1623 - Exploration, Colonization

Exploration, Colonization

Another large group of English colonists arrives at Plymouth.

The port of Gloucester is founded in the Massachusetts Bay colony.

The Dutch make Nieuw Nederland a formally organized province and organize a group of families to settle there (see 1614). The Dutch West India Company chartered 2 years ago draws up Provisional Regulations for Colonists under whose terms they are to be provided with clothing and supplies from the company's storehouses, these to be paid for at modest prices in installments, but the colonists may not produce any handicrafts and may engage in trade only if they sell their wares to the company. They must promise to stay for at least 6 years and to settle wherever the company locates them (see 1624).

Sir Thomas Warner arrives in the Caribbean and establishes the first successful English colony in the West Indies on the west coast of Saint Christopher, whose name will be shortened by the colonists to Saint Kitts (see 1632; Columbus, 1493; Bélain, 1627).