or were the colonists simply lining their pockets via the new world?
Were the Plymouth pilgrims the first libertarians (or ancestors of the concept)?
I had long forgotten how much activity and time elapsed in the new colonies, before the separatists landed in New England. King James had sent the English hundreds of years before the Revolutionary war took place.
What were those original colonists really doing - was it all for King and country?
This came about because someone mentioned to me that the majority of native Americans allied with England during the American revolution, because they believed once the fight was over, the expansion of the empire would cease should the British win.
If this was true, then how would the colonists continue to prosper?
It’s complicated. But mostly people who chose to come to the colonies were looking to strike it rich. There was far more opportunity available than in England.
The various tribes mostly aligned with the British during the war because the British had proven themselves trustworthy in regards to treaties and land grants. The colonists, not so much, as they tended to see the natives as obstacles to making money off the land.
Judge by results, I guess. The U.S. turned out mostly okay. A bit too bellicose, and the whole slavery thing was handled unutterably clumsily. Still, all in all, it’s a pretty good country.
It could have gone horribly wrong, in so many ways. The French Revolution had at least some promise, and went straight to hades. The Russian Revolution was also based on good principles, but went bad. Today, we’re watching Egypt try to maintain the straight-and-narrow path, and to resist the temptation toward tyranny. Will they succeed?
Canada and Australia managed things a little better than the U.S. did. Maybe if we’d been more patient, we could have followed a path a little more like theirs.