ANSWERS: 5
  • They didn't. Pilgrims came first, and they started the 13 colonies. Then the Brits came over and started bossing people around, until we had enough of it, and started raising cain over it.
  • Where do you think Pilgrims came from??
  • Because they needed more places to build Prisons, or to put Prisoners. It is the same reason they settled in Australia. Also, more land = more power. England was (during that time) a modern day Rome
  • The English Crown and Parliament had essentially economic and geo-political motives in chartering the colonies on the American mainland. Economically, they were a source of raw materials/cash crops, especially hemp for rope, timber for ships, and tobacco. They were also intended to be a ready made market for British finished goods. Additionally, they served as a dumping ground for surplus population, especially religious disidents and non-conformists (New England & Pennsylvania), Catholics (Maryland) junior sons of the aristocracy and other adventurers (Virginia & the Carolinas), convicts (Georgia), debtors (as indentured servants throughout the colonies), and the most rebellious and ungovernable people in history, the Scotch-Irish of Galloway and Ulster! (settled in the mountain/hill country of the interior [Appalachia] to keep the Indians at bay). Also, as good estates to reward nobles were growing increasingly scarce, the Crown could award favored peers a colony of their own (New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Delaware) instead of having to build another Blenheim in England. Geopolitically, they needed ports and bases and supplies all around the Atlantic to protect and expand their incredibly valueable possessions in Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, the lesser Antilles, and Hudson Bay - any one of which was worth 10 times more than all the 13 colonies of the eastern seaboard put together (such was the value of sugar and furs). They also needed to deny viable ports, bases, and supply sources to France, Spain, and the Netherlands. Now, as to why the earliest colonists came to America, you had eight basic types: 1. religious non-conformists (Puritans, Pilgrims, Quakers, Congregationalists, Moravians, French Huguenots, British Catholics, Scotch Presbyterians) 2. plantation builders/owners (gentry and aristocrats with substantial investment capital, but few opportunities at home), 3. their servants and retainers, 4. wannabe-landowners, 5. fur traders & trappers 6. crown agents, government officials, garrison soldiers and sailors who didn't plan on staying but did, 7. clergymen to staff the churches and missionaries to the Indians 8. and convicts and fugitives.
  • The same reason any nation colonizes another region: To exploit its resources and people in order to make tons of money.

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