Differences in Each of the European Colonies in America

The French, English, and Dutch were not as fortunate as the Spanish and Portuguese about the lands they found to colonize. The territory they controlled did not have the mineral resources or the temperate climate that the Spanish and Portuguese colonies had. This required the Northern colonies to diversify economically. They could not rely on mining or cash crops to make their colonies profitable. This influenced the economic as well as the political and cultural structures of these colonies.

The French set up extensive fur trading operations with the help of the native Indians. They needed the natives' knowledge, so they had to work with them, instead of trying to control them. In contrast, the English wanted nothing to do with the natives. They either worked their tracts of land themselves or imported slaves, as the Spanish had done in their colonies. The English, however, imported many more of there own people than the Spanish did. Eventually, this would make the colonies stronger and more independent than the colonies that had very small European population. The Dutch failed to colonize like some of the other major powers, but made money in shipping colonists and supplies for other countries. Their economy in the New World was geared toward providing services that allowed others to make money.

In the New World, Europeans had the military and technological power to impose their cultures, including their religions, on the people they encountered. Jesuits, for example, were better able to convert Native Americans to Catholicism than they had been Indians, Muslims, and Chinese who had civilizations of comparable technology. As had been the case when Christianity was imposed on the Roman world, however, this imposition invariable produced a hybrid, not orthodox, form of Christianity when the Native Americans accepted it at all. The native culture was simply changed a little bit to make it more Christian.