Colonisation in North America

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Tobacco and furs.

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Source A is useful because it shows how much the Pilgrim Fathers depended on Native American help in their first years. Bradford says that Squanto acted as their interpreter, showed them 'how to set their corn' and 'where to take fish', and guided them to new places. This fits what I know about the colony's desperate position: about half of the Mayflower's 102 passengers died in the first winter of 1620-21, and the survivors had little idea how to grow food in New England. Squanto, who spoke English because he had been kidnapped in 1614 and later lived in England, helped them make contact with Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader, who made a treaty of peace with the colony in 1621. That autumn Massasoit and about 90 of his men joined the Pilgrims' harvest celebration.

The provenance makes the source valuable. Bradford was governor of the colony for most of the years from 1621 to 1656 and an eyewitness, so he knew Squanto personally and understood the colony's needs. However, he wrote 10 to 30 years later, and as a deeply religious Separatist he saw everything as part of God's plan. He calls Squanto 'a special instrument sent of God', which presents him as a gift to the English rather than a person with his own reasons. In fact Squanto had returned home in 1619 to find his Patuxet people wiped out by an epidemic, and he used his position with the English to increase his own power; Massasoit, meanwhile, wanted allies against the rival Narragansett.

The source is also limited because it shows only the early, friendly period from the English point of view. It says nothing about how European diseases had emptied the land the Pilgrims settled, or about how relations worsened as English settlement spread, leading to the Pequot War of 1636-38 and King Philip's War of 1675-76, led by Massasoit's own son, Metacom.

Overall, Source A is useful for showing that the Plymouth colony survived because of Native American help, but Bradford's religious outlook and the narrow time it covers mean it gives an incomplete picture of relations between the two peoples.

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The loss of the American colonies was significant first because it was a major defeat and humiliation for Britain. After Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, Lord North resigned, and in the Treaty of Paris of 1783 Britain recognised the independence of the United States. Britain had lost its most populous colonies, added to its national debt and found itself fighting France, Spain and the Dutch at the same time, which showed how isolated it had become.

However, the economic effects were less serious than many feared. Trade with the USA soon recovered and grew, especially as American cotton fed the Lancashire mills. This suggested that Britain did not need to rule a country in order to trade with it, an idea that encouraged support for free trade in the 19th century.

Secondly, the loss changed the direction of the empire. Britain paid more attention to India, where Pitt's India Act of 1784 increased government control over the East India Company, and to the East more generally. Because convicts could no longer be transported to America, the government sent the First Fleet to Botany Bay, which arrived in 1788 and began British settlement in Australia. Canada was also strengthened: perhaps 60,000 to 80,000 Loyalists left the USA, many settling in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and what became Ontario. Some Black Loyalists, who had been promised freedom for supporting Britain, later moved from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone in 1792.

Thirdly, the loss taught British governments lessons that shaped the later empire. They were more careful about taxing settler colonies, and over time Canada, Australia and New Zealand were given self-government, following the Durham Report of 1839, so that they stayed loyal. In the long term the USA grew into a great power, at first a rival and later Britain's closest ally. So although the loss of America was a disaster at the time, it led Britain to build a 'second' empire focused on India, Australia and Canada, and to rule its settler colonies differently.

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Government decisions often triggered conflict between Britain and the peoples of its empire, from Ireland in the 12th century to Suez in 1956. However, the deeper causes of conflict were usually economic interests, religion and ideas, and some of the worst conflicts were caused by settlers and traders acting against the government's wishes. So government was an important factor, but not the main one.

There are many examples of government decisions causing conflict. In 1171 Henry II went to Ireland, beginning centuries of English rule and resistance. In 1609 James I's government organised the plantation of Ulster, taking land from Catholic Irish lords and giving it to Protestant settlers, which led to the rebellion of 1641. In America, Parliament's decision to tax the colonies after 1763, through the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend duties of 1767 and the Tea Act of 1773, provoked protests, and the Coercive Acts of 1774, which punished Boston for the Tea Party, led directly to war in 1775. In India, the East India Company's policy of taking over states such as Awadh in 1856 under Lord Dalhousie helped to cause the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and in 1919 the Rowlatt Act, which allowed imprisonment without trial, led to the protests that ended in the Amritsar massacre.

However, governments sometimes tried to prevent conflict, while others caused it. The Proclamation of 1763 was meant to keep settlers off Native American land, but colonists ignored it. The wars with Native Americans, from the Powhatan attack of 1622 to King Philip's War of 1675-76, were caused mainly by settlers' hunger for land, which is the factor of economic resources. The search for wealth also lay behind the Boer War: although Joseph Chamberlain and Sir Alfred Milner pressured the Transvaal government, the real issue was control of the gold of the Witwatersrand. In Kenya, the Mau Mau rising of the 1950s grew out of anger at the loss of land to white settlers.

Religion and ideas were also important causes. Conflict in Ireland was deepened by the division between Catholics and Protestants. In 1857 Indian soldiers rebelled partly because they believed the cartridges for the new Enfield rifle were greased with cow and pig fat, which offended both Hindus and Muslims. Racist ideas and the belief in a 'civilising mission' led Britain to ignore the rights of colonised peoples, while in the 20th century the ideas of nationalism led them to demand independence. Individuals mattered too: Cecil Rhodes's Jameson Raid of 1895-96 worsened relations with the Boers, and General Dyer ordered his troops to fire at Amritsar.

Overall, government decisions were often the trigger for conflict, as in America in 1774 and India in 1919. But they were rarely the main cause. Economic interests, especially land and gold, together with religious divisions and ideas about race and nationhood, created the tensions that government decisions then brought to the surface, and in some cases conflict happened in spite of the government's efforts to prevent it.