Before the Mayflower | Hacker News Reader

Before the Mayflower

historytoday.com

37 pointsThevet37 comments

> They believed church should be a voluntary community rather than a compulsory state religion. For their refusal to submit to the Church of England they had faced raids, prison, exile and death for the previous 60 years.

Let us not forget that less than 30 years later the Puritans had inverted that, taking over control of the British Isles.

Because nobody actually believes that. People only speak the language of mercy and tolerance when they're on their knees. When it's them in charge, they inevitably switch to the language of power and dominance.

The Separatists (Pilgrims) were close on many things to the Puritans, but should be classified separately from "Puritans."

The Puritans believed in a unified government and church, which the Brownists very much rejected.

Ultimately, the Mathers arranged to have the Puritans take over the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies after the Glorious Revolution.

I feel like they really gloss over the fact that this crew seized a French man-of-war:

> At that moment they had the extraordinary luck – or providence, as the Separatists saw it – to spot the Hopewell passing on its return journey, and they flagged it down. Once reunited, they negotiated the return of some of their lost possessions and seized a French man-of-war and so were at least able to return home with as many ships as they started with.

Really would like to know more. Has anyone found the ship's log from the captain of the Hopewell?

Yes it’s mentioned in the article that it was published at some point.

“History is written by the victors”

The Spanish, French, and Dutch had many more successful and earlier settlements (some non-permanent) than the English. It is only because the English prevailed that we hear more about the pilgrims and Jamestown.

Really? By New Years Day 1600, other than possible Roanoke colonists scattered throughout the winds, how many European settlements existed within the future borders of the United States or Canada? They're all sorta contemporaneous, and it was the bad luck of the French to colonize a place that was cold and was always going to be much more underpopulated than Britain's Atlantic colonies.

I would also say the legacy of the Spanish in the New World is...sorta hard to miss as well.

Ever been to Manhattan Island?

Also French use and control of the maritime regions of what is now Canada began about a century before the Mayflower, resulting in some small permanent colonies by that time.

France still has territory off Newfoundland.

Puerto Rico - 1513

New France - 1534

Little Venice - 1528

Santa Fe - 1610

New Netherlands - 1614

New Sweden - 1638

Norse - 1001 (New Foundland, possibly Maine)

Brazil - sometime in the early 1500s (not explorers but settlements)

São Tomé - 1493

Príncipe - 1500

Guanare - 1591

Nova Scotia (Scottish not French) - 1629

St. Augustine (now Florida) - 1565

Parris (South Carolina) - 1562

Sapelo Island (Georgia) - 1526

Various missions and presidios in California - 1519

Various missionary settlements in Georgia, late 1500s and early 1600s

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I mean, I could go on...

These are some of the ones that we know about. Surely there are others that did not survive historical record.

> They're all sorta contemporaneous

I don't consider a 100+ year difference between 1620 and some of the settlements I listed to be contemporaneous.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Puerto_Rico#Spanish...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_France

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein-Venedig

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Netherland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Sweden

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_colonization_of_North_Am...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Brazil#Arrival_and_ea...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A3o_Tom%C3%A9_and_Pr%C3%A...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_colonization_of_the_A...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine,_Florida

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe,_New_Mexico

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parris_Island,_South_Carolina

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapelo_Island#History

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_before_1... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_missions_in_Georgia

IIRC, there wasn’t a permanent settlement in New France until Quebec City in 1608.

As I wrote in my OP, I'm including non-permanent settlements, too.

"By the 1580s, French trading companies had been set up, and ships were contracted to bring back furs. Much of what transpired between the indigenous population and their European visitors around that time is not known, for lack of historical records."

"Other attempts at establishing permanent settlements were also failures. In 1598, a French trading post was established on Sable Island, off the coast of Acadia, but was unsuccessful. In 1600, a trading post was established at Tadoussac, but only five settlers survived the winter.[11] In 1604, a settlement was founded at Île-Saint-Croix on Baie François (Bay of Fundy), which was moved to Port-Royal in 1605. It was abandoned in 1607, re-established in 1610, and destroyed in 1613, after which settlers moved to other nearby locations, creating settlements that were collectively known as Acadia, and the settlers as Acadians."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_France#Early_exploration_(...

No Europeans had even seen California in 1519. The Wikipedia page you linked talks about New Spain (i.e. Mexico), but the first spaniard to see CA was Cabrillo in 1542. The first European settlements of any note would settled by the Portolá expedition in 1769.

You might be correct. However, there were settlements in Mexico in the 1500s, not just explorers. They were miners, traders, etc. My point is not undermined -- there were many non-English settlements before the 1620 Pilgrims.

Of note:

"In the late 1560s, however, the able Viceroy Martin Enriquez stepped in to throw the weight of the royal government behind the effort to better (or more actively) defend the Spanish towns, mines, and ranches. In 1569, Enriquez declared all-out war ("war by fire and blood"-- guerra a fuego y sangre) against the Chichimecs and began establishing presidios in the Far North, with the result that by 1590, the presidio was a major frontier institution, a symbol of the King's authority in the Far North."

https://californiamissionsfoundation.org/articles/the-presid...

