Period 2 Review

1607-1754

How did the French colonize?

They were interested in finding a water route that passed through the Americas, which would give them access to trade in Asia

• Had a much greater interest in trade than in conquest

• Mostly established trading settlements

• Some French men would marry Native American women to have ties to vast trading networks

• Samuel de Champlain established the first permanent French settlement called Quebec

How did the Dutch colonize?

Henry Hudson seeked a water-based passage through the Americas

• Claimed New Amsterdam

• Became a trading hub that attracted other traders, fishermen, and farmers

Mainly had economic goals

Proudly Protestant and had no interest in converting the Natives, just about the money

How did the British colonize?

Main motivation was economics

The nobles were losing money due to wars and the economy after the Columbian Exchange went down, so they wanted to come to America

• Peasants in England lost land due to the Enclosure movement

• Took land from everyone held in common and sold it to private parties

Wanted to pursue religious freedoms as well

Improve living conditions

Set out as family groupd

Expelled Native populations

The Chesapeake colonies

Jamestown

• Financed by a joint-stock company

  • Privately sponsored

  • Investors pooled their money together and shared the financial risks

• Purpose was to profit

• Tobacco

  • John Rolfe discovered tobacco

  • Labor was done by indentured servants

    • Signed a seven-year labor contract

• Increasing tension between them and Natives due to a want for more land

• More violent uprisings from Natives, and when colonists complained to the governor, he did nothing

  • Bacon’s rebellion

    • Resentful of Natives

    • Farmers led an attack on the Natives

    • Led to a fear in the elite’s that more uprisings would occur, so they started to use enslaved Africans

The New England colonies

• Settled by pilgrims

• Puritan settlers

  • Unhappy protestants due to the Church of England

• Primarily for economic reasons that they came to America

• Migrated largely as family groups

• An economy that centered on agriculture and commerce

The British West Indies/Southern Atlantic Coast colonies

• Large growing seasons

• Sugarcane

  • Very labor intensive

  • A spike in demand for enslaved Africans

  • Population was primarily black, so elite’s enacted harsh slave codes - defines slaves as chattel

The Middle colonies

• Developed an export economy based on cereal crops

• An unequal population of elite’s

  • 1st: Urban merchants

  • 2nd: Artisans, shopkeepers

  • 3rd: Orphans, unemployed, widowed

  • 4th: Enslaved Africans

• Pennsylvania was founded in Quaker ideals meant to be a model on living peacefully

What was one thing all colonies had in common?

All had unusually Democratic systems of government

• Virginia - House of Burgesses

  • The first legislative and Democratic governing body established by the British colonies

• New England - Mayflower Compact

  • Establish law and order in Plymouth

Triangular trade

Merchant ships followed a three part journey

• Start in New England and carry rum to West Africa

• Trade the rum for enslaved laborers

  • Slave Trade Act

    • Limited the number of enslave people that could be put on the hull of a ship

• Sail the Middle Passage

• Arrived in the British West Indies

• Slaves were traded for sugarcane

Mercantilism

The dominant economic system in Europe

• Assumed that there was only a fixed amount of wealth in the world (gold and silver)

• A country became wealthy by increasing the amount of gold and silver it possessed

• Goal was to maintain a favorable balance of trade

  • More exports than imports

• Established colonies to access raw materials not found in their country

• Colonies could become markets for manufactured goods

• Led to Navigation acts

Navigation acts

• Required merchants to engage in trade with English colonies exclusively in English ships

• Valuable trade items were required to pass exclusively through British ports

  • All done to assure that the British could have maximum gold and silver

• Resulted in the consumer revolution

The consumer revolution

• Generated massive wealth for the elites of society

• Transformed America’s seaports into thriving urban centers

• Financial success

How did Spain interact with Natives?

• Introduced a Caste system

• Convert Natives with brutal measures

  • Pueblo Revolt

    • Successfully drove out the Spanish for over a decade

• Thought they were only good for labor

How did the English interact with the Natives?

• Not interested in intermarrying

• Initially coexisted peacefully

• Provided Natives with manufacture goods and iron tools

• Natives taught English how to farm and hunt

• Got land from Natives

  • Metacom’s War (Kind Phillips’s War)

    • Metacom was the chief of the Wampanoag’s and he saw how the more British settles, the more they took land

How did the French interact with the Natives?

• Saw them as trade partners

• Military allies

• Maintained decent relations

• Intermarrying

What was slavery like in the British colonies?

All of the British colonies participated in, and benefited from the African Slave Trade

• Increased demand for agricultural goods

• Shortage of indentured servants to perform agricultural labor

The further south, the more slaves

Chattel (property) slavery

Race-based slavery

Accounted for the same as a farm tool or a domesticated animal

Slave laws - most notable influence

• Legally defined African laborers as chattel

• Slavery was made a perpetual institution that was passed from one generation to the next

• Laws became harsher and harsher

Legal right was granted to kill his enslaved laborers if they defined his authority

Slave resistance

Found ways to resist this dehumanizing institution

• Convert resistance

  • Practice cultural customs from home

  • Maintained belief systems

  • Spoke native languages

  • Kept naming practices from home

  • Slowed pace of work by breaking tools and damaging crops

• Overt (open) resistance

  • Stono rebellion

    • Caused by the harsh conditions

    • Directly challenged the common narrative of plantation owners

    • One effect was the enactment of harsher slave codes to control the slave population

The Enlightenment

A movement in Euopre that emphasized rational thinking against tradtition and religious revelation

• John Locke

  • Natural rights

    • Human beings, by existing, had rights to life and liberty and property that were given to them by a creator

  • Social Contract

    • The power to govern was in the hands of the people

The 1st Great Awakening

Caused by a loss of faith in the biblical revelation

• Created a massive religious revival through all of the colonies

• New Light Clergy

  • Preachers who hated this awakening

• Jonathan Edwards

  • New England scholar well-studied in philosophy and natural sciences

  • “Sinners in the hands of an angry God”

  • More concerned with the joy of God

• George Whitefield

  • Was part of the Methodist revival

• The environment led to the lasting changes in the colonist’s attitude towards colonial authority

  • Self-governing structures

  • Gradual Anglicization

Impressment

The practice of seizing men, against their will, and forcing them to serve in the royal navy

• Colonists were becoming more aware of violation to the natural rights