Colonization+Before+1650

Colonization Before 1650
Shortly after 1500, Spanish settlers introduced suger cane into the West Indies, but colonies fell because the attention shifted to colonizing the mainland of America. After 1600 though, the West Indies came back as a focus of colonization, and by this time in Northern Europeans interest in growing tobacco and other crops. From 1620 to 1630, England colonized societies on Montserrat, Barbados, and other Carribean islands, while the French colonized Martinique, Guadeloupe, and some other islands. The reason why England decided to colonize before the French was the large demand for tobacco export. "The New World Leaf" as they put it found a new market amongst seventeenth century Europeans. Despite oppositions from King James the first of England who stated:dangerous to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, and dangerous to the lungs" it still spread, and by 1614 tobacco was reportedly being sold in seven thousand shops in and around London. Shipping and producing tobacco wasn't easy though. Disease, hurricanes, and attacks from the natives as well as the Spanish threatened French and English settlements. They also suffered shortage of supplies and labor to clear and plant virgin land with tobacco. There were two changes though that improved the prospects though, the first was the formation of **charted companies**. To promote claims without help from the government, France and England gave groups of investors monopolies over trade to the West Indies colonies in exchange for payment of annually fees. These companies then began to provide passage to the colonies for poor Europeans who paid off their debt for transportation by working three to four years for the colonists and indentured servants. Because of this system, French and English population on severaltobacco islands grew rapidly in the 1630's and 1640's. In the middle of the century however, the Carribean colonies were in trouble because of competition from the milder Virginian grown tobacco. The French, English, and Dutch colonies of the Carribean emerged from this crisis richer than before, but the economy of the reigobn would be based on the cultivation of sugar cane, not tobacco, and the labor would be overwhelmingly composed of African slaves, not indentured servants and free settlers. The Portugeese had introduced sugar cultivation to Brazil from islands along the African coast after 1550 and had also introduced African slave labor and by 1600, Brazil was the Atlantic world's greatest sugar producer. Some dutch merchants invested in Brazillian sugar plantations so they can profit from sugar transportation across the Atlantics and distribution in Europe. However, the first half of the century the Dutch were trying to fight for freedom against the spanish which then ruled Portugal and Brazil. As a part of this, the Dutch created the **Dutch West India Company **in 1621 to carry the conflict of Spain's overseas possesions. Not only as a form of the Dutch Navy, irt also was a private trading company and its investors expected the company's profits to cover its expenses and pay them dividends. In 1628 the Dutch West India Company captured a Spanish treasure fleet and used some of it to pay its stockholders and the rest to assault Brazil's sugar-producing areas and by 1635 the Dutch company controlled 1,00 miles of Brazil's coast and over the next fifteen years the new Dutch owners improbed Brazillian sugar industry and the company prospered by supplying plantations with enslaved Africans and Eouropean goods and carrying sugar back to Europe.

Like the assault on Brazil, the Dutch West India Company's entry into the African slave trade combined economic and political motives. It seized the important West African trading station of Elmina from the Portuguese in 1638 and to the port of Luanda in 1641. FRom these coasts the Dutch shipped slaves to Brazil and the West Indies. Once free of Spanish rule in 1640, the Portuguese focussed on reconquering Brazil and in 1654 had driven the Dutch away. Once expelled some of the merchants turned to the Carribean and showed their ways of trade to the English and French. This was a momentous turning point in the history of the Atlantic Economy.

Done by Robert Bella