early colonial period

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New England and the Middle Colonies While another lecture looked at the southern colonies and the influence of Spain on some regions of what would become America, this will touch on New France and the English colonies above the Chesapeake. The French controlled territory in the Great Lakes region and the waterways South of that and inland from the east coast, and were not as interested in establishing colonies, although they had established Nova Scotia and Quebec around the same time the English founded Jamestown. They were interested in the natural resources America could provide, and had a strong focus on trade, especially in furs, which led to a different type of relationship with Native peoples in the New World, primarily the Mohawks, Hurons, and Iroquois. The Fur Trade shows how eager not only Europeans were for furs for fashion, but also how eager Native peoples were for European trade goods. They adapted new things like knives and cooking pots into their lives which helped out countless ways. Unfortunately rum was not a good addition, and some studies have shown that the indigenous of North America did not have a “natural immunity” to fermented beverages. Many civilizations had fermented beverages like beer, mead, wine, pulque, and sake. They did not and thus it hit them hard. The fur trade also led to wars over territory for more hunting. Neighboring tribes often fought with one another in Beaver Wars to have control over hunting territory, which shifted the dynamic in indigenous relations. Jesuit priests eager to pursue more Catholic converts and traders lived with the people, for the most part they engaged in a respectful relationship with one another, realizing that partnerships were necessary. Meanwhile in Britain religious conflict continued to rock the nation, and in the early 1600s as royal siblings of Protestant, then Catholic and then Protestant persuasion again came to power there were groups that fled. Puritans sought to “purify” the Church of England from its Catholic abuses, and yet it was created mainly because Henry VIII wanted a son, not because of religious doctrine. They felt there was too much ritual and not enough focus on the Bible, and they adopted John Calvin’s ideology on predestination and the “elect.” That ideology basically stated that God had chosen a certain number of souls for heaven. A human could not know whether God had chosen him or her, but could look for clues. If he or she were chosen they would be the “elect.” They looked for “signs” of God’s choosing them largely based on their wealth and status. The original Pilgrims believed that the Church of England was too corrupt for saving, and having fled England to Holland, they left again to start anew in 1620 aboard the Mayflower and established a colony at Plymouth. Captain John Smith dubbed the area they landed “New England,” and today it refers to the region of the northern former colonies of the eastern seaboard. The colony was chartered by the Virginia Company and the Pilgrims would need to send lumber, furs and fish back to the merchants for 7 years. When they landed they had a dearth of supplies and many did not survive, but after the first winter with the help of the 1 Wampanoags led by Massasoit they began to thrive. Most students are familiar with the feast of Thanksgiving they gave the following fall in honor of their first successful harvest. Meanwhile in England in the 1620s Puritan Congregationalists rejected reforms made by the King and were persecuted, leading to the formation of the Massachusetts Bay Company and their migration to the New World in 1629. Plymouth was eventually absorbed into the larger Massachusetts Bay Company, and many small towns such as Boston, Salem, and such grew to depend on maritime trade as well as small farming, timber, and fishing. The climate of New England was more akin to what Englishmen and women were accustomed to, and those who went to the region tended to move in families, thus the demographics of the region differed a great deal from the Chesapeake. Not only was there more of an equal ratio of men to women, but they lived much longer, giving a stability to New England the Chesapeake lacked. The economy was also much more diverse, as trade and agriculture supplemented timber and fishing. Religion also had a much stronger role in New England society than in Southern society. The strict structure of Puritan thought and action meant that society would be controlled by the church, and local government leaders were also church elders. Women could certainly be the elect or saved, but they were considered helpmates to their men. One would think that since the Puritans were persecuted in England that they would have religious tolerance in America, but that would be naive. They thought of themselves as saviors for the Church of England, purifying the church of its “popery.” Governor John Winthrop made an analogy to Matthew 5:14’s description of Jesus’ sermon on the mount, describing the Puritans and their goal of creating a new nation as a beacon of light shining on a “city upon a hill.” This is still an important mindset, in a way asserting that American/Puritan values would be an example to the world, but also it could demonstrate that they were God’s chosen people. While some sought to purify the Church and head back to England, most hoped to transplant what they liked about the Old World and create a better one here. Puritans wanted to recreate their same institutions albeit a bit more democratically. Cracking down on dissidents also led to a more ordered society, thus Quakers and Catholics in particular were persecuted. Some religious groups branched off willfully as in the case of Connecticut, while others were exiled. For example Roger Williams founded Rhode Island after exiled for espousing separating from the Church of England, and supported purchasing land from the local Indians rather than simply taking it. Anne Hutchinson might have founded her own colony if she had been a man. She began essentially ministering or giving sermons to men and women in her home, expanding on that week’s lessons from her minister. Authorities rejected the right of a woman to do so, and they feared she espoused controversial opinions on church doctrine. They exiled her and her followers and she died from an Indian attack. 