Click here for the reading: selections from Chapter 3: “Colonizing a Continent in the Seventeenth Century” in Gary B. Nash, et al., The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society, Volume One: to 1877, Seventh Edition (New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2006), 94-102. Start with the section titled "From the St. Lawrence to the Hudson" and end at the section titled "New Spain's Northern Frontier."

What to look for in the reading:

Charles II 1364 235.jpg English colonization had gotten off to a slow start between 1600 and 1660. By 1660 there were only about 66,000 English settlers in the British North American colonies, clustered around the Chesapeake Bay (Virginia and Maryland) and New England (Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and Connecticut). But with the restoration of the monarchy in England in 1660, the new king, Charles II (pictured left), expanded the English colonies greatly by giving away large tracts of land to people who had supported his return to the throne. (It pays to be king, huh?) These new colonies are sometimes known as the Restoration colonies since they came about with the restoration of the English monarchy. The map on page 97 shows the Restoration colonies.

These new colonies were again different in character from the first two clusters of colonies in New England and the Chesapeake. This reading describes the expansion of the English colonies after 1660.

Why are we doing this reading?

You can use information from this reading in responding to Discussion #1: Migrations.

To cite this source

Use the format (Nash et al. 2006, page) where you replace the word page with the actual page number from the original book.

(Note: The term et alia (abbreviated et al.) that you see in the citation is Latin for and others. When a book has four or more authors, we use the first author's name followed by et al. in the citation. Much easier than including ALL of the authors' names!)