The Colonies, 1492-1750

by Reuben Gold Thwaites

The Portuguese, though impelled by a similar passion for conquest, were more eager for trade than their powerful and often domineering Spanish neighbors. They oppressed their colonies, were greedy in their commercial strivings, maltreated the weak natives of Brazil and the West Indies, lacked administrative ability and the spirit of progress, and suffered from want of a well-balanced colonial system. The Portuguese colonies in America had much the same history as the Spanish, their situation being similar. Brazil was of no great importance until the early years of the nineteenth century, and made herself independent in 1822,—thus following the lead of Mexico, which set up an independent government the previous year.

20. French Policy.

France.

France had no permanent colonies in America before the seventeenth century. Port Royal was planted in 1604, and Quebec not until four years later. The French were good fighters, enterprising, and while not eager to colonize, were capable of adapting themselves to new conditions; they had the capacity to carry their ideas with them across the seas, and they readily assimilated with the aborigines. While freely intermarrying with the natives, unlike the Spaniards they rather improved the savage stock than were degraded by it. They had the faculty of making the red barbarian a boon companion, and of inducing him to serve them and fight for them; indeed, since their colonizing enterprises were based on the fur-trade, their opposition to the advance of English agricultural possession was, like that of the Indians, fundamental. The French and the savages were therefore united in a common cause against a common foe.

The Breton and Norman merchant-seamen who went out to Newfoundland and carried on fisheries and the fur-trade paved the way for the future throng of emigrants. As colonizers the French worked quietly and persistently, and would have succeeded, had not their enterprises been ruined by their unfortunate political and ecclesiastical policy and the mismanagement of their rulers. Louis XIV. was capricious and extravagant. His court was a nest of intrigue, corruption, peculation, jealousies, and dissensions. The Huguenots, who represented the industrial classes, began the French colonization of America; but we have seen how sadly their government neglected them in Florida. Finally, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) resulted in driving them from home, and they were eager to join their lot with that of their countrymen in Canada, priest-rule prescribed their deliberate exclusion from the colonies,—which they could have made a New France in fact,—and thus forced them to contribute their strength to the rival English settlements farther down the coast. The government was in some respects over-liberal to its North American colonies,—it aided them financially to an extent unknown elsewhere; but they were not self-governed, and the king continually interfered with the commercial companies, which in a large measure controlled the colonies, so that a favor granted through corrupt influences to-day might to-morrow be revoked by counter-influences equally corrupt. Paternalism, centralization, bureaucratic government, official rottenness, instability of system, religious exclusiveness, and a vicious system of land-tenure were the prime causes of the ruin of New France; although we must not forget that the centre of its power had been planted in an inhospitable climate, and that its far-reaching water-system tempted the inhabitants into the forests and cultivated the fur-trade at the expense of agriculture, thereby placing the province at a disadvantage from the start.

21. Dutch and Swedish Policy.

Holland.

The burden of over-population with which Spain, France, and Portugal were troubled, and to relieve the pressure of which was one of the motives of their colonizing efforts, was not felt by Holland; for despite the fact that she sustained a more dense population than any other European State, her citizens were prosperous. They were not stirred, like neighboring peoples, by the impulse of emigration. Preeminently a trading nation, Holland sought commerce rather than extension of empire. Long the chief carrier of Europe before striking into a broader field, she followed in the steps of the Portuguese, and by the opening of the seventeenth century took rank as a colonizing power. Her most fruitful labors were in the East rather than in the West. It was in the attempt to find the northwest passage to India that Hudson discovered the river which bears his name. With the Dutch, though religious reformers, religion was secondary to trade. So long as trade was good, they were patient under insult and outrage. Individually they made but little impress upon the community. Commerce was chiefly conducted through large chartered companies, minutely managed in Holland. Dutch colonies declined because their commercial system was non-progressive and unsound; they appear to have been unable to rise out of the trader state. Yet we must not forget that Holland was of small size and had overbearing, jealous neighbors; her long and heroic struggle with Spain tended greatly to delay her efforts to trade in and colonize the New World.

Sweden.

The Swedish colony on the Delaware was planned by authority of Gustavus Adolphus on broad, liberal principles; he hoped it would become "the jewel of his kingdom." But while it throve for a time and gave much promise of endurance, the Dutch soon overpowered it. Had the Swedish monarch lived to carry out the design, doubtless he would have proved that Scandinavians could successfully maintain an independent province in the New World. Like the Germans, however, they have in later years been in the main content to colonize as the subjects of foreign governments.