England Ready To Colonize The New World

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Lucy Hanson Period 6-7 10/11/11 Essay #3: Why was England ready to enter the colonial scramble in the New World by the early 1600s, but not before? During the 1600s England started to colonize the New World, but before that they were not quite ready to enter the colonial scramble. Before the seventeenth century England was experiencing religious conflicts and they couldn’t compete with Spain’s success, making it hard for them to colonize. Spain started its colonization of the New World in the late fifteenth century. In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail under the Spanish flag, sparking Spain’s colonization era. Spain created a powerful, wealthy empire, which was hard to compete with. England was also allies with Spanish for the first half of the sixteenth century, taking little interest in establishing colonies. England, however, finally gained confidence over Spain in 1588 when they beat the Spanish Armada. The defeat brought about English nationalism and in contrast Spain was humiliated and nearly emptied its national treasury, (Defeat of the Spanish Armada). During the first half of the sixteenth century England experienced the Protestant Reformation. In 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church in Wittenberg, Germany. Little did he know this would start a new religion called Protestantism. King Henry VIII of England was at first opposed to Luther’s ideas, but when he broke with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s, he supported Protestantism. When he died and his daughter Mary took over the throne in 1553, she persecuted many Protestants trying to restore England to Catholicism because she was a devout Catholic, (John H. Ratliff, page 4). In 1558 Elizabeth I succeeded Mary restoring order to England. Elizabeth being a Protestant queen only intensified problems with Spain. This lead to problems between Catholic Spain and

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