What were the political, economic and religious reasons for the
colonist coming to America?

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Request for Question Clarification by mvguy-ga on 16 Oct 2002 16:02 PDT

Which time period are you interested in? The earliest colonists had
different motivations than some of the later ones.  Thanks!

Last year I read Vilhelm Moberg's Emigrant Novels - which gave a
fascinating insight into the reasons for one particular group of
Swedish colonists to go to America. However, I suspect that there are
many, many reasons including fear, greed, starvation, oppression,
religious differences and so on. It is difficult to appreciate quite
how different life was in Europe then than now and hence to understand
the reasons without considerable research.