India and China

India Flag

I have not written in a very long time, because I have been busy with Spring Break and other school work. If you scroll down the lists of my blog posts, you will see one entitled: “India and England.”In that blog post, I wrote about one of the Indian Emperors and three bad decisions he made that would later lead to an English takeover of India. Aurangzeb, the emperor, let the English make trading posts and towns in India. He thought this would help India prosper because of European trade, but what it really did was let the English get a good hold on India before they tried to conquer it outright.

The country of India was having big troubles. As soon as Aurangzeb died, three of his sons claimed the throne. The oldest son killed his brothers in battle and crowned himself. Now Emperor Bahadur Shah I ruled. He tried to repair his father’s mistakes about the Hindus, ( see
"India and England,") but he died after only five years on the throne.

His son was not a good ruler. He didn’t care about ruling at all. Finally, two brothers, Husain Ali and Hasan Ali, had him assassinated. They put another king on the throne, but eventually killed him too, because he was suspicious of them. The next two kings that they crowned died after less than half a year on the throne because of health problems. Finally, the Ali brothers found a king who got rid of them instead of the other way around. But he didn’t pay attention to India’s welfare either. India was breaking into pieces because the emperors weren’t strong enough to keep it together. All the officials were claiming land and ruling it themselves.

At this point, Persia was ruled by a highway robber, named Nadir who wanted to prove that he was truly Persia’s rightful ruler. He wanted everybody to acknowledge this, so he sent a message to India asking that they would hail him as the king of Persia. But because India was in great disarray, no one bothered sending a message back. Nadir took this as a personal insult and declared war against India. He had many soldiers and easily raided the treasure of India. He burned cities and looted the Taj Mahal. This was a perfect time for England to invade, because India was weaker than ever. And it did.

The ruler of Bengal, one of the little parts of India, saw that the English were getting stronger. He offered the French land in India if they would help fight to keep the English from conquering India. The French agreed, and together, the two armies captured one of the English forts. They forced all their captives into a little dungeon with no food or water. Although the captives were released in the morning, the English in England were angered at this cruelty. They sent an army to punish India. Soon, English rule was established in Bengal. England kept claiming more and more land in India. Susan Wise Bauer calls this “the shopkeepers’ invasion.”



Books



While India was falling apart, China was prospering. The Forbidden Palace was the home of the Emperor Chi’en-lung. He wanted the whole world to know China’s greatest accomplishment: its books. Books of poems, books of philosophy, and books of history and stories were scattered all over China, and he wanted to bring them together.  Chi’en-lung ordered that all of China’s greatest books were to be written down on a list. Then, all the books were to be copied so that the library could have a full set. This was not an easy job. The Chinese had letters for different sounds and words, and it was extremely hard to master the art of Chinese Calligraphy. The set had 36,275 books in it. Then, Ch’en-lung ordered six other copies to be made. Finally, one copy was completed, ten years after the search actually began.

But Ch’enlunng wasn’t satisfied with just preserving the old and wonderful Chinese books, he wanted to destroy the bad ones that opposed or questioned his rule and the rule of his descendants. These two huge tasks would take many years to complete.

Wars in the New World

While Europe was fighting and burning, the New World was having its own trouble: the colonies were growing bigger. This would have been a good thing if nobody else had been living in the whole of North America. But as it was, there were already very many people who had made their home there: the Native Americans. The kings in Europe were glad to see their colonies growing, but the Indians were not. The colonists were taking over more and more of their land, and they were not happy about it. The Indians who had once been the settlers’ friends were now their enemies.

It was the Wampanoag tribe who fought back first. Metacom, the leader of that tribe, gathered together other tribes to fight against Plymouth Plantation. At first, Plymouth ignored the warning a friendly Indian had given them, but when they found out that the Indian had been murdered by his own tribe shortly after, they began to consider what he had said. Soon after, a war began.

