HIST 101 · U.S. History to 1877 · Chapter 2
How England built colonies it never planned — and never fully controlled
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Why did one nation's colonizing ventures produce several different Americas — and no single authority over any of them?
Lecture 1 argues that colonization happened where separate motives converged, not because England followed a plan. Lectures 2 and 3 show what happened next: goals, environments, migration streams, and labor systems turned English settlers into genuinely different colonial societies. Lecture 4 then asks who had the right to govern the result — and finds several claimants and no referee.
Lecture 1
Why did England begin establishing permanent colonies in North America?
England colonized where several separate motives converged — and wanting a colony turned out to be very different from being able to keep one.
Section I · Religion Remade England
What happens to a country when it changes its church?
Notes go in this box. Fragments are fine — nobody is grading your handwriting.
Listen for: How did four monarchs in one generation make being English and being Protestant hard to separate? Why did Spain become the thing England defined itself against?
⏸ Pause & Reflect
Choose one. Defend it in a sentence.
Section II · Rivalry and Profit Pull England Outward
Why chase an empire that someone else has already built?
Your space. Arrows, abbreviations, and questionable spelling all welcome.
Listen for: Why was Spain's head start both a threat and an opportunity? How does one privateer earn three different verdicts at once? Where does 1588 actually belong in this story?
⏸ Pause & Predict
Section III · Wanting a Colony Is Not Having One
What does a permanent colony actually require?
Stash anything Future You will want. Future You forgets fast.
Listen for: What does a colony need that a raid does not? Why is Roanoke a failure of capacity rather than a mystery? And why would anyone leave England at all?
⏸ Different People, Different Motives
Match each person to a motive. Then complicate your own matches. Then answer the question.
Could the merchant also want Spain weakened? Could the Puritan family also want land? Could the Crown also care about trade?
Online hour — Independent Study: Why Roanoke failed · The case made for colonies · The Irish rehearsal · Leaving England.
Lecture 2
If the settlers were English, why didn't all English colonies become the same kind of society?
Colonists did not reproduce England in America; goals, environment, migration, and labor turned English settlers into different colonial societies.
Section I · Virginia Began as a Business
What happens when a colony is founded to make money?
Type here. Full sentences strictly optional.
Listen for: What made a colony organized as an investment so badly organized for survival? And what was Tsenacommacah — what did the English actually walk into in 1607?
⏸ Pause & Reflect
From the Virginia Company's perspective, Jamestown is an investment.
Section II · Tobacco Changes Everything
The relationship becomes far more dangerous once Virginia learns how to make money.
Scribble zone. Arrows encouraged, diagrams even better.
Listen for: How does one crop turn into six consequences? Why did economic success make conflict with Powhatan communities worse rather than better?
⏸ Pause & Predict
Section III · Labor Systems Build Different Societies
Who is going to do the work?
Big box, on purpose. Park whatever is worth keeping.
Listen for: What separated indentured servitude from slavery? How did colonial law make slavery lifelong, inheritable, and racial? How did Barbados run the same variables harder?
⏸ Predict the Colony
Colony A
Colony B
| Difference | Colony A | Colony B |
|---|---|---|
| Labor | ||
| Settlement and population | ||
| Land and wealth |
Online hour — Independent Study: Jamestown's near-collapse · The Anglo-Powhatan Wars · 1619 and the historians · The Barbados sugar revolution.
Lecture 3
What happens when people cross an ocean not merely to practice a religion, but to organize an entire society around it?
Puritans crossed to build a godly community rather than simply to worship freely — which is why dissent inside that community proved so hard to tolerate.
Section I · A Religious Society, Not Just a Refuge
What did Pilgrims and Puritans actually want?
Notes here. Nobody reads this box but you.
Listen for: What separates Separatist Pilgrims from non-separating Puritans, and how small was Plymouth really? Why was the Mayflower Compact an urgent legal fix rather than the birth of democracy? What did the Wampanoag alliance offer each side?
⏸ Pause & Reflect
Plymouth needed the Wampanoag alliance simply to survive its first years.
Section II · Belief Built the Society
What does a society look like when it is organized around religious purpose?
Free real estate for anything worth remembering.
Listen for: What did Winthrop carry across the ocean besides people? Why is a city upon a hill a warning rather than a boast? How far does covenant reach — family, congregation, town, school, government?
⏸ Build the Society
Which part of life would religion probably shape first?
Section III · Truth Had Limits
What happens when someone inside the community says the community itself is wrong?
Write it down before it evaporates.
Listen for: What did Williams actually argue about conscience and coerced worship? What made Hutchinson's claim to direct revelation so dangerous? What does Rhode Island prove by contrast?
⏸ Freedom or Toleration?
Religious freedom
Our community should be free to practice our religion.
Religious toleration
People who disagree should also be free to practice theirs.
Online hour — Independent Study: The Mayflower Compact myth · The Antinomian Controversy reconsidered · The Half-Way Covenant · Missions and the praying towns.
Lecture 4
As English settlements expanded, who had the right to govern people and control land?
Seventeenth-century English America had several claimants to legitimate authority and no single center able to settle their conflicts.
Section I · Representation
Does electing representatives make a society democratic?
Your box, your rules. Bullet points are a perfectly respectable life choice.
Listen for: What did colonists bring from England, and what did distance add? What do the House of Burgesses, the Mayflower Compact, and the town meeting have in common? Who was shut out of all three?
⏸ Pause & Reflect
Choose one and defend it.
Section II · Sovereignty
What kind of political world did English settlers enter?
Toss the good stuff in here.
Listen for: Whose territories, councils, and diplomacy were already here? How did one agreement with Ousamequin get read two ways? Why is the Pequot War not a story of English versus Indians?
⏸ Pause & Predict
Section III · Empire
What happens when the government that supposedly rules you collapses?
Last note box of the chapter. Send it off with something useful.
Listen for: What happened to imperial supervision while England fought a civil war and executed its king? After 1660, where did the Crown say assemblies came from, and where did colonists say they came from? What were proprietors handed six colonies to do?
⏸ Who Has Authority?
English Crown
“We granted the colony.”
Colonists
“We govern our communities.”
Native nation
“This is our homeland.”
Online hour — Independent Study: Land as politics · Uncas and the politics of alliance · Carolina's design · New York's charter won and revoked.
Reference
You do not need to write definitions. Recognize these when you hear them, and use them when you explain the chapter. Each deck defines them in a pop-up.
This section is optional. It is not required for notebook completion, and nothing here is collected. Use it if it helps you consolidate the chapter.
The first two columns are given. Add the tension or consequence that followed — a phrase is enough.
Lecture 1 — Why Colonize?
Lecture 2 — Why Did the Colonies Become Different?
Lecture 3 — Building a Puritan Society
Lecture 4 — Who Controlled America?
Answer from memory first, then check the deck or your notes.
Chapter 2 does not end with a winner. Colonists, Native nations, proprietors, and the Crown all held claims that looked legitimate from the inside, and those claims collided as settlement expanded. Next: Stream & Discuss: Massacre at Mystic.
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