ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COLONIAL GOVERNMENTS Evolution of American Governments. The first English colonies in North America were business enterprises. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the forests of England had been depleted through the expansion of agriculture and the increasing use of wood for fuel, for shipbuilding, and for the construction of houses. Great and increasing quantities of wood were needed for three all-important industries, the industries upon which the prosperity and wealth of the nation were largely dependent shipbuilding, for which were needed timber, masts, pitch, tar, resin; the manufacture of woolens, calling for a large supply of potash; smelting of all kinds, since three hundred years ago wood and not coal was the fuel used in the furnaces.' Ship timber and potash were imported by the Muscovy Company from Germany, Poland, Russia, and Sweden, where the forests were still extensive and labor was cheap. I For this quotation and the other economic facts in this paragraph, the authors are indebted to "The Planters of Colonial Virginia," Chap. I, by Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Princeton University Press, 1922. |