Copy of APUSH Sumer Reading Notes

• What do these sources reveal about colonial America?
• What details and practices seem significant to the political, social, and economic contexts of the pre-collision and early colonial periods?
• Hypothesize: what themes in these readings remain relevant to the contemporary United States?
• Pay close attention to the language used by the scholars, and in the primary sources. Identify 3 phrases, 2 sentences, and 1 passage that stood out most to you, and be able to explain why they were noteworthy.

Detailed Timeline with Page References SUMMARY AT END

• 1492: Columbus's first voyage to the Americas (p. 15)
• 1607: Establishment of Jamestown, Virginia (p. 1)
• 1619: Virginia House of Burgesses convenes; first Africans arrive in Jamestown (p. 1)
• 1620: Pilgrims land at Plymouth and sign the Mayflower Compact (p. 2)
• 1622: Indian War of 1622 initiated by Opechancanough (p. 2)
• 1630: Puritan migration to Massachusetts Bay begins (p. 3)
• 1636: Roger Williams founds Rhode Island (p. 8)
• 1637: Anne Hutchinson banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony (p. 8)
• 1637: Pequot War leads to massacre and land division (p. 8)
• 1640: 3,000 settlers in Plymouth Colony (p. 2)
• 1644: Rhode Island obtains a corporate charter (p. 9)
• 1649: Maryland Toleration Act passed (p. 6)
• 1651: Navigation Acts implemented to control colonial trade (p. 6)
• 1660: Virginia shifts to a racialized system of slavery (p. 7)
• 1661: Barbados enacts first slave code (p. 7)
• 1670: Black population in Chesapeake colonies rises to 5% (p. 7)
• 1675-1676: Metacom’s War (King Philip’s War) devastates New England (p. 12)
• 1676: Bacon’s Rebellion highlights tensions between settlers and the colonial government in Virginia (p. 13)
• 1681: Pennsylvania founded by William Penn as a haven for Quakers (p. 14)
• 1688: Glorious Revolution in England impacts colonial governance (p. 14)
• 1692: Salem Witch Trials result in 19 executions (p. 14)
• 1700: Indentured servitude shifts to African slavery in Virginia (p. 14)

Chapter 1

• Columbus called Indigenous people Indians because he thought he was in India during his time in the Atlantic
• 60 million ppl occupied Americas when Europeans arrived
  • 7 million lived north of Mesoamerica (mexico and guatemala)
• First americans are believed to have crossed from asia on 100-mile-wide land bridge connecting siberia and alaska during last Ice Age between 13000 and 3000 BCE
• For approximately 300 generations, peoples of western hemisphere largely cut off from rest of world
• Mesoamericans cultivated maize (corn) for a nutritious plant
• Aztecs and Incas dominated Mesoamerica and Andes
  • Both had bureaucratic states as key to their power
• Not many big empires above mexico, except for stuff in the mississippi valley
  • Most villages in mississippi valley were built around fields of maize, beans, and squash
• Many indigenous groups had chiefdoms, but some had couuncils of sachems that mdae decisions (matriarchal societies)
• Lots of indigenous rivalries in new england, when dutch and english arrived, theye exploiteid these rivalries
• Native groups in northern New england and now-canada were hunters and gatherers, more mobile and less populus groups
• Algonquian people dominated great lakes area
• Traveled long distances for hunting, trading, and military alliances
• Horses very big introducting from Europe to indigenous groups in great plains
  • Introduced to spanish colony of new mexico in late sixteenth century
• Pueblo cultures and indigenous populations in southwest canyon areas made intricate systems to manage scarce water, like irrigation
• Pacific coast was mainly hunter-gatheres, CA was home to 300,000 people
  • Lots of small indigenous groups and tribes
• Lots of social hierarchies in indigenous culture
• Expansive trade networks in indigenous US
  • Regional trade allowed indigenous to share their resources like food
  • More valuable and rare objects were traded across longer distances
• Powerful indigenous leaders redistributied a community’s wealth to show them their power and strength
• Lots of rituals and traditions based on sacred power by guardian spirits
  • Although parts of views differed, they were kinda the same thing
• Traditional gender roles in indigenous cultures

