Throughout history different nations migrated from one area to the next for various reasons. Some of these reasons could have been as basic as survival, while others could have been as complex as empire building through colonization. The struggles of colonization is the main subject for Karen Ordahl Kupperman’s Jamestown Project<\/em>. I found her work to be informative on the levels of success and failures that plagued early English colonies in North America. Kupperman’s discussion regarding the similarities and differences between the Jamestown colony and the Plymouth colony showcases the difficulty with maintaining a successful colony. Jamestown was established before Plymouth, in May 1607, and had to start from scratch without any previous English colony successes to learn from. I thought it was interesting that the colony may have been settled to produce goods and add territory for the motherland, but soon struggled to maintain basic survival for the English colonist living within. Disease, lack of useful farming knowledge, and poor environmental conditions nearly killed off the English colonists. Only through the intervention of the Chesapeake Algonquians did the colonists gain colonial successes through trading of goods and sharing of farming techniques. As my colleague Matt Everett<\/a> had put it, \u201cJamestown was able to learn from past mistakes in a short time given how late England was in comparison to other European powers.\u201d In contrast, the colonist in Plymouth achieved quicker success in 1620 by learning from the mistakes of Jamestown. Though, instead of migrating for economic gain and free land, these colonist left England to escape religious persecution. Putting their beliefs in God before profit, these Puritans were able to establish a successful community in an environment with adequate resources.<\/p>\n These examples of English exploration and colonization in North America both expressed similar patterns in maintaining survival and striving to adapt to a new environment. I believe that these patterns are similar to the concepts brought up in George E. Brooks Ecological Perspectives<\/em>. Though a lot dryer in information than Kupperman’s work, Brooks ideas are still interesting as he discusses the migration patterns of a West African tribe of Mande-speaking people. The West African tribe would often migrate in response to climate conditions in the region. These Mande-speaking people would strive to establish their culture and beliefs within their new settlements similar to the English colonists in North America. The West African tribe would migrate northwards to take advantage of the \u201cGreen Sahara,\u201d a favorable environment with an abundant of resources. Though the Mande-speaking people moved for, seemingly, primitive reasons their motives are still relatable to English colonists motives in Jamestown and Plymouth. Both colonies had sought out environments with favorable amounts of resources. What is even more eye opening is that the Mande-speaking tribes were able to convince other tribes to adopt their languages, institutions, and cultural patterns through trade, land usage, and (sometimes) dominance. This is comparable to the manner of which the Europeans would further colonize the Americas and its native people, though the method of dominance would play a more substantial role for European colonization. By striving to establish settlements colonist had enacted commonly held strategies for survival in an unknown area. These commonly held strategies help us to further understand that migrating great distances and establishing settlements is not a uniquely European concept.<\/p>\n