2 Conflicts with Indians were still very common given that the number of white colonists increased and wanted their land. While epidemics swept through and killed a large number just before the Pilgrims arrived, the Indians weren’t ready to simply give up. It led to contentious battles and fear on both sides throughout the colonial period. While some Wampanoags converted to Christianity and relocated to “praying towns” others became angered at colonists’ animals eating their fields and pushing for more land. For example Massasoit’s son Metacom, also known as King Phillip, led a revolt near Boston and laid waste to local villages that devastated the white population in 1676, and yet more came. Some historians have argued that there were brutal Indian wars near Salem around the time that the witch craze occurred in 1692. Conflict between Salem Village and Salem Town erupted, as did conflict over local ministers. Young women in the village had the least power of anyone, and while women were considered helpmates to their husbands, they were often sent out to work in other peoples’ homes. In fact many Puritans didn’t trust parents to whip the sin out of their children properly so it was common for youth to live in another household and act as essentially servants or apprentices to others. Historians could argue over the real causes of the witch accusations for another 300 years we don’t know exactly why young girls began accusing older women of being witches. In a society that looked at much it didn’t understand as the mysterious workings of god or the devil, their accusations were taken seriously. Part of why we know much about the Salem Witch Trials is because Puritans were great record keepers as they tried the alleged witches in court. At the time some felt that the girls were faking it as they writhed in pain and agonized over being harassed by unseen spirits. That the court allowed “spectral evidence” that no one but the accuser could see was troubling. Over 150 men, women and children were accused, and In the end 19 mostly women were killed and then local leaders stopped the trials. Remember that these women were not practicing “witches,” but Puritans who others believed were influenced by the devil. It was not a religious persecution but more an act of establishing order within society. The Mid-Atlantic colonies were a sort of hybrid of New England and the southern colonies. They were generally much more diverse in terms of Europeans living there and religions practiced, although note that they were overwhelmingly Christian, just different denominations of Protestant Christianity. New York would become a very important colony, as would Pennsylvania. New York began as New Amsterdam, as the Dutch had a strong navy and trade networks. Later King Charles II simply gained New York by granting the title to the land to his brother the Duke of York. Pennsylvania, like Maryland and the Carolinas was a proprietary colony given to Quaker William Penn by King Charles for an unpaid debt. Penn established the colony as a religious haven and sold land cheap to attract settlers, while espousing compensating Indians for land purchases. Port Cities and a mild climate made the economy varied and welcoming in these Middle Atlantic colonies, with small farmers growing a wider variety of crops. This led to more diversity in the economy and demographics. 3 During the colonial era the King at different times had control over the various colonies, at one point taking control of the Virginia Colony, and in 1686 the Crown consolidated Connecticut, Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and New Hampshire into one colony called the Dominion of New England, then added New York and New Jersey. Needless to say the colonists weren’t happy about this overreach, and in England King James was overthrown in what was called the Glorious Revolution because no one was killed in the process. His daughter Mary and her husband William ascended the throne, and by the end of the 1600s politics in England caused many to stop paying attention to the colonies for a while, as long as they supplied natural resources, paid their taxes and followed the Navigation Acts. Historians have called this period one of “salutary” or “benign neglect” – where the healthy neglect of the King and Parliament allowed the colonies to stabilize and prosper. Karin Enloe, PhD 4 Colonizing the South In many ways you can see the conflicts that erupted in Europe when exploring how the American South was colonized. The religious and political struggles between England, France and Spain continued and manifested themselves in the New World. The Spanish were interested in expanding their empire to North America, first to look for gold and riches as they had done previously, but also for strategic reasons. They set up missions with monks attempting to convert the Natives to Christianity while often the military forced the peoples to pay tribute or goods to sustain the Spaniards. One thing that is interesting to note is it might have appeared that the Indians were converting to Christianity for a number of reasons. Disease ravaged their communities and yet the Spaniards weren’t affected – they might have reasoned that performing Catholic rituals would