Why Did Some Europeans Choose To Colonize America

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Course United States History and Career Planning Unit Building a Nation Chapter Colonial America What's New2.1
European Colonization
Why did some Europeans choose to leave home and settle in colonial America?
Engage Explore Explain Elaborate Evaluate
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War in Europe

Why did European nations compete to colonize America?

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European Nations Cause/Event/Effect Chart
As you study the first two sections, use a Cause/Event/Effect graphic organizer to organize your notes on the factors that led to and influenced European colonization in the 1500s and 1600s.
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Natural resources from colonies provided a variety of materials. For example, colonists collected the huge trees of Maine and New Hampshire to make masts for English ships. However, Europeans soon found that not all resources grew naturally in the environment. Unlike trees in the forest, fields of cotton and sugar cane needed to be tended by people. The European colonizers created large farms, or plantations, to grow large amounts of these cash crops. Cane would be processed into sugar, molasses, or rum, and then sold for a profit. Cotton would be shipped raw to England to be spun and woven into fabric. The colonizing countries could earn huge profits because they only had to pay for labor and transportation; the raw materials were basically …show more content…
A king could increase his wealth by conquering a neighboring kingdom or principality. Countries also made alliances, promising to protect each other from common enemies.

Countries often made alliances through marriages, with royal families arranging for sons and daughters to marry in order to gain power, or even to merge countries. For example, the marriage between Isabella, crown princess of Castile and Leon, and Ferdinand, crown prince of Aragon and Navarre, eventually led to the unification of Spain.

Another set of marriages meant that when Philip became king of Spain in 1556, he also inherited the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands. In 1581, several of the provinces declared independence from Spain and united to form the Dutch Republic, sometimes called Holland. The Dutch War of Independence lasted 80 years.

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FULL VIDEO
Monarchs and Merchants: Chartering the Colonies
Royal charters were granted to companies and merchants in return for large shares of profit. This system of mercantilism helped countries finance the European wars of the 1500s.
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