Hello and welcome to a history of the United States. Episode 36, The Dutch.

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Thanks. I couldn't do the show without you. I want to begin this week with a pronunciation

correction-ish, because it's not quite pronunciation,

but it sort of is. Anyway, I've heard from a lot of people saying that I got the name of the

bay that Rhode Island was built on wrong last week. It should be Narragansets. Which is oddly what I thought I was saying,

but apparently I was saying Nagaransets. Which is really weird because I've had so many people

message me saying nega ansets. And my first reaction was, wait, wasn't that what I was saying in the first place?

But apparently I wasn't, so my apologies, it is Negrancid Bay.

Now that we have that dealt with, onto the episode.

If the 16th century colonial world was defined by the Hispanic-Portuguese expansion into New Spain and South America.

The 17th century was when European attention turned towards North America.

The English, forever living on the fringes of Europe, threw themselves into the adventure,

and managed to set up two colonial groups, one centred upon tobacco growing around the Chesapeake,

and one with an eye towards fishing in Massachusetts Bay.

But they were mostly concerned with internal affairs,

matters of religion, matters of voting, matters of securing food. As time passed,

they began to develop into actual settlements with characters of their own. Their field of vision began to expand. They felt more secure

and able to see what was going on beyond the horizon. What they found was that they were not alone.

...