on the Continent. It was consequently to the smaller islands which
compose the Leeward and Windward groups that the English, French and
Dutch first resorted as colonists. Small, and therefore "easy to settle,
easy to depopulate and to re-people, attractive not only on account of
their own wealth, but also as a starting-point for the vast and rich
continent off which they lie," these islands became the pawns in a game
of diplomacy and colonization which continued for 150 years.

In the seventeenth century, moreover, the Spanish monarchy was declining
rapidly both in power and prestige, and its empire, though still
formidable, no longer overshadowed the other nations of Europe as in the
days of Charles V. and Philip II. France, with the Bourbons on the
throne, was entering upon an era of rapid expansion at home and abroad,
while the Dutch, by the truce of 1609, virtually obtained the freedom
for which they had struggled so long. In England Queen Elizabeth had
died in 1603, and her Stuart successor exchanged her policy of
dalliance, of balance between France and Spain, for one of peace and
conciliation. The aristocratic free-booters who had enriched themselves
by harassing the Spanish Indies were succeeded by a less romantic but
more business-like generation, which devoted itself to trade and
planting. Abortive attempts at colonization had been made in the
sixteenth century. The Dutch, who were trading in the West Indies as
early as 1542, by 1580 seem to have gained some foothold in Guiana;[58]
and the French Huguenots, under the patronage of the Admiral de Coligny,
made three unsuccessful efforts to form settlements on the American
continent, one in Brazil in 1555, another near Port Royal in South
Carolina in 1562, and two years later a third on the St. John's River in
Florida. The only English effort in the sixteenth century was the vain
attempt of Sir Walter Raleigh between 1585 and 1590 to plant a colony on
Roanoke Island, on the coast of what is now North Carolina. It was not
till 1607 that the first permanent English settlement in America was
made at Jamestown in Virginia. Between 1609 and 1619 numerous stations
were established by English, Dutch and French in Guiana between the
mouth of the Orinoco and that of the Amazon. In 1621 the Dutch West
India Company was incorporated, and a few years later proposals for a
similar company were broached in England. Among the West Indian Islands,
St. Kitts received its first Eng