protect them. In a previous lecture I mentioned that Indians were dynamic, meaning they adapted when new resources showed up. So they could have adapted some of the rituals into their everyday lives as a way of warding off death. Missionaries were shocked that they only adopted some things and not all the aspects of Catholicism, and continued conflict led to the Pueblo Revolt. The Pueblo people in modern New Mexico lived with a small Spanish population in Santa Fe, established in 1610. The Pueblos did well but suffered from disease outbreaks, threat of captivity, and forced labor for the Spaniards. When the Pueblo tried to reassert their own religion over Catholicism the authorities cracked down by executing two and publicly punishing others. This led to a revolt in 1680 spanning multiple villages led by Popé, a Tewa man. The Spaniards fled for a decade, but in time they returned. The Spaniards also established colonies in Florida to ensure that the English and French would not encroach on their territory to the South. Often people think of America being founded on religious freedom, and while that was important for the Puritans in New England, those in the southern colonies were interested foremost in wealth. Joint stock companies that allowed investors to pool their money in the hopes of sharing profits asked the king for charters to establish colonies: they were capitalist enterprises. The English crown sought higher revenues through Mercantilism, which ideally set up a system of trade that favored the crown, and colonies were an important part of that system, sending back trade goods that could then be sold for a profit. In the same vein of ensuring a monopoly on trade, Parliament passed the Navigation Acts that ensured that colonists could not directly trade with France, Spain and the Netherlands. All trade was supposed to go through Britain first. Established in 1606, the Virginia Company laid claim to the Chesapeake region, the area around Chesapeake Bay that would later encompass parts of Virginia and Maryland. The Company first founded the settlement of Jamestown in 1607, and yet it was poorly run and managed. The majority of settlers were male and 1 wanted to get rich quick, and thus they didn’t pay attention to the little tasks of survival. Coupled with environmental conditions that led to malaria and sickness and few provisions it was a tough place and most died. The soil and climate did provide for a crop that was coveted in Europe: tobacco. John Rolfe, married to the powerful chief Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas, helped develop tobacco and made it thrive. A boom in tobacco cultivation had the possibility of making people rich and could be very profitable if one survived the climate, thus English men and women signed on to be indentured servants, where they received a paid journey to America and in return served their masters a term of between 4 and 7 years, at which point they would gain their freedom. All of the land needed for tobacco cultivation led to conflicts with Indians, therefore life in the Chesapeake was tenuous as swampy lands were harsh, there were Indian attacks, and often tobacco was planted instead of actual foodstuffs, causing starvation. Thus certainly not all indentured servants lived to the end of their contracts, as a great many free people did not as well. The Virginia Company sought a new influx of settlers as others died off, and one way to encourage people to migrate to America was its relative autonomy. The headright system granted land to free settlers, not servants, and new settlers received grants of land based on their status and how many family members and servants they could muster. The Company also allowed free men input in the House of Burgesses, or governing body. Virginia is also heavily associated with the rise of slavery, partly because it was the first English colony and can document the first Africans that were sold as slaves in 1619. In the early years planters relied on indentured servants, and as mentioned in a previous lecture slaves were mostly used for sugar cane plantations. Tobacco production was laborious though, and as the boom increased throughout the 1600s more Africans suffered through the perilous Middle Passage journey from Africa to the New World. While the vast majority went to places like Brazil and the Caribbean to work in sugar cane production, a growing percentage were auctioned in America. The Atlantic Slave trade became a type of “triangle trade” of globalization, where slave ships left Britain for West Africa carrying manufactured items, which were traded for captured men, women and African children. The enslaved were then densely packed into ships that sailed to the West Indies, where they were sold at auctions. With the money goods such as sugar, coffee and tobacco or rum went back to Britain or her colonies. While the earliest enslaved peoples were treated like indentured servants and might have gone on to earn their freedom, as time wore on the legal system began to single out blacks to be permanently enslaved. European society was a patriarchal with heredity passed down through fathers, but colonial legislation passed the condition of servitude down through the African mother, allowing enslaved women to produce more slaves for their masters. Additionally, as the population adapted to the climate of the region, fewer died as quickly and they could be more profitable. One of the catalysts for importing more human chattel 2 stemmed from continued Indian conflicts in the Virginia countryside. Nathanial Bacon led a rebellion against the British backed government of Virginia to punish Indian peoples against perceived raids and threats. His men attacked friendly as well as hostile Indians. He also appealed to the lower-class freedmen that had once been