Unfortunately, it does not explain "Far North", but it is definitely distinct from Alta California (San Diego) if you read further. So I would guess this means the Baja, but I don't really know.

The "far north" is contextual. That part is talking about an area historically known as La Gran Chicimeca [1]. It's only a few hundred miles from Mexico City.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Gran_Chichimeca

Don't forget the Low California (Baja California) already discovered in 1533 and a settlement in 1535 by Hernan Cortes.

It also helps if you write it too.

The story of Plymouth Colony was well documented.

Yeah that is exactly my point:

“ History is written by the victors” as I wrote top of thread.

The English prevailed then, but the New Englanders also prevailed in the wake of the American Civil War, when the public school education model was introduced by people from Massachusetts, and textbooks tended to reflect a Northern view of American history, presenting an unbroken sequence from the Mayflower to the Emancipation Proclamation, eliding many things that did not fit their preferred narrative, such as Jamestown in Virginia, France in Quebec and the Maritimes, the Dutch in New York, Catholics in Maryland, St. Augustine, anything to do with New Spain, etc.

I think there's two reasons we hear more about the English settlements. First is the media we have access to being restricted by language. Second is U.S media being in such a dominant position. I think we know more about the American Revolution and Civil War than our own countries major events.

> The first pilgrim settlers to America [...]

Correction: the first non failed british intent to colonize america

A Century before Spanish civilization already was succesfully stablished there. The were already skilled on how to build empires, settlements and communicate with very different cultures and create laws for heterogenous populations, since they had to reconquer their own country after 9 centuries of constant struggle against arabs invasions.

That’s a misreading, not a correction.

There weren’t really any Spanish pilgrim settlers—a very specific type of colonizer—just conquistadors, and a bog standard extractive colonial empire.

Sorry but you are mentioning a common historical missconception perpetuated in history because of competition, war and propaganda between the Spanish Empire and England (the sort of conflict and propaganda also evolved in the time, it is a complex topic)

Please check this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend_(Spain)

There is a lot of literature on the topic, so I won't discuss further.

I’m not quite sure what 17th century intraeuropean propaganda has to do with Andalusian conquistadors not being separatist English puritans, have you misread my comment as well?

Apparently Separatists == Dissenters, there was a bunch of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Dissenters#Brownists

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

The experience of early colonists always interest me.

There isn't a modern equivalent of traveling months away from home to a new land with local natives and trying to live off a strange land with some serious life or death risks.

I guess the closest thing will be Mars colonisation less the natives (hopefully).

> There isn't a modern equivalent of traveling months away from home to a new land with local natives and trying to live off a strange land with some serious life or death risks.

Sure there is. Just get a good job and save some money for 5 or 10 years. Buy yourself a boat - the biggest one you can afford - a trailer, and some provisions. Drive to the edge of your continent and point the boat out to sea. Keep going until you see land. If you make it to shore without being dashed upon the rocks, your adventure begins.

I'd play that game.

you'd love the book Conquerors by Roger Crowley

Thank you.

I think a large number of refugees from places like Syria and Afghanistan would disagree there.

Read the biography of Don Juan de Onate, but more than colonialists it was an empire builder. More towards adventure there are several books on Spanish exploration of the new world and how they contacted and approached native populations and the several constant fights, missunderstanding, exchanges, etc a good examples for that would be some biography from Juan Sebastian ElCano or Magallanes.

If you are just intereste din community building the experiences of the jesuits in america is what you are looking for. Their work was invaluable founding cities, communities, and creating bridges between natives and Europeans as well as teaching natives European arts, culture, technology, etc.

These recent articles around the Thanksgiving holiday are making me realize just how little I know about the early colonial period of the Americas.

Are there any books on the period yall would recommend?

If you want to know about the Pilgrims specifically, William Bradford's firsthand account is the gold standard:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Plymouth_Plantation

I definitely agree, but before reading Bradford, I strongly suggest watching this:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/pilgrims/

I seems to be available free online at the moment. You can also pay to watch on some services. You hear Bradford's actual words spoken by a fine actor in the context of the events he was describing. (They really are his words, not modernized, so some viewers might want to turn on closed captioning.) It's not perfect, but it's the best introduction I know to set the stage for reading Bradford's story of Plymouth.

I also suggest establishing a broader foundation in the early colonies with something like the Teaching Company's lectures on America before 1776, available in audio form from Audible.com, which allows one to establish a historical foundation while doing mind-numbing chores like doing the dishes or cleaning the garage.

Maybe you should read the The Conquest of Florida by Hernando de Soto (1541) you can find his actual diary notes and letters in spanish or some book adaptation in english as the one from Theodore Irving.

For the spanish settling in america was mostly setting ties and allies with native populations, often as exchange of technology or accepting to fight against a local historical enemy from the communities.

You might also find interesting the biography of Don Juan de Onate, also named "the last Conquistador" who dominated the whole south of nowadays USA and built communities, ended up civilizating the zone, etc.

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