The Indians were good at surprise attacks, but the English had guns. Eventually they defeated Metacom and his army. This war lasted for months and months. It was called “King Philip’s War” because the English called Metacom “King Philip.” But there was still another war going on in a different part of North America, but for a different reason. This time it was the Indians who wanted more land.

Down in New France, the Europeans and the Huron Indians were friends. But this friendship was not always good for the Hurons. Besides the gifts the French gave them, the Indians also got a disease called small pox. They became weak from sickness and rashes. This made them a good target of another Indian tribe nearby, the Iroquois. The Iroquois captured the land the Hurons lived on and killed many of their people.

Then, they turned towards the colonies. The French settlers were afraid of the Iroquois and their attacks. As more raids on their village happened, more of them left to go back to Europe. King Louis XIV didn’t want his New France colony to be lost. He sent a lot of soldiers over to America. The soldiers were not able to totally defeat the Indians, but they did force them to retreat back onto their own land.

 King Louis XIV had promised the soldiers land in return for their help fighting the Iroquois. When they settled down, however, there was another problem. All the soldiers were men, and they wanted to start families. But for every six men in the colonies there was only one woman. King Louis XIV to the rescue again!!! He paid women from France grand amounts of money so that they would travel to New France. This plan worked, and soon New France was growing bigger than ever.

The Iroquois did not give up, however, and soon they started another war on the French colonies. One fourteen year old girl, Marie-Madeleine de Vercheres was walking through her father’s fields when she saw them running and shooting at her. She screamed for help to the guards, but the guards were all hidden away in fear in the fort. Finally, she ran into the fort, and cried to the soldiers to fight the Iroquois who were trying to get into the fort. Realizing no one else would lead them; Marie-Madeleine took off her bonnet and commanded her two younger brothers to help her guard the fort. They shot cannons which frightened the Iroquois. The children and an old man held the fort for eight days, before French soldiers finally came to help them. Marie-Madeleine is still regarded as a French Canadian Heroine.

At this time, the French and English colonies were colonies of war. One man, named William Penn, wanted to build a colony of peace. William was a Quaker. Quakers were often persecuted throughout England and other parts of Europe. King Charles II owed William’s family money that they had loaned him. After his father’s death, William reminded the king of this, and suggested that he pay back the debt with land in North America, rather than with money. The king agreed and gave William a portion of land in North America almost as big as England itself!

William organized the way the government in his new land would work. It was almost like the way the USA government works today. He also made plans about being friendly to the Indians there. He sent messages to them telling them that he would pay for any land that the colonists took from the Indians. The colony prospered. More and more Quakers came from Europe to live in Pennsylvania. But the Maryland governor, whose colony was right next to William’s, thought that Maryland should have the land that Pennsylvania had. William had to go to court with him back in England. William didn’t return to America for fifteen more years. But when he returned, he was very happy to see that colony had prospered greatly.

While William Penn was in England, an important event happened. Charles II, who had given William the land, died. His brother, James II became king. But the people of England were worried. James was Catholic, and he had married a Catholic woman and had a Catholic son. Most of England did not want to become a Catholic country. So the Protestants sent a message to James’s daughter and her husband who were both Protestants. The soon-to-be monarchs agreed to seize the throne and to sign a message saying that they would never pass any laws without the approval of Parliament. The people of England were happy, (but William Penn was arrested several times because he was suspected of being loyal to the former king.) England was at peace at last.

The Sun King or France and the Prussian king of Prussia

Have you heard of the Egyptians, who thought that their kings were the god’s sons? France’s kings believed a different version of that story. They thought that the king of France was the owner of every little thing in France, down to the last ladybug. The king was sometimes known as “a visible divinity.” In 1638, France was one of the most powerful countries in Europe, and because the five-year old king was “visible divinity,” he ruled with no opposition.

Known as the Sun King, King Louis XIV sent away his board of advisors, announcing that he would rule his own kingdom by himself. The advisors were astonished! For almost a century, no French king had ever ruled without his advisors.

