The History of the United States, 2nd Edition

Columbus's discovery of a New World; Europeans exploit natural and human resources; they write new social, economic, and political scripts for their lives in a place where European ideas of society no longer applied.

The Spanish tap sources of wealth in the Americas; they obtain it by various methods; they evolve from an extraction society to a settler society; the French attempt extraction incursions to settle in North America but do not succeed.

The English join the game of settlement and extraction after all other major European nations; settlements around the Chesapeake Bay achieve success with tobacco and the involuntary recruitment of a workforce of African slaves.

The northern settlements are motivated by ideas; the southern English colonies are motivated by economic self-interest; in New England's case, the ideas are religious; the first Puritans are succeeded by the same slow tendency toward aristocracy.

Swedes settle in the coastal territory between Chesapeake and Long Island along the Delaware Bay; the Dutch settle along the Hudson River; Dutch settlements develop into a major commercial center; Pennsylvania emerges by the 1750s.

Cheap labor provides settlements with commercial success; America's immensity of land and lack of labor to develop it requires the forced migration of laborers; a less expensive source of labor are 11 million Africans slaves.