From Expedition to Expansion to Nation

Mary Ann V. Cunningham

19 November 2009

HISTORY 111

From Expedition To Expansion To Nation

The United States of America started with the ideas and endless possibilities that this great country has more to offer her people with its diverse landscape, and centralization to both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. These trade routes to reach throughout the world would prove vital in the establishing of a dominant nation. She needed to be explored in order for those dreams to be fulfilled, thus the expansion of the New World, empowered by cultural differences, long hard fought battles for individuality, respect, and economic growth would not only shape this country, but change everyone else that came into contact with it.

Long before English settlers began to colonize the New World, many attempts by other countries such as Norway, France, Spain, and Portugal had set sail into the vast ocean for several reasons such as finding a route to Asia, trades for resources, and an economic relief in some cases. This in particularly is called an expedition, a voyage, march, etc. as for exploration or battle, (Dictionary). These voyages would lead them into becoming the settlements that would start with colonization along the coast of the New World’s Atlantic Seaboard, and then expand inward. Roanoke was the first colony before it mysteriously disappeared. Astoundingly, less than twenty years later, Jamestown, also known as Virginia, was founded followed by New Netherland and Plymouth in the same decade!! Shortly thereafter, a massive Puritan-led “Great Migration” to the New England began, (Boyer/Clark/Kett/Salisburry/Sitkoff/Woloch), starting the colonies Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, Connecticut being the first English settlement. In conjunction to that, Lord Baltimore establishes Maryland.

New England’s first colonies met with little sustained resistance from Native Americans, whose numbers were drastically reduced by the ravages of various...