Period 2: 1607-1754: Patterns of Empire and Resistance

Spanish Colonies

• spain maintained tight control over it’s colonial empire

• converted natives to christianity

• exploited labor of native pop (encomienda system - ended in 1550)

• Northern Portion = Viceroyalty of New Spain

• Souther Portion = Viceroyalty of Peru

Repartimiento System

• banned outright Indian slavery

• mandated indian labors be paid

• remained highly exploitive

• supplemented by African slave labor

French Colonies

• small pop

• great lakes region + ohio river valley

• diplomacy with natives (intermarriage) to get favorable trade (fur)

  • pushed natives to expand their territory to look for fur to trade (caused more conflict)

  • aligned themselves with Algonquian-speaking tribes

Dutch Colonies

• dutch colonies served as trading outposts: fur

• focused on sugar production and relied on african slave labor

• expedition to North America funded by the Dutch East India Company

• Dutch West India Company chartered to develop colonies in NA

• New Amsterdam = new york area - soon taken over by English

• tried to induce immigrants with land grants

• alliance with iroquois

English colonies

• much larger population

• joint-stock companies provided capital for overseas expansion

• had some sort of colonial legislatyre

Upper South

• (i.e. N. Carolina and Virginia): labor intensive tobacco

  • exhausted soil - led to encroachment of native land

  • became staple crop

  • brought indentured servants and African slaves as laborers

• Virginia: House of Burgesses

Jamestown

• expedition funded by the Virginia Company

  • struggled due to the “starving time”

  • rocky relationship with natives

Maryland

• catholic refuge

New England

• first settlers = puritans

  • belief in predestination

• Pilgrims: separatist community of English Calvinists got land grant from Virginia Company

  • Mayflower Compact

• Massachusetts Bay Colony

  • Puritans

  • John Winthrop

  • “a city set upon a hill”

  • a “great migration” of middle class ppl to this colony

• Town meetings: direct democracy

• diverse economy: agriculture, fishing, timber, rum

Rhode Island

• Roger Williams

• seperation of church and state

• dissenter in masachussets

• critical of mistreatment of natives

Anne Hutchinson

• woman in puritan new england

• challenged contemporary gender norms

• banished - established settlement in rhode island

Connecticut

• Thomas Hooker

• believed everyone living a godly life should be able to be a part of the church

• formed colony of Connecticut

  • Fundamental Orders of Connecticut

Halfway Convenant

• potential new members of puritan churches in new england had to demonstrate to church elders that they had undergone a conversion experience

• Congregational Church

• in order to heighten Puritan zeal

Salem Witch Trials

• 1692

• Massachusetts

• women accused of witchcraft

The Middle Colonies

• mose diverse

• export economy + cultiviation of cereal crops

  • used indentureed servants “redemtioners”

• Pennsylvania

  • William Penn

  • Quakers

  • non-hierarchical (equality for all)

  • religious toleration

  • no slavery + friendly with natives

• New Jersey and Delaware: originally Dutch

• New York: New Amsterdam renamed to New York

  • commercial port

  • slavery = central

The “N*gro Plot of 1741”

• tensions in NY between whites and slaves

• unexplained fires

• people believed it was a slave conspiracy - 150 African American arrested, 30 executed

The Lower South

• dependent on exporting staple crops

  • indigo and rice

• slave labor system

• Carolina

  • planters who migrated from Barbados

  • shifted to growing rice

  • split of N. and S. cus of political and economic division

• Georgia'

  • colony for Britain’s “deserving poor” - failed

West Indies

• Barbados = most profitable colony in British New World Empire

• based on agriculture and slavery

• sold sugar produced from sugarcane

• high slave pop

• very wealthy sugar planters

Triangle Trade

• brought manufactured items from England to both Africa and America

• Kidnapped Africans sold by human traffickers

  • transported through middle passage in horrid conditions

  • encouraged African mento kidnap members of other tribal groups

• New World provided raw materials to britain

Molasses Act of 1733

• rum distillers purchased French molasses - violated mercantilist principles

• GB passed Molasses Act which put a duty on foreign molasses - badly enforced

Collapse of Huron

• Huron people made alliance with French

• devastated by disease

• Beaver Wars: Iroquois with Dutch firearms destroyed Huron villages

  • ended by Great Peace of Montreal in 1701

The Catawba

• American Southeast

• made themselves useful to settlers: traveling peddlers

• introduction of alcohol led to new social problems for the tribe

Salutary Neglect

• British policy in the early 1700s of loosely enforcing regulation on the colonies to allow them to grow by themselves

• credited to Robert Walpole

• i.e. Molasses Act: import tax on sugar and molasses which was usually ignored by merchants

