The Story of the Many Ill-Fated Attempts by Europeans to Create
Permanent Settlements in the New World
The nations of the modern Americas began as successful colonies, but not
all colonies succeeded, and the margin between colonies that survived
and those that failed was small. Both contribute to our understanding of
the ordeals of the Europeans who first settled in the New World and of
the Native Americans who had to interact with them, but with the
exception of the famous lost Roanoke colony, the failed colonies of
North America remain largely unknown except to specialists in colonial
history. The Spanish and French repeatedly attempted to colonize parts
of Georgia, Florida, and Virginia, while the Dutch, French, and English
sought to establish permanent settlements along the northern waterways
of the New World. The greatest problem faced by every colony was the
specter of starvation. Native Americans gave food to newly arrived
colonists, but such generosity could not endure. Indigenous people soon
realized that colonists of every nationality were prepared to make war
against Native peoples, conquer, subjugate, and even massacre whole
communities unless they were cooperative and offered no resistance to
the intrusion into their territory. In response, Native Americans
withheld aid or resorted to retaliatory violence, dooming many European
settlements.
In We Could Perceive No Sign of Them: Failed Colonies in North America,
1526-1689, historians David MacDonald and Raine Waters tell the
fascinating stories of the many attempts to establish a European
foothold in the New World, from the first Spanish colony in 1526 on the
coast of Georgia to the final disastrous French endeavors near the
arctic. Using primary source texts, the authors synthesize the shared
experiences of Europeans to better understand the very fine line between
success and failure and the varieties of Native American responses.
