Mayflower Pilgrims

The Pilgrims or Pilgrim Fathers were early European settlers of the Plymouth Colony in present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States. The Pilgrims' leadership came from the religious congregations of Brownist English Dissenters who had fled the volatile political environment in England for the relative calm and tolerance of 16th–17th century Holland in the Netherlands. The Pilgrims held Calvinist religious beliefs similar to the Puritans but, unlike many Puritans, maintained that their congregations needed to be separated from the English state church. As a separatist group, they were also concerned that they might lose their English cultural identity if they emigrated to the Netherlands, so they arranged with English investors to establish a new colony in North America. The colony was established in 1620 and became the second successful English settlement in North America (after the founding of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607). While seeking religious freedom for their own group, the Pilgrims exhibited intolerance to other faiths. The Pilgrims' story became a central theme of the history and culture of the United States.

By this time, non-English European colonization of the Americas was also under way in New Netherland, New France, Essequibo, Colonial Brazil, Barbados, the Viceroyalty of Peru, and New Spain.

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