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Hello every year on the fourth Thursday in November Americans go home to their families and sit down to a meal called Thanksgiving

It echoes a meal that took place nearly 400 years ago when a group of English religious exiles sat down

After a brutal winter to celebrate their first harvest having crossed over into what was called the New World

They celebrated in company with American Indians who would help them survive

These settlers are called the Pilgrim Fathers and although they were not the first and certainly not the largest of the early settlements

They retain a hold on the American imagination far out of proportion to their historical significance

We'd need to discuss the Pilgrim Fathers at Tim Lockley, Associate Professor of History at the University of Warwick, Harry Bennett,

Readering History and Head of Humanities at the University of Plymouth and Kathleen Burke, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at University College

London, Cutland Burke

The Pilgrim Fathers arrived in Plymouth in America in 1620

They're often seen as the first British European settlers in America, which isn't true

Can you give us a sense of who was actually there in six already there in 1620?

Well one of the earliest

Pilgrim leaders William Bradford referred to the vast and unpeopleed continent

Countries of America and this was not true as you say the French were in Canada and indeed the Pilgrims were worried about being attacked by them

Spain locked up all of South and Central America and indeed was as far the Florida's ruined by Spain and

Americans you're quite right Americans do forget about Jamestown because the English colonized Virginia in 1607

This was not a good precedent

Because

After the first year 400 colonists only 40 were left alive after what was called the starving time when they cut up and sold it their wife one of them did

...