Mercantalism

• idea that only a limited amount of wealth exists in the world

• nations increase their power by increasing their share of world’s wealth

• favorable balance of trade w/ exports exceeding imports

• colonies would purchase manufactured goods from the “mother country”

• extensive government regulation of trade and economics

Navigation Acts

• From 1650-1776 Parliament made legislation which developed a list of “enumerated goods: goods from the colonies that could be shipped to Britain

• i.e.: Wool Act, Hat Act, Iron Act

Greater Imperial Control

• during 17th century charter and proprietary colonies were taken over directly by the crown (royal colonies)

Dominion of New England

• in the wake of King Philip’s War

• 1686: royal officials revoked charters of all colonies north of the Delaware River forming one massive colony called the Dominion of New England

• Led by Sir Edmund Andros - arrested by New Englanders inspired by the turmoil of the Glorious Revolution in England

French and Indian Wars

• King William’s War, Queen Anne’s War, King George’s War, and French and Indian War

• eliminated French military and governmental presence in North America

King William’s War

• conflicts about borders between British and French claims

• Iroquois Confederacy allied with British colonists

• Challenged by French colonists + their indian allies (Wabanaki Confederacy) in the west

• English settlement in Maine encroached on French colony of Acadia

• Grand Settlement of 1701

Queen Anne’s War

• British forced gained control of Newfoundland and Hudson Bay

• Wabanaki Confed joined the French": stagec raid on Deerfield, Masschusetts

• late 1600s, French fur traders pushed down the Mississippi

• British pushed west from Carolina

• Chicasaw people allied with British (supplied them with slaves)

• tensions between British and Spanish over boundary between Florida and Carolina

  • Spanish allied with France + Apalache in south

• 1704 Apalachee and Timucua were virtually destroyed in a massacre by the British in 1704

• Chickasaw suffered huge losses - became dependent on the British

• conflict unresolved until end of French and Indian War

King George’s War

• siege by NEw England soldiers on the French Fortress of Louisbourg

• French and INdian forces destroyed Saratoga, NY

• in the peace treaty british agreed to return Louisbourg to french - angered northern colonies

The Pequot War

• violent clashes between Natives and British colonists

• AMerican Indians died in large numbers - rest pushed to interior

• Massachussets Bay + Plymouth worked with Narragansett and Mohegan peoples to defeat the Pequots

King Philip’s War

• new englanders pushed into interior Wampanoag lands

• chief of Wampanoag: Metacomet (King Philip) launched an attack on a string of Masschusetts

• New Englanders received support from Mohawks

• many losses on both sides

“Praying Indians”

• some natives converted to christianity to coexist with puritans

• puritan missionaries established “praying towns” for “praying indians”

Pueblo Revolt

• Pueblo Indians in New Mexico grew resentful of Spanish Rule

• Pueblo Revolt/ Popé’s Rebellion - succesful in driving away spanish settlers in Santa Fe for a bit

• Spanish appointed a public defender to protect native rights and agreed to allow Pueblo to continue their cultural practices

  • each pueblo family was granted land

Bacon’s Rebellion

• ex-indentured servants wanted to move west

• taxed by House of Burgesses despite no representation

• tensions with natives as they tried to push west

• 1676: Nathaniel Bacon led rebellion

• Governor William Berkeley refused to help in fighting natives

• burned Jamestown to the ground

• discouraged indentured servitude in favor of african slaves

new slavery

• rigid social hierarchy

• beginning of rampant use of slave trade

• child of slaves would inherit their status

Stono Rebellion

• slabe rebellion in Stono, SC

• 1739

• put down

The “Great Awakening”

• attempted to increase zeal for religion

• George Whitefield: revival meetings

• emotional

• Jonathan Edwards: passionate sermons

• core message: people could make choices in their lives that could affect afterlife

• more egalitarian and democratic

Deism

• 1700 enlightenment idea that god was a distant entity that didn’t control aspects of our lives

Anglicanism and Enlightenment Thinking

• conservative and ritualstis high church: embraced by Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud

  • fueled oppositional puritanism and exodus of puritans in 1630s

• Low Church: reform minded liberal approach: inspired by enlightenment

  • Latitudeinarians

Religious Toleration

• 1649: Maryland passed the Act of Religious Toleration: guarantted rights to Christians of most denominations

• Dutch New Amsterdam: Flushing Remonstrance: requested a lift of the ban on Quaker worship in the colony

Influence of the Country Party

• British reformers against corruptions, wastefulness, and tyranny

• followers = Commonwealth men

• “Cato” - Country party essayist in American press

American Legal Procedures

• differed from british system

• less reliance on imprisonment as punishment

• gave more freedom of press by saying that people couldn’t be accused of libel if it was truthful