The Colonial Period

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492.

When he was a young man he made a lot of voyages and got a much experience in sailing and navigation. The seamen of that time did not sail very far. Their voyages were made mostly in the Mediterranean Sea. They knew nothing of the Atlantic Ocean. They believed that great monsters swan about in the ocean. Columbus decided to sail across the Atlantic because he wanted to reach India by sailing to the west.

The ships and the men were given to him by the Spanish government because they were interested in shorter trade routes to India. Columbus was given 3 small ships and less than a hundred men.

He left Spain in 1492. The men were astonished when they saw strange natives with red skins, strange trees, plants and animals Columbus named that island San Salvador.

Columbus did not know that he had discovered a new continent; he simply thought that he was in an unknown part of India.

The explorers returned home in triumph. Columbus brought back with him several Indians. They produced a great impression on the Spanish people as they were covered with paint and decorated with gold and feathers of tropical birds. It was the happiest moment in the life of Columbus. The rest of his life is a story of misfortunes. His ships were old and they were no good in bad weather, three of them sank, but Columbus managed to return to Spain. By the time every had forgotten him and he died in poverty.

America was named after the famous Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci. But it was not named America until 1506, the year in which Columbus died.

The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 took place in an age when the medieval dogmatic system of thought was giving way to a more liberal spirit of philosophical speculations and discoveries and when the growth of a rich middle class was beginning to check the influence of feudal authority.

The first English colony was established in Jamestown in 1607; half a century before France had settled in Canada and the Mississippi valley, Spain and Portugal in South and Central America.

The English colonies were not the work of the English government but were initiated by private business: for instance, Virginia was founded by a joint-stock company who had obtained a charter from the English Crown and was sending promoters to make the show profit; Maryland was the individual property of Lord Baltimore who had been granted by the King unrestricted power over his domain.

The first important group of settlers arrived in 1620 in Massachusetts; they had sailed on the Mayflower and are known as the Pilgrim Fathers, they were Puritans who had fled from England in order not to submit to an Anglican King, James I.

Most of the immigrants to America were from the lower or middle classes; they were dissatisfied people who were hoping to find in the New World opportunities of carrying their religious faith in their own way.

Emigration was also due to the serious economic changes that accompanied the early stages of large-scale capitalistic agriculture; impoverished peasants had to leave their farms to seek fortune overseas while at the same time beggars, vagrants and any other kind of “idle per­sons” were transported to the colonies.

In 1643 there were 20,000 persons living in Massachusetts Bay Colony, helped by British investors and bringing them profits in return. All these people had brought with them their English ways of living and of thinking.

Life in America was democratic only if compared with life in England.

Most of the immigrants regarded the Bible as a complete code of laws to be obeyed indisputably. Swearing, smoking or adultery was severely punished, not to mention witchcraft.

Politically speaking, the colonists claimed the right to local self-government.

The life of the first settlers was also strongly influenced by their environment. They were obliged to rely solely upon themselves to clear land for cultivation, to shoot and fish for food and to fight against the Indians whom they did not try to befriend.

Owing to the severe climate and grudging soil of the North, they turned to fishing, shipbuilding and commerce (exportation of fish lumber and cattle). In the South they established large plantations given over to rice, cotton and tobacco cultivated by black slaves.

In the earlier years there was a high mortality due to diseases, famines and wars, but it was always offset by a large birth-rate.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11