Chapter 1: The Meeting of Cultures Before European explorers arrived in the Americas, Native Americans had developed their own forms of social organizations, which differed from one another in their levels of achievement. Europeans, concerned first with exploiting the New World and its peoples, regarded the natives as savages and set out to destroy their societies and replace them with a variation of European culture. Helped in this by the biological disaster brought on by smallpox and other diseases, the Europeans were able to conquer the tribes and civilizations and impose on the Indians a number of different colonial systems. To help make up for the Indians' labor lost through conquest and epidemic, Europeans brought in Africans slaves, who added to the cultural diversity of America. Conflicts in the old world spilled over into the New as different nations got into the race for colonies. By the end of the sixteenth century, the age of discovery was all but over, and the great era of colonization, especially English colonization was about to begin. Chapter 2: The English "Transplantations:" During the seventeenth century, colonies were established in British North America. Before 1660, most colonies began as private ventures (with charters from the king), but the motives that brought them into being were as varied as the sociopolitical system they developed. After 1660, proprietary colonies became the norm, and charters indicated a closer tie between the "owners" of a colony and the king, who granted the charter. As a result of this colonization effort, by the 1680s England had an unbroken string of provinces stretching from Canada to the Savannah River. As the colonies matured, their inhabitants began to exhibit a concern for control of local affairs and an independence of interests that eventually came to trouble the British Empire. It was a time when colonists began to sense that they were both English and American, a dual person...
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