2 American Experiments

1521–1700

The “age of exploration” resulted in the establishment of many different colonies in the Americas. As no single model prevailed, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are best understood as a period of colonial experimentation. European colonists projected onto their communities the intellectual and cultural hallmarks of the world they left behind, but the unique challenges they faced also demanded change and innovation. The new world was not “discovered” so much as it was forged through crisis and adaptation by the Europeans, Native Americans, and imported Africans who found themselves occupying common ground.

This chapter focuses on the forces that shaped colonial society and the ways that colonists interacted with their new surroundings. In the Spanish tribute colonies, Europeans extracted resources from indigenous peoples, but their efforts were met with native resistance. In New England, John Winthrop viewed the planting of a colony as a leap of faith, but even the Puritans’ godly commonwealth faced conflict as the religious debates that wracked Europe spread to the colonies. As plantations were established, changing systems of trade and a growing dependence on race-based slavery came to define enduring racial and economic patterns. Finally, as colonists were not settling an empty continent, in many ways their experiences were shaped by conflicts and encounters with indigenous peoples.