<P> Economic advantage also prompted the Darien Scheme, an ill - fated venture by the Kingdom of Scotland to settle the Isthmus of Panama in the late 1690s . The Darien Scheme aimed to control trade through that part of the world and thereby promote Scotland into a world trading power . However, it was doomed by poor planning, short provisions, weak leadership, lack of demand for trade goods, and devastating disease . The failure of the Darien Scheme was one of the factors that led the Kingdom of Scotland into the Act of Union 1707 with the Kingdom of England creating the united Kingdom of Great Britain and giving Scotland commercial access to English, now British, colonies . </P> <P> In the French colonial regions, the focus of economy was on sugar plantations in Caribbean . In Canada the fur trade with the natives was important . About 16,000 French men and women became colonizers . The great majority became subsistence farmers along the St. Lawrence River . With a favorable disease environment and plenty of land and food, their numbers grew exponentially to 65,000 by 1760 . Their colony was taken over by Britain in 1760, but social, religious, legal, cultural and economic changes were few in a society that clung tightly to its recently formed traditions . </P> <P> Roman Catholics were the first major religious group to immigrate to the New World, as settlers in the colonies of Portugal and Spain (and later, France) belonged to that faith . English and Dutch colonies, on the other hand, tended to be more religiously diverse . Settlers to these colonies included Anglicans, Dutch Calvinists, English Puritans and other nonconformists, English Catholics, Scottish Presbyterians, French Huguenots, German and Swedish Lutherans, as well as Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, Moravians and Jews of various nationalities . </P> <P> Many groups of colonists went to the Americas searching for the right to practice their religion without persecution . The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century broke the unity of Western Christendom and led to the formation of numerous new religious sects, which often faced persecution by governmental authorities . In England, many people came to question the organization of the Church of England by the end of the 16th century . One of the primary manifestations of this was the Puritan movement, which sought to "purify" the existing Church of England of its many residual Catholic rites that they believed had no mention in the Bible . </P>

How did the new settlers take over the land