Western Europe: Edge of the Old World

• Traditional hierarchical societies in Europe
• A patchwork of kingdoms, republics, etc. thrown together after fall of Roman empire with famine looming constantly
• Patriarchal societies
• Most europeans were peasants
• Peasants lived on manorial lands and their farming rights were given in exchange for labor on the lord’s estate
  • Peasants essentially became serfs/slaves
• Similar to indigenous people, rhythm of life followed seasons of the year
• Newborn peasant girls “helped to die” to make way for boy babies
• Italian elites rule their land as republics, no prince or king but instead governed by merchant coalitions
  • Celebrated civic humanism
  • Arts and learning with this transformation labeled the renaissance
• King’s created bureaucracies that helped them centralize power while they forged alliances with merchants and urban artisans after this boom of trade
• Oldest european religious beliefs similar to indigenous americans, form of animism which held that the natural world was animated by spiritual forces
• The pagan traditions of grece and rome overlaid animism with elaborate myths about gods interacting with affairs of humans
• As roman empire expanded, built temples to gods and planted new setllements
• Christianity grew out of Jewish monotheism (belief in one god)
• Chrsitianity beneffitted from conversion of Roman emperor Constantine in CE 312
  • After this, Christianity became Rome’s official religion
  • Temples abandoned and remade into churches
  • Anyone who wanted to retain or gain power converted
• The Crusades:
  • Christian rulers obliged to combat islam
  • After Muhammad death, many muslims used force to convert people across old world
  • Chrsitian armies startd series of cursades to reverse muslim advance and “win back holy lands”
  • Crusaders only had some military succcesses, most notably in Europe
  • Their warfare intensified christian identity of Europe and led to persecution of Jews
  • Crusades introduced western european merchants to global trade routes
• Monk Martin Luther took up cause of reform in Catholic church, 1517
• In Geneva, John Calvin established Portestant regime and was more extrreme than luther on some issues
• Luther’s criticisms of catholic church led to a war between holy Roman Empire and northern areas in Germany
  • Caused greater outspread of wars
• Origins of Slave Trade in Western and Central Africa
  • Homo sapeins originated in Africa
  • Africa divided by vast Sahara Desert
  • Three big empires arose from cultural origins:
    • Ghana Empire (circa 800 CE) capitalized on came
    • Mali Empire (13th century CE)
    • Songhai Empire (15th century CE)
    • All three empires made up of smaller “vassal” kingdoms similar to the Aztecs and Incas
    • Used military might to control their trade routes
  • Lots of fightig in Africa for local power
  • Lots of smaller states, although a select few were quite large
  • Tropical ecosystem of africa didn’t allow them to raise ljivestock because of flies that would kill them
  • Lots of caravans travelling through Africa with good like gold, copper, salt, and slaves
  • European trade begam in mid-fifteenth century
  • West Africans were very spiritual as well and a hierarchical society
• Portuguese Conquest of Africa:
  • Young crusade soldier, Prince Henry of Portugal, learned about trans-Saharan trade routes for gold and slaves
  • Henry founded center for oceanic navigation
  • Henry and his people created a better-suit ship for navigating through the African coast, the caravel
  • They used these ships to colonize Madeira and Azore islands
  • In 1435, sailed to sub-Saharan Sierra Leone, they traded salt, winem and fish for African ivory and gold
  • Italian merchants also started to join in on trade with Africa as they were being cut off from east meditteranean and Asia due to Ottomans
  • Meditteranean traders voyaged to many African islands and used them as laboratories for expansion of their agriculture
  • Experimented with lots of different cash crops: wheat, wine grapes, honeybees, and livestock
  • By 1500, Madeira producing 2500 metric tons per year of sugar
  • All of the expansion islands were uninhabited except for the Canaries which took a while to defeat the people, but afterwards they enslaved them
  • Europeans didn’t really expand into the continent of Africa itself because how well the coastal kingdoms were defended and the fact that so many diseases would prey upon Europeans who stepped foot in Africa
  • They were still looking for an atlantic route to India
• African Slave Trade
  • Portuguese traders ousted arab merchants as leading suppliers of African slaves
  • Coerced labor (slavery, serfdom, or indentured servitutde, was the norm in almost premodern societies and was widespread throughout Africa
  • Slaves were a “commodity”
  • Sometimes slaves’ descendants were freed but others were automatically taken into enslavement
  • Slaves also central to translate-Saharan trade
    • Six hundred female slaves traveled with Ibn Batutta for domezdetic service or concubinage across the Sahara
  • Between 700 CE and 1900, estimated that as many as 9 million Africans sold in Trans-Saharan slave trade