 Louis XIV also had a gargantuan palace built for himself. After nearly fifty years of labor, the quarter-of-a-mile long palace was finished. It was called Versailles. One of the most famous rooms is called the Hall of Mirrors. In it, are seventeen large mirrors, each facing a tall window. 

Louis XIV wrote in his memoirs, that he preferred fame to all else, even life. He lived a lavish life, and liked to act in ballets.

Louis XIV’s subjects fought over doing the small things for the king, such as handing him his clothes after a bath. They all wanted to be in the king’s favor, even if all it meant was a more ornately decorated chair at a dinner party, or special clothes reserved only for the king’s favorites.  Louis XIV encouraged his subjects to spend a lot of money on rich and lavish things and to mind their courtly manners. This made the courtiers and subjects depend on the king, because they had spent all their money on other things.

While Louis XIV reigned, France was the most important and powerful country in Europe, but when he died, catastrophe was ready to strike. In fact, even while Louis XIV was alive, catastrophe struck. Many of his family members died, including Louis’s son and grandson.  Some other European countries were bonding together to fight against France. Most of Louis’s reign had been spent trying to increase France’s borders. He had forced people to work hard and pay high taxes.  Many men died in the wars that Louis started.  “Anger was spreading through France-” Susan Wise Bauer said. “-Anger which would eventually destroy the French crown forever.”

In Germany, there were 300 little German states. But the people who lived in these states probably didn’t think of themselves as German. All the states were ruled by princes, and one of these princes, Prince Frederick, decided to make his two states into a kingdom.

One of the states, Brandenburg, was on the border of the Holy Roman Empire, so when he was in Brandenburg, Frederick had to obey the Holy Roman Emperor. But Frederick asked the Holy Roman Emperor if he could call himself “King of Prussia”, the other state, since Prussia was not in the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Emperor agreed, partly because Frederick had just helped him fight against Louis XIV. Frederick was now the King of Prussia. He also acted like he was the king of Brandenburg, and he entered this other state like a king would do, with cannons firing and bells ringing.  Frederick’s acting like a king helped the people in his “kingdom” to think of themselves as citizens of Prussia.



The German Flag



 Susan Wise Bauer says, “Prussians learned to pay allegiance to an idea of a German kingdom, ruled by a German king.” This meant that instead of paying homage to a king, like King Louis XIV, the German people of Prussia learned to pay homage to the state of Prussia. In later generations, Frederick’s son, Frederick William, announced that Prussia and Brandenburg were all one country, Prussia, and his son, Frederick II, even added land to the kingdom. One day, this country that these men established would be the European country of Germany.

India and England

In past blogs of 2011, I have talked about the thirty years war, the emperors of China, the Kings of Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. But I have hardly mentioned India, except for a blog in January. In the times that I have been reading about in Bauer, three emperors have ruled India.

The first was a strict man named Jahangir, who called himself “world seizer.” He knew that India would prosper if there was more trade going on. So, he and King James the First of England made a trade treaty saying that the English traders could come to India to trade in peace. When Jahangir died, his son, who was renamed Shah Jahan, meaning “King of the World," became the emperor.



The Taj Mahal



Shah Jahan had a wife who he loved very much. He was filled with grief when she died, and he built a huge tomb for her. It took over 20 years for twenty-thousand laborers to build this exquisite tomb, complete with a mosque and garden, often called “the eighth wonder of the world.”

Shah Jahan had four sons. His favorite was a boy named Dara, who was lazy, and didn’t do much fighting. When the emperor announced that Dara was going to be his heir to the throne, one of the other sons, Aurangzeb, rebelled.

Aurangzeb was a fierce warrior, and one of Shah Jahan’s best generals. However; the king was not appreciative of Aurangzeb’s strength, and instead of praising him, he demoted him! So when Aurangzeb heard that Dara was going to be the next king, he raised an army and easily defeated Dara’s small army. He imprisoned his father in his own fortress, and though the former king was well cared for, with servants and doctors, as well as food and water, he was never let out again.

