Before There Was A USA - Englishmen Found An Empire

Spain had a century's head start. France had the fur trade and the rivers. The Netherlands had New York. England had almost nothing in the New World — and then, in the space of a few generations, it had everything that mattered. Episode 5 of this 1955 television series — Englishmen Found An Empire — is the pivotal episode in the series. Father John Francis Bannon of Saint Louis University traces England's slow, stumbling entry into the colonisation of North America: the failed Roanoke settlement, the desperate early years of Jamestown, the Puritan migration to New England, and the gradual spread of English settlements down the Atlantic seaboard. What made England different wasn't just military power or royal ambition. It was the character of the people it sent — farmers, tradespeople, religious dissenters, and fortune seekers who came not just to extract wealth but to stay. That distinction — settlers rather than conquerors — would shape everything the United States eventually became. The common law tradition, representative assemblies, the idea of land ownership, the Protestant work ethic — all of it traces back to the particular kind of empire England chose to build. This is the episode where American history as most people understand it truly begins.