The Pros And Cons Of British Colonization

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After the failure of Roanoke, British colonization of the New World petered out for a few decades. In the 1600s, the tides changed. The English began colonizing again, founding numerous colonies with many different goals in mind. The purpose and makeup of each colony was different, but most of them had one thing in common. The colonists were often unprepared for the challenges that they would face in the New World, for a variety of reasons. For example, many settlers didn't realize how different the new land was from their homeland, and so didn't prepare for the challenge of harsh winters. Many also underestimated the natives, and made potentially fatal mistakes in their dealings with them. Lastly, citizens who funded certain colonies had purpose …show more content…

This led many to believe that North America wouldn't be a hard place to survive – an assumption that would prove both incorrect and dangerous. Many of the first settlers in America failed to bring adequate supplies because they were not anticipating such harsh conditions. For example, the Jamestown colony of Virginia was founded in May of 1607, and the settlers were vastly unprepared for nearly every aspect of colonial life. Though what a new colony like Jamestown needed was farmers and craftsmen, most of the settlers who'd come over from Europe were well-off, used to being waited upon and pampered. The new colonists were extremely averse to the sort of physical labor needed to make a colony successful, or even to prepare the colony for the coming winter. As a result of this, more than a third of the colonists died the following winter. Similarly, Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth in 1620 arrived unprepared for the harsh winter, despite the numerous colonies before them who had shared the same problem. About half of the settlers were dead by 1621. In 1628, colonists of the Massachusetts Bay colony arrived in what is modern-day Boston, and it happened again – about 1/3 of the original colonists died because they were not prepared for winter. Despite many colonies suffering through the same problem, companies and government officials continued to send hundreds of citizens off unprepared, to face horrible challenges, and sometimes death. Many of these deaths could have been prevented, had the leaders of the colonies attempted to learn from past mistakes and adequately arm their citizens for the coming

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