Chapter 2 (1607-1660)

Patterns of English Colonization and the Foundations of Early English America ($1607$–$1660$)

• The Overarching Question of English Colonization: Historian Eric Foner examines why England entered the race for colonization late and how the two primary early colonies—the Chesapeake and New England—diverged so drastically into different social, economic, and religious systems.

• The Primary Driver of Divergence: Foner argues that the specific economies of these regions (tobacco in the Chesapeake versus mixed family farming in New England) were the foundational elements that shaped demographics, social structures, religious practices, gender roles, and the evolution of slavery and freedom.

• Foner’s Central Tension: A defining characteristic of early English America was the simultaneous expansion of freedom and unfreedom. This paradoxical pattern, where the liberty of some required the bondage or displacement of others, persisted for centuries in American history.

The Context of England’s Late Entry into Colonization

• The $1500$s: Religious Turmoil and Rivalry:     * $1534$ - The Henrician Reformation: King Henry VIII broke from the Roman Catholic Church because the Pope would not grant him a divorce, leading to the creation of the Church of England (Anglican Church).     * Internal Struggles: England experienced a series of Catholic-Protestant power struggles. Mary I attempted to restore Catholicism, followed by Elizabeth I who restored and stabilized Protestantism in the late $1500$s.     * Global Positioning: During this era, Spain dominated the New World while England remained a distant and less powerful rival.     * $1588$ - The Defeat of the Spanish Armada: The English navy, aided by storms, defeated the Spanish Armada. This crucial victory opened the Atlantic Ocean to English shipping and signaled a shift in global maritime power.

• The First Failed Attempt at Roanoke ($1585$):     * Sponsorship: Walter Raleigh sponsored the first colony attempt at Roanoke Island, located off the coast of modern North Carolina.     * The "Lost Colony": By $1590$, the colonists had vanished. The reasons for this remain a matter of debate, with theories ranging from disease and massacre to assimilation with Native American populations.     * Significance: The failure at Roanoke demonstrated that England was not yet organized or prepared for sustained colonization efforts.

• Conditions Leading to the $1607$ Success:     * The Enclosure Movement: Wealthy landowners began fencing off common lands for sheep grazing to produce wool. This displaced large numbers of peasants, creating a pool of landless, impoverished people who viewed colonial emigration as an escape.     * Religious Tension: Ongoing friction between Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics, and Separatists provided a religious motivation for diverse groups to seek new lives abroad.     * Joint-Stock Companies: These emerged as a financial innovation, allowing investors to pool capital to fund risky overseas ventures.     * Richard Hakluyt’s Propaganda: In his $1584$ work, A Discourse Concerning Western Planting, Hakluyt argued that colonization would solve domestic unemployment, spread the Protestant faith, and serve as a strategic check against Spanish influence.

The Chesapeake Colony: Jamestown and the Rise of Virginia

• The Founding of Jamestown ($1607$):     * Funding: The venture was funded by the Virginia Company, a joint-stock company chartered by King James I.     * Arrival: In May $1607$, over $100$ male settlers arrived at a site on the James River, named Jamestown in honor of the King.     * Strategic Location: The site was chosen for its defensibility against Spanish ships, but it was swampy, malarial, and unhealthy.     * Early Failure: The initial settlers were largely "gentlemen" who sought gold and refused to perform manual labor. Within the first year, half the colonists died from starvation, conflict, and disease.

• The Powhatan Confederacy:     * Leadership: The region was controlled by a Native alliance of approximately $30$ tribes led by Chief Powhatan (Wahunsenacawh).     * Demographics: The Native population of roughly $14,000$ significantly outnumbered the early English settlers.     * Pocahontas: The Chief's daughter, whose real name was Matoaka, became famous for her interactions with the colonists.     * Conflict over Land: Although Powhatan initially traded food for English goods, relations soured as colonists encroached on Native territory.

• The "Starving Time" ($1609$–$1610$):     * Conditions: During a brutal winter, the colony’s population dropped from approximately $500$ to just $60$. To survive, colonists reportedly ate dogs, rats, leather, and even committed acts of cannibalism.     * Captain John Smith: Smith briefly stabilized the colony by instituting military discipline with the rule: "he that will not work, shall not eat." He was forced to return to England in $1609$ after a gunpowder explosion injury.

• Tobacco as a Catalyst for Growth ($1612$):     * Introduction: John Rolfe introduced a sweet and smokable variety of tobacco around $1612$.     * Economic Impact: Massive European demand made tobacco Virginia's essential cash crop, saving the colony financially but creating an insatiable demand for land and labor.     * Social Impact: Rolfe’s marriage to Pocahontas in $1614$ brought a brief period of peace. Pocahontas converted to Christianity (taking the name Rebecca), traveled to England, and died of disease in $1617$.

• Labor Systems in the Chesapeake:     * The Headright System: To encourage migration, Virginia offered $50$ acres of land to anyone who paid for an immigrant's passage to the colony.     * Indentured Servitude: Approximately $rac{3}{4}$ of Chesapeake immigrants in the $1600$s arrived as indentured servants. They traded $4$ to $7$ years of labor for passage, food, shelter, and "freedom dues" (tools, clothes, or land) at the end of their term.     * Conditions: The work was brutal, and many died before completing their service. The demographic was skewed heavily toward young, single men, with a sex ratio in early Virginia of approximately $6:1$.