Aurangzeb had taken drastic measures to be made king, and now he was taking drastic measures to make India a good country. But when he died, India was very close to either falling apart or being conquered by foreign invaders. He made three decisions that would change the life of India greatly.

 First, he ordered that India was a Muslim country. This was a great change, because, in the last couple generations, Hindus had had jobs at court, and had been able to worship freely. One had even been made Prime Minister by Akbar, Aurangzeb’s great-grandpa. From now on, Hindus had to pay high taxes, and they couldn’t work in the court. Since the Koran was the Muslim book of law, Aurangzeb decided that the laws of the Koran and the “Shari’ah”, (the Muslim law,) would be the laws for all India. Since the Koran forbid wine, wine was made illegal throughout India. Aurangzeb banished art and parties, since he thought that the Koran was against them.  His Muslim subjects welcomed these new decrees, but the Hindus did not.

Aurangzeb’s next decision made the gap between the Muslims and Hindus even greater. He decided to try to conquer all of the southern parts of India. So he tried to conquer the Deccan, the tribes who lived up in the mountains of India. The Deccans called on some Hindus to help them fight Aurangzeb. While the king and the Deccans fought against each other, Aurangzeb ignored the rest of his empire, and he made his third rash decision. He let the English come into India and build their own cities. his was bad. The English established cities, fortified the settlements, and brought more and more people over to India. This was the beginning of an English takeover.

While they were beginning to build the foundations for the takeover of Japan, the English were having troubles of their own. James the First had died, and his son, Charles, had become king. Charles married a Catholic wife, which none of the English Protestants liked. Charles got mad at Parliment and told them to go away. But the Parliment stayed. And when the rash king brought an army of five-hundred soldiers to force five Protestant members out, the people of England started to be against Charles. Even though the Protestant members had been warned and had escaped, a civil war began. Finally, the Parliment and the Protestants won, and Charles was beheaded. England was now a "commonwealth", which meant that Parliment listened the to the people, and then made the decisions.

But a man named Oliver Cromwell got tired of the Parliment, and sent them all away. Then, he selected his own men to be in the Parliment. However; England wasn't a commonwealth for long. Soon, the men loyal to Cromwell passed a bill giving all the Parliment's powers to him, and then naming him "Lord Protector." Even though no one dared call him a king, Cromwell was basically that. One man even wrote a little booklet, encouraging someone to assasinate him.  When Cromwell died, a lot of people were very happy. Cromwell's reign had not been the brightest of times for England, but more sorrow was yet to come.

After Cromwell died, there were at least half a million people living in London, England. They lived in small houses, not well made, and squished together. All in all, London, in 1665, was the perfect place for plague to spread. So when a few men died in the outskirts of London, no one hoped it would spread. But spread it did. By that year's Christmas, whole families were dying of the black death. Very few people went out of their houses. So many people died, that there wasn't enough room in the graveyards to bury them! The plague raged for a year, until finally, over 200,000 people had died in London.

The next tragedy happened when a baker was putting out his fire, a coal rolled out, unnoticed, and started the Great Fire of London. The fire started small, but because the wooden houses were crammed so close together, the fire spread quickly. It burned the bakery, the shipyard, stores, houses, and even a great stone castle. When the fire stopped, after almost a four days, more than 3\4 of London had been burned. Most of the buildings were gone. Susan Wise Bauer writes that John Evelen, who lived in London at that time, wrote in his diary, "London was, but is no more."

