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Looking West

Religious wars in Europe and major rivalries between the major states in the 16th century encouraged England to focus on establishing colonies in the newly discovered Americas. Explorers like Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh were significant in increasing England’s wealth and territories in North America.

Another Elizabethan explorer, John Hawkins, took advantage of the huge profits that were being made by Europeans in acquiring and selling enslaved Africans to work on plantations in South America and the Caribbean.

As England’s presence grew in the Americas, different groups left Britain to start a new life in the New World. Many of these migrants were indentured servants who worked on the land for a set number of years to pay for their passage to the new country, while others left Britain due to economic hardship.

The Elizabethan ‘Sea-dogs’

England became a nation of ship builders and explorers during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. This gave many people the means to seek their riches around the world:

• Envious of her enemy Spain’s vast profits from South America, Queen Elizabeth I set the foundations for a powerful navy. Captains such as Sir Francis Drake were given permission to steal Spanish gold as it made its way back to Madrid.
• Other ‘sea-dogs’ like Sir John Hawkins saw an opportunity to supply enslaved Africans to the Spanish and Portuguese to work on their sugar and tobacco plantations. Eventually British investors began to establish plantations on Caribbean islands such as Barbados and made large sums of money using African slave labour to process their valuable sugar crops.
• Sir Walter Raleigh’s exploits had the longest lasting influence on the development of the British Empire. Raleigh’s expeditions to North America paved the way for other Englishmen to emigrate there and trade valuable furs, as well as establishing increasingly profitable plantations.