I understand that a big reason for the Thirteen Colonies' high English-American population was that many of the colonies were established to house religious dissidents during the 1600s, but what about mercantilism-oriented colonies such as Virginia? I understand that a mass of Cavaliers fled to the colonies after the English Civil War, but they only numbered about 40,000 in Virginia. Virginia's population at the time of the first census in 1790 was 691,737, with the majority being free whites. Did Virginia and the other colonies' populations really multiply up to 20 times between 1660 and 1790 due only to breeding?
I think this is an extremely important question, as the colonies' large white population is a key feature that set the United States apart from other states born out of colonial rebellion. I want to know where that large population came from.
Another thing to consider is what was going on in Britain at the time. It was the period of the Enclosure Acts, when rural workers were being driven off of the land. Old-style communal open fields were being displaced by closed-off private holdings, which left a fair number of people who had nowhere to work. Lots of them moved to cities, where they became the labor force for the Industrial Revolution. And lots of them moved to the New World colonies.
Tobacco had become a valuable enough crop in the Seventeenth Century that it was worth it for planters to hire indentured servants to work the land: they'd front the cost of moving, and the immigrants would essentially be slaves for seven years to pay off the trip, after which they could seek their own fortune in the new world. So, a part of what was going on was the fact that the British colonies had a supply of British people to draw from to populate the area.
I'm getting this from college lectures by David Galenson. Let's see if I can find the reference. Ah, yes. Actually, this is an article Galenson wrote, and later expanded into books. He was specifically talking about the economics of indenture, but the implications as they pertain to this question are pretty clear.
Oh, and this is a little blurb on the UK Parliament's web site about land enclosure. It's pretty interesting, in that it kind of dances around the question of how people's lives were affected by the whole thing. But then, it's a government web site, so what can you expect?
The 13 Colonies in North America were founded as settlement colonies unlike the Spanish and French colonies that had other purposes. The British used their Irish Plantation system as a model to force the endogenous people off their land so they could have it. Before anyone had left England to settle Virginia the whole thing was planned out. That is why there were so few towns in Virginia as it stayed truer to the Irish Plantation system than anywhere else. It was all about setting up plantations (self sufficient farms) that would produce and export to England. The nearest stores were all in England and most of the big planters had choice land on the coast or on navigable rivers where ocean going vessels could dock.
What ultimately drove settlement was the feudal history of Europe. They got people to go to the New World by choice because they had no chance to move up in Europe due to their birth class but in the New World they could get land and a chance. Many people left Europe looking for this new opportunity as indentured servants. After their term was up they could get land (usually at the frontier of the colony so it would push outward away from the coast.) At first that was the main route of immigration. Many people went freely but there were lots of people sent against their own will. There were seven different paths to indenture and only two were by choice.
If you would like to learn more about Virginia colony you can read Conceived in Liberty, which is freely available online.
It also is available as a free audio book. Here is the chapter talking about bonded servants. A good listen IMO. It explains the seven routes as an indenture and the rise of slavery late in the 17th century.