London, Treaty of
LONDON, TREATY OF
LONDON, TREATY OF (1604), brought to an end the formal warfare that had been waged since 1585 between England and Spain, endangering all English colonizing projects in the New World. The treaty temporarily eradicated this danger and, among other things, reopened "free commerce" between the two kingdoms "where commerce existed before the war." Spain intended this clause to exclude English merchants from its colonies overseas, but the English gave it the opposite interpretation, causing continued warfare "beyond the Line" and the rise of the buccaneers. Three years later, with the Spanish threat no longer pressing, King James I authorized the first permanent English settlement in the New World.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andrews, Charles M. The Colonial Period of American History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1934.
Davenport, Frances G. European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and Its Dependencies to 1648. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1937.
Raymond P.Stearns/a. g.
See alsoColonial Policy, British ; Colonial Settlements ; Colonial Wars ; Piracy .