaty of Utrecht (1713) Newfoundland was acknowledged as English territory, but the French were given fishing privileges on the western and northern coasts. This led to diplomatic contentions, |Growth of the colony.| not yet ended; nevertheless settlement at once increased, and a satisfactory growth has since been maintained. In 1728, a form of civil government was for the first time established.

Loyalty to England.

During the American Revolution Newfoundland had sufficient inducement to remain loyal; since French and American competitors in the fisheries were kept out by British fleets, her merchants had a monopoly of the European markets, and were enabled to maintain high prices.

105. Nova Scotia, Acadia (1497-1755).

French and English rivalry.

First visited by the Cabots in 1497, it was not until 1604 that European colonization was attempted in Nova Scotia, under the Frenchman De Monts (page 35). In 1613, the Virginia privateer, Argall, basing his excuse on Cabot's previous discovery, swooped down on the French settlements, demolished the cabins, and expelled the inhabitants. A grant of the peninsula—called Acadia by the French, but in this document styled Nova Scotia by the king—was made by James I. to Sir William Alexander; the latter was, however, prevented by the French (1623) from carrying out his colonizing scheme. Nevertheless, several Englishmen and Scotchmen came into the country and mingled with the French, who were slowly re-populating it.

New England captures the country.

Recaptured by an English force in 1654, Nova Scotia was, thirteen years later (1667), ceded to France. But the ease of communication by water made the colony an uncomfortably close neighbor for the English colonies farther south. In 1710 the Massachusetts men captured Port Royal; and in 1713 France relinquished possession to England by the treaty of Utrecht. Again in 1745, Massachusetts volunteers captured Louisbourg on Cape Breton (§§ 111, 112).

Deportation of the Acadians.

England paid little attention to Nova Scotia until 1749, when four thousand emigrants were sent over to found Halifax. The French settlers, known as Acadians, had meanwhile become numerous, and greatly abused their privileges as neutrals by fostering and joining Indian war-parties against the New England settlers. In 1755, the Acadians were easily reduced by General Monkton, and seven thousand transported to the British provinces southward, many of them finally drifting to the French settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi.

An asylum for Tories.

A colonial constitution of the regulation English pattern was granted to Nova Scotia in 1758, and France formally released her claim by the treaty of 1763. At the same time Cape Breton, which had been a second time captured (1758), was added. The Englishmen in Nova Scotia were largely of the official and trading class, having little in common with their neighbors of the more southern colonies. In the Revolution several thousand loyalist refugees found an asylum in the peninsula.

For the remaining French colony, Canada, special treatment will be necessary.

106. Hudson's Bay Company.

Similarity to the Massachusetts Bay Company.

The Hudson's Bay Company, from the time it was chartered by Charles II. (1670) until its lands were sold to the British Government (1869), was a joint-stock association, with exclusive commercial and political privileges, very similar to the Company of Massachusetts Bay. To-day it trades as a private corporation; its former territory—the lands draining into Hudson's Bay—is now open to all on equal terms.

French opposition.

Fur-trade factories, protected by strong forts, were early planted by the company at the mouths of several sub-arctic rivers, such as the Rupert, Moore, Albany, Nelson, and Churchill, the only inhabitants being the small garrisons and the company's trading servants. Several expeditions were successively made to Hudson's Bay by French war vessels; much devastation was wrought and blood spilled, until in 1697 the treaty of Ryswick put an end to the trouble, and left the company in undisputed possession. It had lost more than £200,000 in this predatory warfare, but soon regained its position, through the profits of the fur-trade.

American rivals.

After the fall of New France (1763), the Hudson's Bay Company met formidable rivals in the enterprising Northwest and American organizations; the story of the fierce competition which ensued, with its effect on American settlement and international boundaries, belongs to the period covered by other volumes of this series.

Summary.

From the foregoing sketch it will be seen that for all the American colonies to the south of Georgia the English were obliged to fight a changeful battle with the Spaniards and the French. It was not till after the Revolutionary war that the permanent ownership of the islands was assured to Great Britain. A similar struggle, though briefer and sooner concluded, went on for the possession of the colonies north of Maine. But twelve years before the Revolution the last of them had been yielded to the British. In Nova Scotia, and later in Canada, English residents were not numerous till the beginning of the nineteenth century. In Newfoundland and Hudson's Bay, in colonial times, the settlers were English, but in numbers they were few.