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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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