and spread to Australia (New South Wales) and Bermuda where they had a rum plantation. Later they migrated to America and became part of the Patriots of the Revolutionary War.

From having superior weapons for these last 500 years...

Industrial Revolution.

What?

Would you please give us a brief description of your educational process? Thanks. Meanwhile:

The colonization of Virginia was intended to be a money-making venture from the get-go:

London Company

The London Company (also called the Charter of the Virginia Company of London) was an English joint stock company established in 1606 by royal charter by King James I with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.

The territory granted to the London Company included the coast south America from the 34th parallel (Cape Fear) north to the 41st parallel (in Long Island Sound). As part of the Virginia Company and Colony, the London Company owned a large portion of Atlantic and Inland Canada. The company was permitted by its charter to establish a 100-square-mile (260 km2) settlement within this area. The portion of the company's territory north of the 38th parallel was shared with the Plymouth Company, with the stipulation that neither company found a colony within 100 miles (161 km) of each other.

Jamestown, Virginia

Their extreme version of Christianity....

Jamestown was a corporate installation.
Same with Bermuda, St. Kitt, Nevis, and most of the French, Dutch and British Caribbean.
Same with British India.
Plymouth had a Royal charter; they left England for the Netherlands because England wasn't buying their religious extremism; then they left the Netherlands because the Netherlands was too tolerant and their children weren't growing up to be proper intolerant little Calvinists.
Pennsylvania was a corporate installation granted to a wealthy representative of a religious minority.
Maryland was a corporate installation granted to a wealthy representative of a religious minority.
The Carolinas were both corporate installations and a dumping ground for the extra sons of the aristocracy, to prevent said subsequent brats from fomenting rebellion or impoverishing themselves and their brothers.
Georgia was founded as a transportation colony. (read: private prison).
New Amsterdam was a corporate installation from a rival corporate entity that became a war prize.

The freedoms were all marketing and PR from the corporate charter holders to get the rubes to a) invest, and b) pack up their stuff, cross an ocean, and go make money for the corporate charter holders.

Among my ancestors are the religious fanatics, not only in Massachusetts, but French Huguenots in Virginia, and German Palatines in the Carolinas. Some bought land from William Penn while they were being "persecuted" in Ireland and in Cheshire because they refused to pay their taxes or follow the laws. I had ancestors who were early settlers of New Amsterdam (one was the first female child born in Fort Orange) because they were wealthy enough to buy in.

The term "freeman" in most of the New England colonies meant that the person had bought a share in the governance and was permitted to buy land and participate in the government. Much of the population was not "free" as we would call it - they were indentured servants who had to work their way out of essential slavery and they had few rights. In 1630, one of my ancestors, Walter Palmer of Charlestown, Massachusetts was tried for the death of Austen Bratcher 'at Mr. Craddock's plantation,' it being alleged that 'the strokes given by Walter Palmer were occasionally the means of death of Austen Bratcher & so to be manslaughter.' Palmer was found not guilty of manslaughter by the trial jury.

Politicat your answer is the best and most complete.

However I'd like to add one set of facts to the history of Pennsylvania. As most of us know Pennsylvania was one of the 13 original colonies so it goes back to the early 1500s. It began as a landgrant to William Penn, a wealthy Englishman Quaker who never actually came to the colony. Penn tried to get English people to become settlers on his land but by then word had spread about how difficult and precarious it was trying to survive in the wilderness of Penn's Woods. The Quakers were an early English religious group who agreed to establish a settlement near the port of Philadelphia.

William Penn was interested in religious freedom and he offered free land to any religious group who wanted to relocate to the New World. That was how the group of German Protestants led by Daniel Pastorius agreed to settle in the area west of Philadelphia and they eventually came in great numbers. The Germans were originally motivated by religious freedom, but eventually the later settlers came for economic opportunity. The chance to own their own land and become prosperous through their own labor became the motive with later German settlers. Also the young men who came to Pennsylvania wanted to escape conscription into armies of their kings/dukes/princes who always seemed to be fighting endless wars. Most of the Germans were farmers and tradesmen of some kind, and they settled in peaceful communities near like-minded people. For the most part, English and German settlers got along well in Pennsylvania and were good neighbors.

on the lam!

Her life in Europe wasn't going well. Maybe she believed the Mormon propaganda of a new Eden in the West, or maybe she figured anything was better than nothing and was grasping at straws.

It turned out she didn't like sharing a husband when she got here so she ran away with a monogamous man and they established a homestead that's still a long ways from the nearest WalMart and sometimes inaccessible in the winter.

The stories of my 17th and 18th century immigrant ancestors are perhaps equally gritty. There's not a revolutionary or civil war hero among them. They had a tradition of living where war and troubles were not.

I'm not sure an abstract notion of "wanting to be free" played a part in my family history. Not wanting to starve, not wanting to die in prison or be killed as political or religious dissidents is not the same as wanting to be free.

One of my grandfathers came from a pacifist religious tradition, always a dangerous position when the flames of nationalism run high. He himself was a conscientious objector in World War II. It was not a popular position and he was offered some stark choices. He ended up as a welder building, repairing, and refitting ships for the Merchant Marine; Liberty and Victory ships, etc..

I was lucky to have high school history teachers who didn't teach the usual watery bullshit. My kids were fortunate to have the same sort of teacher. Zinn's "A People's History..." was one of their assigned texts and he had zero patience with parents who choked on that. Nothing like "How Texas is whitewashing Civil War history"

Many kids who suffer crap high school history courses are shocked when they take their first college history course. (If it's a good college, a *real* college... )

Polish Jews getting out while the going was possible.

Fathers: German who arrived just before the Revolution, probably to score the cheap/free land. Irish who didn't want to starve to death.

Mothers: English who arrived 17th century, don't know why. Could have been religion or indentured servant or that land thing again. German who bailed out of the army.

Don't expect a lot of fair and balanced in human history. We've been robbing each other blind long before 1492.

And anyway, my ancestors didn't left Europe until the 19th century--a colorful bunch, if not all exactly distinguished. One grandfather's side was a bunch of deadbeat Mississippi Riverboat gamblers who fled to New York to escape their debts, and my maternal grandfather was born into poverty in NYC. My other grandfather was born to a poor tailor in South Carolina, worked his way through college as a janitor, eventually became a deputy mayor of New York City. His wife, my paternal grandmother, was the daughter of an immigrant Austro-Hungarian Jew who became a hotshot lawyer in New York. She got herself fired by Fiorello Laguardia, who had brought her into his administration as a labor liason. She got too cozy with labor for LaGuardia's tastes, and he canned her.

Anyway, none of my ancestry comes from England, and from the little I have heard, they all left Central or Eastern Europe because they hoped for a better economic future for themselves. Of the generation that first set foot on North America, only the one lawyer really made it. The others never got far, but some of their children fared better. Interestingly enough, the ones that made it (or whose children did) moved up north to New York City (the lawyer landed there to begin with). My siblings and I, as well as my mom's sister and her children, were all born back in the South. Most are still there, except for my sister (NJ) and me (Rheinland).

On the other hand, my wife's ancestors were farmers in Northwestern Germany for at least 500 years until the end of World War II. When her dad got a leg blown off at age 18, his farming career was over, and he got a desk job. Some of the others are still farmers. Her family never left Europe at all. Neither did she, which is why I moved here.

were for plantation wealth. French were for trade and land.

Just a slightly larger nutshell than yours.