William Warren Sweet On The Founding Of The American Colonies

William Warren Sweet, The Story of Religion in America

(New York: Harper & Brothers; 1950), pp. 8, 9.

ʻIt was long the custom of Protestant ministers in the United States to speak of the discovery and colonization of North America as a providential event.

The facts seemed perfectly clear.

Just twenty-five years after Columbus made his famous voyage of discovery, Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door at Wittenberg.

Thus the beginning of Protestantism and the discovery of America were contemporaneous events.

In other words, God appeared to have saved America for Protestantism. To them it seemed that a divine wisdom and a controlling providence had kept the very existence of America a secret until the fullness of time.

But whether providential or not, it is a significant fact that these two great historic events, taken together, contain the key which explains to a large degree the establishment of the English colonies in America.

ʻEngland was more than a century behind Spain and Portugal in founding colonies.

At the opening of the period of discovery the majority of Englishmen were little interested in establishing an England beyond the seas, and as late as the opening of Queen Elizabeth's reign (1558) there were, perhaps, not more than a few hundred Englishmen outside the British Isles.

But within a hundred years, following the close of that long reign, English trade had gone out in every direction and English colonies were to be found in America, in Africa, in Asia and in the islands of the sea.

England had succeeded Spain as the mistress of the seas and the foundations of the British Empire had been permanently laid. All this was the accomplishment of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The sixteenth was the century of English pioneering on the sea; in the seventeenth every English colony in America was planted except Georgia.

These were also the centuries par excellence of the English trading companies.

But what were the reasons which made these centuries a period of such feverish activity on the part of Englishmen?

The economic historian would attempt to explain it by saying that a new set of economic forces were at work, while the political historian would mention the political rivalries between Spain, France, Holland and England as the most important contributing factor. But neither of them, nor both together, can explain adequately the establishment of the majority of the English colonies in America.

It is true that economic stress was, very probably, responsible for bringing the majority of colonists to America during the whole period of the colonies, but religion was responsible for the founding of more colonies than any other single factor.ʼ

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