Tanism and Sea-Power

TANISM AND SEA-POWER The 16th century gave place to the 17th. The old Queen passed away. Three years after, while Shakespeare was writing "King Lear," the Virginia Company was created on a more lasting foundation; and in December 1606 the first founding emigrants of the English-speaking world went out. Their vessels were the "Susan Constant," 10o tons, the "God Speed," 4o tons and the "Pinnace" 20 tons. In the spring of 1607 they found the James River and sailing upwards they fixed upon a landing place where six fathoms of water were so near to the shore that the ships could be tied to the trees. Jamestown, inaugurated on May 13, 1607, became memorable as the spot where the English-speaking race cast first root overseas and where the United States began.

The First Colony: Foundation and Spirit of Virginia.— The emigrants proper on embarking in the Thames numbered Amongst them Captain John Smith was worth a host. The rest as a whole were an unlikely lot—for the most part ne'er do wells "packed thither by their friends to escape ill-destinies." In America, they were miserable. More than half died in twelve months, from privation and sickness and thriftlessness. Despite Smith's vigour this enterprise threatened to disappear like Raleigh's attempts in the generation before. The company sent out more colonists. But in the third summer, 161o, all agreed to quit the place. Lord Delaware's saving reinforcements came in the very nick of time. In 1611 a company of 65o new colonists arrived. After that—by coincidence it was the year when the Authorized Bible appeared—there was no more talk of abandon ing the English-speaking settlement in Virginia. Let us follow its better, though not easy, fortunes there before turning to events northward. Plantations extended along the river-lines. Trade grew. There was continuous infiltration of emigrants from Eng land. It had been hoped at first that the colony would supply shipbuilding materials ; for them England then depended insecurely on the Baltic. But this was not to be the business of Virginia. Tobacco became its flourishing staple. Within one decade after the James River settlement was saved for good, 20,000 pounds of the leaf were annually exported when the new habit of smoking was spreading in Europe with amusing rapidity. In 1619 as many as 1,200 new colonists arrived. Virginia was growing like the tobacco.

Above all, in that same year occurred at little Jamestown one of the signal events in history foreshadowing the political future of the English-speakers overseas and revealing the chief secret of their free vitality. A parliament "broke out." The Virginia House of Burgesses was the first representative assembly yet seen outside Europe. In the same place about the same time negro slavery was introduced. How the colony went forward henceforth the figures of population estimated at irregular periods may indicate. In 1622—when King James at home was suppressing his parliament in the Stuart temper that would lead at last to Civil War—Virginia had 4,00o inhabitants. In 1649 when Charles the First was executed at home, there were 15,000. Another fifty years or so brought the number of whites up to 50,000 (and there were 20,000 blacks) when the 18th century began.

"New England..

But meanwhile ran parallel the sterner story of "New England." Captain John Smith gave it that name when he e-:plored and mapped its coast in his last voyages after quitting Jamestown in its dismal days. On his map was a spot he called Plymouth. Here the Puritan pilgrims landed in 162o— the year after a parliament "broke out" in Virginia. We see already what different political and religious forces were bound in the end to converge. The sequel in the north is a tale so well known that we need only indicate here at what rate the English speakers grew in this hardy quarter. Toe "Mayflower" brought a hundred souls, men, women and children. More than half died in that first winter. Reinforcements were scanty in the first hard years. In 1622 only 35 new colonists arrived, and in the next year 96. Yet the roots were tough. The Puritan settlement num bered only about three hundred persons in 163o at the end of its first decade; but at the end of the next, in 1640, the population of Plymouth Colony was 3,000; and so throve onwards.

Now, rather, take New England as a whole. Within a quarter of a century from the voyage of the "Mayflower" the Puritan emi gration had brought the total number of settlers in the five original colonies up to over 25,000. And of these 5,00o had been born in New England (Fiske). An English-speaking and American born generation—this as in Virginia was a new kind of fact in the world and one of endless significance. This lean, sinewy race threw itself with equal vigour into agriculture and sea-faring, religion and politics. Attracting the strongest fibre of native English character the Puritan colonies hardened it again and quickened it. Probably they had more continuous practical energy than any stamp of men seen up to then. By 172o, a century after the arrival of "the first hundred," the English speakers of New England numbered about ioo,000.

The Atlantic Chain of Settlements.

Meanwhile the Middle States and the southernmost Slave States had come variously into being. Pennsylvania amongst single colonies was second in strength. Along the Atlantic seaboard of the northern part of the New World, now stretched for more than a thousand miles, the English-speakers.

We must look back for a moment on the chequered interval in the mother-islands. There was no systematic self-conscious crea tion of Empire at any time. The French always were superior in logical plan. English ideas were as irregular as Shakespeare corn pared with Racine. But they left more and more room for individual initiative and free combination. They regarded colonies not only as reformatories for the evil-doing and sanatoria for the unfit—Virginia's early days suffered from this view as we have seen—but also, to quote Hakluyt himself, as places of safety, "if change of religion or civil war should happen in this realm." Religious change happened in the consciences of a very large part of "this realm" and civil war rending England nourished America.

Cromwell and the Connecting Seas.

That Civil War threw up Cromwell—"the greatest prince that ever ruled in England." This was the real turning point for English-speaking expansion. We must remember what had been taking place apart from the American mainland. Barbados and other sugar-islands had been acquired. When Jamaica was won from the Spaniards for the Lord Protector by Penn and Venables and settled soon after, England became predominant in the 'Vest Indies. This meant maritime and mercantile advance of the first order. The mighty thing was the creation by Cromwell of his new sea-power. To most foreign eyes, what could have seemed more audacious than his attempt, or more improbable than its success? The Dutch advantage at sea was overwhelming. The Puritan dictator first sought security by a project of alliance between the two Repub lics, the insular Ironsides providing the military arm : leaving Holland its naval supremacy. The confident Dutch declined the plan with some scorn. They did not know their man. When the struggle opened they relied, as well they might, on their wealth to outbuild him. But first he passed his Navigation Act striking at their carrying trade. Then by heroic finance, based on sweeping confiscation of Royalist estates, he launched in a few years over 15o warships; and his fleets at his death, manned by 22,000 men, had already reduced the Dutch from supremacy to doubtful equality, bound henceforward to sink slowly into inferiority. Through the two centuries and a half following, the sea-power of the English-speakers (the American Colonists playing their full part in various ways for several generations) rose to a wider mastery of the great waters than any age before had seen.

The conditions for the creation of the English-speaking world as we see it to-day were established. When in 1674 New Nether land became New York and New Jersey for good, the Dutch prospects in colonial rivalry were extinguished. But France re mained and her spirited and highly organized people at that time were still four times as numerous as the English people. France would prove the formidable antagonist of the future.