Europe, Japan, and China

         A long time ago, on March 1st, I wrote about two kings. One was Ferdinand, the former king's brother, and one was Philip the second, the king's son. The former king, Charles the fifth, split his empire between the two of them. Ferdinand got his German land, and Philip got Spain and the Netherlands. This blog post is partly about Ferdinand and the 30 years war.
         When Ferdinand died, he gave his lands to his son, who gave them to his son, who gave them to his cousin. This was when a war began. At this time, Germany was full of little territories ruled by their own princes. Although each prince had to pay homage to the king, they got to decide whether their territories were Catholic or Protestant. However, Ferdinand the second, the new king, was a very devout Catholic. He wanted to have all his empire be Catholic, so he started to pass laws against Protestantism. The Protestant princes were not happy about this, and as the king wasn't even in Germany, this was a perfect time to start a rebellion. The king had left two officials in charge of the kingdom, and the army of Protestant subjects and princes welled into the palace where they were hiding and pushed the two out a window. Since the Latin word for "window" is "fenestra", the word "defenestration" is just a fancy way of saying "to push someone out a window." The rebelling Protestants stated that they were no longer under Ferdinand's rule. But when the king came back and convinced his allies in France and Spain to help him, the rebellion was crushed. Ferdinand also forced the princes to make him the Holy Roman Emperor. He took away the rebellious Protestant princes' land, and thought that would be the end of it. It wasn't.
         There were a few other Protestant princes that had not been part of the rebellion, but when they saw what had happened to the other territories, they got a little anxious. Would their land be next? England and Denmark, two other Protestant countries, were also worried. Germany had formed an alliance with Spain and France. Would the three Catholic countries also try to take control of their land?
          The king of Denmark gathered his forces and marched into Germany. Not only was he planning to help save the Protestants, it might be nice to have a little land in the bargain. But his plan failed. Ferdinand's forces crushed Denmark's, and then even took over the country itself.
          Denmark was right next to Sweden, and King Gustavus the second was getting worried, too. Would Ferdinand's forces try to attack Sweden? The king and his advisers all agreed it would be better to attack Ferdinand, then to have him attack them. The army joined forces with the other German Protestants. For awhile it looked like they would win the war, but then Gustavus was killed in battle and the army began to fall apart. Soon, the Protestants began to discuss peace. Slowly, a peace treaty was formed. But the war wasn't over yet. The Prime Minister of France declared war on Germany, seeking its land, and the war continued until finally, the heads of both sides died. A peace treaty, called the Peace of Westphalia, was cautiously declared. Even after that, Spain and France kept fighting for eleven more years. The 30 Years War was really the 41 Years War.

             Before the 30 Years War had even started, Europe was sending Catholic missionaries over to Japan. Some of the Japanese became Christians. Others hated the religion. They did not want to give up their Buddhist traditions. The emperor, Ieyasu, was puzzled by the new way of life. He did not know what to do. So he asked his Western advisor, who had come to Japan on a Dutch ship. William Adams was a Protestant, and he hated Catholicism. He told the emperor that he should watch out for the missionaries. When a Spanish ship docked in Japan, intending to make maps of the ports, he told Ieyasu that Spain was really trying to capture Japan. So Ieyasu made laws against Christian missionaries coming to Japan.
           When his son, Hidetada, came to the throne, he killed Christians and made more laws against them. His son, Ieymitsu  decreed that no Japanese person was allowed to travel farther than Korea, so as not to bring any foreign ideas back into Japan. Then, he closed Japan. No one could go out. No one could come in. No one could make ships big enough to sail across the ocean. Only the Protestant Dutch could trade with Japan. They could only send one ship each year. These laws caused a revolt, but it was soon crushed. A new kind of religion, Zen Buddhism, flourished. This religion believed that wisdom came from the inside.