• The Defining Year of $1619$:     * House of Burgesses: The first elected colonial legislative body in English America was convened.     * Arrival of Women: Ninety English women arrived, marking a shift toward a more permanent family-based society.     * Arrival of Africans: The first Africans (referred to as "$20$ and odd") were brought by a Dutch ship. While their initial status was ambiguous, the system of permanent racial slavery would harden over the following decades.

Chronology of Conflict and Development in the Chesapeake

• $1622$ Attack: Opechancanough (Powhatan’s brother) led a coordinated strike that killed approximately $350$ colonists (about $rac{1}{4}$ of the population).

• $1624$ Transition: The Virginia Company collapsed, and Virginia became a royal colony directly under Crown control.

• $1632$ - Founding of Maryland: Lord Baltimore (Cecilius Calvert) was granted Maryland as a proprietary colony. He intended it as a refuge for English Catholics.

• $1644$–$1646$ - Third Anglo-Powhatan War: The Powhatan Confederacy was ultimately crushed, allowing for unimpeded English expansion.

• $1649$ - Maryland Toleration Act: Formally known as the Act Concerning Religion, it granted religious tolerance to all Trinitarian Christians.

• Chesapeake Social Structure: The society was tobacco-dependent with scattered plantations along rivers rather than centralized towns. It was characterized by high death rates, late marriages, and a large number of orphans.

New England: The Puritan World and Plymouth

• The Pilgrims and Plymouth ($1620$):     * Identity: Pilgrims were Separatists who believed the Church of England was irredeemably corrupt and must be abandoned.     * The Mayflower: After a stay in Holland ($1608$), they sailed on the Mayflower in $1620$. Though they aimed for Virginia, they landed at Cape Cod/Plymouth.     * Mayflower Compact: Before landing, they signed an agreement for self-government, establishing the foundational American principle that government rests on the consent of the governed.     * Survival: Half died the first winter. Survival was achieved with the help of Squanto (a Patuxet who learned English while kidnapped in Europe) and Massasoit (the Wampanoag chief).     * Legacy: Primarily small, Plymouth was absorbed by Massachusetts Bay in $1691$.

• Massachusetts Bay Colony ($1630$):     * Identity: Puritans sought to "purify" the Church of England from within, rather than separate from it.     * The Great Migration: Led by John Winthrop, approximately $20,000$ Puritans fled the authoritarian rule of Charles I in the $1630$s.     * "City Upon a Hill": In a sermon delivered on the Arbella, Winthrop articulated a vision for the colony to serve as a moral and religious model for the world.

• Puritan Society and Governance:     * Predestination: Following Calvinist doctrine, they believed God had already chosen the "elect" (visible saints) for salvation.     * Church Membership: Full membership was restricted to those who could prove a conversion experience.     * Local Democracy: Town meetings and congregational church structures fostered a tradition of local involvement.     * Demographics: Unlike the Chesapeake, Puritans came in families. The population doubled every $27$ years due to a healthy climate and balanced sex ratio.     * Education: Founded Harvard College in $1636$ for ministerial training and passed a $1647$ law requiring public schools in towns with more than $50$ households.     * Economy: Based on small family farms, fishing, timber, and shipbuilding. There were few slaves or servants compared to the South.

Dissent, Intolerance, and Native American Conflict

• Religious Intolerance: Puritans sought religious freedom for themselves, not others. Dissenters were expelled, and returning Quakers, such as Mary Dyer in $1660$, were sometimes hanged.

• Roger Williams:     * Banished ($1636$): He argued for the separation of church and state, fair dealings with Native peoples, and denied the King's right to grant Native lands.     * Legacy: Founded Providence and the colony of Rhode Island, the first colony with full religious liberty for Jews, Quakers, and Baptists. He also established the first Baptist church in America.

• Anne Hutchinson:     * Trial ($1637$–$38$): A wealthy woman who held religious meetings in her home. She was accused of "antinomianism" (the belief that faith frees the saved from moral law) and claiming direct revelation from God.     * Significance: Her case highlighted Puritan intolerance of religious dissent, the strict gender hierarchy of the era, and early challenges to orthodoxy.

• Pequot War ($1636$–$37$):     * Cause: Competition over the wampum trade and land encroachment.     * Mystic Massacre (May $1637$): English forces and Narragansett allies burned a Pequot village, killing $500$–$700$ people, effectively destroying the Pequot nation. Survivors were enslaved in the Caribbean.

The Paradox of Liberty and Social Order

• Definitions of Liberty:     * Christian Liberty: Winthrop's view that freedom meant obedience to God’s just authority (the freedom to do what is "right").     * English Liberties: Traditional rights such as jury trials, common law, and parliamentary representation.     * Economic Liberty: The independence derived from owning land and one's own labor.

• The Spectrum of Unfreedom:     * Free Landowner: Top tier with full political rights.     * Wage Laborer: Free but often landless and disenfranchised.     * Indentured Servant: Temporarily unfree; legally treatable as property until the term ended.     * Enslaved African: Bottom tier; status became hereditary and racialized over time.

• Coverture: Under English common law, a married woman's legal identity was subsumed by her husband's. She could not own property, sign contracts, or keep her own wages. This contrasted with the greater legal rights formerly held by Dutch women in New Netherland before the English conquest in $1664$.

Summary of Regional Differences (by $1660$)

• Foner's Big Takeaway: By $1660$, the three distinct colonial regions were already on divergent paths. The 1619 events in Virginia—the meeting of the House of Burgesses alongside the arrival of the first significant group of women and the first Africans—perfectly represent the American contradiction: the birth of representative government and chattel slavery occurring simultaneously.