indentured servants, and some blacks. When his rebellion was put down the sharp inequality in society made local elite realize that with a growing population of white men freed from their indentures and angry at lack of opportunity things needed to change. The Rebellion helped shift the labor force from European indentures to African slaves. Of course Virginia was not the only southern colony, nor even the only Chesapeake colony. While it was founded as a joint-stock company, the other southern colonies were established because the King gave their founders the land. The crown granted the Calvert family a charter for Maryland, which they used as a type of feudal system granting land to powerful families and expecting smaller landholders to pay rents. In addition the Catholic family allowed the colony to act as a haven for Catholics, who were were persecuted in England. It allowed for religious toleration and had an economy also focused on tobacco production. Aristocrats founded the Carolinas in a similar way in 1663, and focused the economy in North and South Carolina on tobacco and rice production. Continued conflicts with Native peoples in the region were par for the course, as most white settlers didn’t respect the Indian peoples’ ties to the land and right to continue living on it. Georgia was founded a bit later in the mid 1700s, as South Carolina sought a buffer zone between itself and Spanish Florida. Calls went out to poor Protestants throughout Europe who would work hard in order to gain land and live virtuous lives. Those who could pay their own way earned more land. In the hopes of keeping the colony filled with small farmers the charter also designated that settlers should gain relatively small parcels, which would not support slavery, and they should abstain from liquor. By the 1750s these idealistic principals were abandoned. It’s economy was mostly on rice and the Indian trade. While the Southern colonies had differing foundations, we can see some similarities. They focused on cash crops like tobacco and rice, and continued to have direct conflicts with Native peoples, especially when they encroached on their land. This focus on cash crops led to importing labor, both indentured servants and then enslaved peoples. The demographics of the region heavily favored men, especially in the early years. The environment led to disease and short life spans for most whites, thus it was a gamble whether moving to the southern colonies would pay off or not. Karin Enloe, PhD 3 The Maturing Colonies of the 1700s America was a diverse place in the 1700s, with people from all over the world living throughout the region. Spain had a strong presence in the West, France in the North, England on the eastern seaboard, and hundreds of Native groups throughout the region. Even in the English colonies there were French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Scots-Irish, Irish, Africans and many more groups practicing many forms of Christianity as well as Jews, Muslims and a vast array of people practicing various indigenous religions. As the decades went by, the tenuous nature of colonial life dissipated for people living in more established towns and villages. The swamp of the Chesapeake killed fewer people, and for the most part Americans lived peaceful lives with a bit of conflict here and there. In the inland areas there were more conflicts with Indians and groups like the Scots-Irish, who hated the English, focused on the Appalachian area and were wary of government. The Spanish continued to construct missions throughout their territory of the West and Florida, continuing mission-building through parts of what is today northern California and parts of Texas. The Spanish created large ranches for their people, while continuing to subdue Native peoples or expect them to pay tribute with goods and services. They of course ran into conflict with Native peoples the Comanches and Apache people. The French continued to expand their presence through the Great Lakes and the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, and had strong trading networks with Indian peoples there. One historian called the region the “Middle Ground” where they cooperated with one another in order to keep the peace. The French established settlements in what because Louisiana, with New Orleans becoming an important city at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi River. The potential for trade was great. The region imported African slaves or already enslaved people from the Caribbean and grew tobacco and indigo. In British colonial America the populations grew steadily, which put pressure for people to continually move West for more land and resources. While the British and French both claimed land between the Ohio River and the Appalachian Mountain Range, American Indian tribes continued to also live there. Colonial cities on the Eastern seaboard grew and prospered from trade, not only of natural resources, but also the continually growing slave trade, which northern maritime merchants benefited from just as much as the growing colonial planter class that profited from tobacco production. The majority of people living in America were small farmers, and the majority were Protestant Christians. They tended to live in areas or communities with people from the Old World, unless they lived in the cities or villages that thrived on the coast. New York, Philadelphia and Boston were two of the most important hubs for trade during his period. They had large maritime commerce hubs and artisans living throughout the cities, growing publishing houses and newspapers, 1 and imported a great deal of goods from Europe to sell to the growing consumer class of women who had gone from being important producers in their communities to consumers of goods as their families did