In China, the Ming Dynasty was ruling, and failing. This dynasty came from southern China, where people called the Han Chinese lived. But not everybody was happy with this. A group of rowdy warriors, called the Manchu, set out to attack the Ming Empire. There was also another threat that was making China weak. There were over 160 million people in China, and there simply was not enough food to feed them all. One man, a post man, decided to set up his own government instead of the Ming government. He gathered an army of the discontented Chinese and marched up to the castle. However; he didn't need to fight. All the soldiers had either deserted or die of a plague. The Ming emperor killed himself, and the Ming Dynasty was over. But not all the Ming realized that. One Ming general sent a message to the Manchu, asking to form an alliance against " this rebel peasant and his army." The Manchu were happy to form an army against the peasants, but for a different reason. When they had defeated the mailman and his army, they set their own leader on the throne. The Manchu thought of themselves as better than the Han Chinese. They separated themselves from the Hans, and made them shave their heads as a sign of the authority of the Manchu. Finally, one Manchu emperor, K'ang-hsi, realized, right from the start, that there were more Han Chinese than Manchu Chinese, and so he made friends with them. He lowered their taxes, and even put some of them into his government. China became stronger and prospered under his rule.

Tobacco, Slavery, and Nzinga

      The colonies in North America were all in the control of the English, now. They were prospering, and had made their mother country prosperous, too. One of the main products of the colonies was "green gold," or tobacco. John Rolfe, the man who was said to have married Pocahontas, knew that the Indians grew their own kind of tobacco, but the colonists who had tried it did not like it. They said that it was weak and bitter. Rolfe had a few tobacco seeds from Europe and he  planted them in a fertile patch of land. When it was ready to be tried, it smoked wonderfully. Rolfe sent some tobacco over to England, and it was instantly popular, because, up until this point, the English had had to buy their tobacco from the Spanish, who they were at war with. Although there were many smokers of tobacco in England, King James did not approve of it. He wrote an essay about the harmful effect of smoking. As might have been expected, no one listened.
      The tobacco was a valuable crop for the colonies, but it took a lot of work to raise. First, the seeds had to be planted, pruned, and weeded by hand. Caterpillars, worms, and slugs had to be picked off the leaves. Then, when the plants were fully grown, the leaves had to be picked and hung to dry for a long time. Next, the stems had to be taken off and thrown away. The leaves needed to be packed into barrels and shipped to Europe. All the work was done by hand.
       In the beginning, the farmers used indentured servants to work in the tobacco fields. Indentured servants were people who had their voyage to America paid for by a company in Europe. Then, when they were in the New World, they had to work for the company for a certain amount of time for the company. After that,  they would be free to start a life of their own. But as the tobacco became an increasingly important export, plantation owners needed more workers. They started making their war prisoners  slaves. They also got slaves from other African countries which sold them their prisoners.
      Soon, however, the colonies wanted more slaves, and so the country of Portugal invaded a small country of Africa called Ndomba. The king of this country fought a war against the Portugese. Soon, his son became king in his place. Nzinga, the prince's sister, fought in the war. But then the prince refused to fight any longer. Soon after, he mysteriously died. Nzinga became queen. She made a treaty with the Portugese king to leave the African kingdom alone as long as they returned all the Portugese captives, but it was not kept for very long. They forced her out of her country. When this happened, Nzinga simply invaded the nearby country of Matamba. Her soldiers would not let the Portugese take slaves from any other West African kingdom, either. The Portugese finally gave up. They told the queen she could rule in peace. When Nzinga died, she was remembered as the queen who saved her country from slavery, but the country of Portugal was not impressed. After she died, they invaded Ndomba and two other African countries. These remained under their rule until 1975.

