Note (return) — Chapter I

In the seventeenth century, moreover, the Spanish monarchy was declining rapidly both in power and prestige, and its empire, though still formidable, no longer overshadowed the other nations of Europe as in the days of Charles V. and Philip II. France, with the Bourbons on the throne, was entering upon an era of rapid expansion at home and abroad, while the Dutch, by the truce of 1609, virtually obtained the freedom for which they had struggled so long. In England Queen Elizabeth had died in 1603, and her Stuart successor exchanged her policy of dalliance, of balance between France and Spain, for one of peace and conciliation. The aristocratic free-booters who had enriched themselves by harassing the Spanish Indies were succeeded by a less romantic but more business-like generation, which devoted itself to trade and planting. Abortive attempts at colonization had been made in the sixteenth century. The Dutch, who were trading in the West Indies as early as 1542, by 1580 seem to have gained some foothold in Guiana;58 and the French Huguenots, under the patronage of the Admiral de Coligny, made three unsuccessful efforts to form settlements on the American continent, one in Brazil in 1555, another near Port Royal in South Carolina in 1562, and two years later a third on the St. John's River in Florida. The only English effort in the sixteenth century was the vain attempt of Sir Walter Raleigh between 1585 and 1590 to plant a colony on Roanoke Island, on the coast of what is now North Carolina. It was not till 1607 that the first permanent English settlement in America was made at Jamestown in Virginia. Between 1609 and 1619 numerous stations were established by English, Dutch and French in Guiana between the mouth of the Orinoco and that of the Amazon. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was incorporated, and a few years later proposals for a similar company were broached in England. Among the West Indian Islands, St. Kitts received its first English settlers in 1623; and two years later the island was formally divided with the French, thus becoming the earliest nucleus of English and French colonization in those regions. Barbadoes was colonized in 1624-25. In 1628 English settlers from St. Kitts spread to Nevis and Barbuda, and within another four years to Antigua and Montserrat; while as early as 1625 English and Dutch took joint possession of Santa Cruz. The founders of the French settlement on St. Kitts induced Richelieu to incorporate a French West India Company with the title, "The Company of the Isles of America," and under its auspices Guadeloupe, Martinique and other islands of the Windward group were colonized in 1635 and succeeding years. Meanwhile between 1632 and 1634 the Dutch had established trading stations on St. Eustatius in the north, and on Tobago and Curaçao in the south near the Spanish mainland.