better. Enslaved people lived throughout the colonies, not only in the South. Slavery wasn’t as profitable in New England or the Mid-Atlantic colonies, but it existed. New York had a large enslaved population, but tobacco plantations took the most labor, and thus the majority of enslaved people became congregated in areas where tobacco could grow. Some worked the “task system” where they had relative freedom to complete their work and then do what they wanted. Especially those living in urban areas with masters who lent them out for skilled work or some on rice farms engaged in work by task. Tobacco farmers worked their slaves in gangs. While cotton was produced on a small scale, it was not profitable in the 1700s, thus was not the leading crop produced by slave labor during the colonial era. Slaves developed distinct communities with African values and carryovers, but they had to adapt as people from different tribes and languages were integrated together, and while by the late colonial period the majority would have been born in America, large numbers continued to be “imported” in via the Atlantic Slave Trade until 1808. Slaves were encouraged to have families, or at least to procreate in order to have a stable family life, which would discourage running away, and to enhance the master’s work force. But slaves could also be sold at any time, thus slave families were often torn apart by the death or debt of a master. There were ways of resisting slavery, one of which was running away, which was easier in the colonial period than in later periods. But there were other ways of subverting the master, from acting lazy and stupid to breaking tools and such. There were outright revolts in parts of the Caribbean and South America but very few in America. One of my favorite topics is the Enlightenment! It sets apart the colonial era from the modern one, and helps modern Americans understand people of the past much easier than those who for example led the Salem Witch Trials and believed that God or the devil was directly influencing the accusers. The major buzzwords of the Enlightenment were things like natural law, reason, and progress, and as the superstition of earlier colonials died down, pragmatists like the founding fathers sought to make life better for all. The Enlightenment offered hope that the world would operate on a progression, it would get better over time. In America that certainly seemed the case. It influenced wealthier individuals who could read, and it helped make them question authority and what had been known of the world prior to that time. While a larger percentage of Americans could read than Europeans, their numbers were higher in New England where Puritan ideology encouraged people to read the Bible for themselves. The Enlightenment encouraged people to question authority and the status quo, to question that some men had control over others. Benjamin Franklin is the most well-known Enlightenment personality in America, and his scientific experiments were very much in line with the way Enlightenment thinkers stressed science and reason 2 over emotion and superstition. Thomas Jefferson was also an important Enlightenment thinker, and his close attention to scientific observation and wide reading in many subjects spoke to his understanding of the intellectual ideology flowing through Europe at that time. Poorer people and those who could not read generally were more religious and influenced by the Great Awakening, a religious movement that also questioned the authority of established churches in America and led to a more democratic element in religion as well as politics. The Great Awakening stressed the personal relationship people had with God, and often questioned the older denominations who had trained ministers. It also had great ministers that traveled throughout parts of America getting people excited about their religious revival, for example George Whitefield was a traveling minister that whipped people up into a frenzy and challenged communities. Communities outright were split on the revival, and some outlawed his speaking to their congregations. In many ways Americans were very similar to their English counterparts. They paid taxes, they purchased consumer goods, they farmed, they engaged in maritime trade, they benefited from the Atlantic Slave Trade, etc. In many respects Americans were happy to largely be a part of the British Empire, the most powerful European nation in the world at that time. But that love affair wouldn’t last. Karin Enloe, PhD 3
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Early Colonial Period outline
Writing Summaries




Colonizing the South
New England and the Middle Colonies
The Maturing Colonies of the 1700s


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The Maturing Colonies of the 1700s
The chapter on the colonies that matured in the 1700s is very vital in understanding the
history of Britain, France, and Spain as superpowers. It presents the many religions that were
being practiced during the time. Each colony worked to expand their territories and establish
mission centers for their presence to be felt. I have been more interested in the French people
who had many trade activities with the Indians. Their areas of settlement had slaves who worked
on tobacco farms.
How did colonial cities grow? They grew through trade, exploit of natural resources and the
slave trade. They benefited from tobacco production greatly. Most of the inhabitants of America
were small farmers who practiced protestant Christianity. The chapter also exposes how the slave
managed life; they had families and procreated, in addition to gaining stability every stage. They
always tried to ...


Anonymous
Excellent! Definitely coming back for more study materials.

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