Japan and Thanksgiving

              Today we know that there was really no "Northwest Passage" through America to China and Japan. But what if there was? You could sail straight through North America and come to the "Land of the Rising Sun." You would have reached Japan.
             While explorers were still searching for the "Northwest Passage" and setting up colonies in the new world, Japan was having a civil war. The emperor no longer had power over the land. Instead, noblemen called "Daimyo" ruled over different parts of Japan. Groups of Japanese soldiers called "Samurai" roamed around the countryside, fighting for whoever would pay them the most. The empire of Japan was divided. Then, a man named Toyotomi Hideyoshi united the country once again.
               Hideyoshi was no one important. He was a peddler with little money or possessions. He wasn't even handsome, and his wife called him "The Bald Rat." But then, Hideyoshi became a soldier in the army of an important nobleman, Nobunaga, who wanted to put all the pieces of Japan together under his rule. Hideyoshi was a loyal soldier, and he became Nobunaga's sandalbearer. Eventually, Hideyoshi was granted the title of "General", and he soon became the nobleman's favorite. But Nobunaga was killed in battle, and four different samurai stated that they would help his young grandson to rule. Each of them really only wanted the throne for himself. Hideyoshi gathered an army of 200,000 soldiers and smashed the rebellious samurais' armies to bits. He then went on to reunite all of Japan, but when he tried to take control of China, he failed, and died not long afterwards.
                While Hideyoshi was still alive, a man named Tokugawa Ieyasu was one of his most trusted helpers. However, he was trying to accumulate loyalty for himself, and when Hideyoshi died, he fought against Hideyori, the five year old heir to the throne. He won the fight, and established himself as "shogun." His capital city was named Edo, and now it is called Tokyo. He encouraged art, literature, and sumo wrestling. He took great measures to make sure the people in his kingdom were loyal to him. Eventually, Ieyasu captured and destroyed the fortress where Hideyori was hiding. Now the whole of Japan was under the rule of the "Tokugawa Shogunate," the family of Ieyasu.

                Imagine that you are a separatist in England, during the early1600's. You believe that the church of England should be purified from all that is Catholic - the candles, the priests, and the prayerbooks,- but it is not happening. You now have given up all hope that the church of England will ever be fully purified. So you separate yourself from the English Church and go to your own services. But King James makes you pay high taxes, and he doesn't let you use real church buildings. You have to meet in barns or stables. One man you know, named William Bradford, is so angry about this, that he and the other separatists have decided to go and live in Holland, where the Dutch welcomed the Protestants. However; when you get to Holland the children are starting to become Dutch! They forget their beliefs, and some go off to war while others go off to sea. The parents want their children to grow up to be good little English boys and girls, but here in Holland, that is near impossible.



William Bradford



                    So everyone gathers onto a ship named the Mayflower and you sail off to find a new life in the New World. The journey is long and hard, but the land is well worth the trip. All the colonists sign a contract called the Mayflower Contract, and then the men go off to explore. They find the perfect place, near cornfields, and next to a stream. All the colonists, including you, work hard, building log houses, but still the food is running low. Sometimes several colonists die in one day. But, soon, the Indians take pity on your starving colony. You make a treaty with the Indians that neither party will hurt the other. Squanto, a friendly native, who can speak English, teaches you how to plant corn. Thanksgiving is celebrated, with lots of food, contests, and peace. Life in America looks like it is off to a good start.

The English, Spanish, and the French were in the New World, but the Dutch were not. Instead, their country was prospering in Europe, with many schools, artists, and traders. One big Dutch company, The Dutch East India Company, sent ships to Asia, which came back with spices, silks, and many other rare items. Soon the Dutch became the most important sea traders in the world. But when they heard of the pelts and furs that could be found in the New World of America, they set up another big company, The Dutch West India Company. This company sent 30 families to live on the banks of the Hudson River and start a colony. The colonists traded beads, cloth, and knives in exchange for Manhattan Island. The Indians thought that the colonists would live on the island for a few years and then move somewhere else. They were wrong. The Dutch had no intention of moving now that they were setting up "New Amsterdam." The town flourished. People from everywhere on the globe came to trade with the Dutch. Imports from India and Africa helped the town grow into a big trading port. But the town was not in the best condition. It was falling apart. The Dutch West India Company tried sending other governors to try and control the town, but it was not use. Finally, they made one last effort. A man named Peter Suyvesant made new laws and enforced them. He repaired the town and ordered ministers to preach more on Sundays. Despite his wooden leg, Stuyvesant was a model governor. But the English colonies were pressing in on New Amsterdam, and eventually he had to surrender to the English soldiers that had surrounded his colony. Now all of the North American colonies were English. The English renamed the colony "New York", a name that has stuck to this day.