  • Europeans first were more interested in gold rather than slaves, but then found out how “valuable” they were
• Columbus and the Carribean
  • Spains rulers, Ferdinand and Isabella, subsidized voyages of Chrsitopher Cloumbus, from Genoa
  • Colunbus thought that atlantic ocean was much narrower channel of water separating Europe and Asia
  • Took him 6 years to persuade Genoese investors along with Spanish monarchs to fund him
  • Columbus set sail in three small ships in August 1492
  • 6 weeks and 3000 miles, disembarked on island in present-day Bahamas
  • He thought he reached Asia, or “the indies” and called the people who lived there “Indians”
  • He said that the natives were “easily [to] be made Christians.”
  • He claimed the islands for Spain and then kept going
  • Spanish Monarchs supported three more voyages where Columbus colinized West Indies with more than 1000 S[anish colonists, all of them men, in addition to domestic animals
  • He died in 1506 and it was virtualy unnoticed
  • Germon geogreapher named the newly found continents “America” in honor of another explorer, Amerigo Vespucci who had visited coast of present-day South America around 1500
• Spanish invasion
  • Spain moved into the american mainland to look for gold and slaves
  • There were rumors of rich indian kingdoms and that kept them excited
  • Spanish marched into Aztec capital Tenochtitlan and challenged the Aztec ruler, Moctezuma
  • Moctezuma received the Spanish with great ceremony but soon the Spanish took Moctezuma captive
  • Eventually then captured the city
  • Cut off the city’s food and water supply and by 1521, toppled the Aztec empire
  • Spanish had disease on their side as an indirect means of weaponry
    • Inhabitantsof America had to immunities to common European diseases and after the Spaniards arrived, they caused a massive smallpox epidemic, “striking everywhere in the city”
    • Smallpox killed Moctezuma’s brother and thousands more in the city
    • Subsequent oubreaks of flu and other disease
  • Spanish then set out for Peru and the Incas, killling half of them with diseases and then the military became easy prey because they were so ill
  • Pizzaro, Spanish conquistador, killed Atahualpa (inca emperor) and seized his wealth
  • Inca conquest complete by 1535 and Spain now the master of wealthiest and mostpoopuous regions of Western Hemisphere
  • Spanish disease took out minimum 300,000 people and in peru, population of 9 million in 1530 came down to 500,000 in 1630
  • Population of 20 million native americans in 1500 dwindled to 3 million in 1650
• Cabral and Brazile
  • At same time as spanish, portugese were trying to sail around southern tip of Africa to find that the winds and currents carried them from the African coast into the atlantic
  • They eventually saw land in the West and continued toward now Brazil
  • They then began with sugar plantations in Brazil
  • They used native americans for work for a few decades but then switched to African slaves
  • Brazil would then become largest producer of sugar and would kill African lives because of how arduous the work was
  • Plantation system in the americas set in motion signficatn developments of early modern era
• Chapter 1 Summary:
  • Native american, european, and african societies developed independently over thousands of years before experiencing direct contacts with one another
  • Residents of Andes and mesoamerica were sedentary but elsewhere in America they were nomads or nonsedentary
  • Africa was also mix of sedentary and semisedentary and nonsedentary settlements
  • Western europe was predominantly sedentary
  • They were all pretty similar though
  • As sailors pushed into the atlantic, they set in motion chain of events whose consequences couldn’t even be imagined
  • Two of greatest empires in the world–Aztec and Inca–taken down by biological forces
• Chapter 1 Key Concepts, Events, People, and Terms: quizlet link

Textbook Chapter 2

• 1600s, leisglators of Virginia and Maryland define chattel slavery
  • Chattel Slavery: The ownership of human beings as property
• Insitution of slavery profoundly affects African Americans and American history
• Virgina Statute 1662: “All children borne in this country shalbe held bound or free only according to the condition of the mother”
  • This idea, based on the mother, was contrary to english law in a patriarchal society
• Through many legal contests and legal battles, the new world would continuously innovate and move forward on their laws in a new environment
• By 1700, 3 distinct types of colonies in the Americas
  • Tribute colonies created in Mexico and Peru relied on wealth and labor indigenous peoples
  • Plantation colonies produced sugar and other tropical and subtropical crops with bound labor (slavery)
  • Neo-Europes tried to replicate, or at least approximate, economies and social structures that colonists had back home in Europe
• Spain’s tribute colonies:
  • European interest in the new world took shape under influence of Spain’s conquest of Aztecs and Incas
  • The spanish colonizers capitalized on existing systems of tribute and labor discipline to get the enormous wealth of MesoAmerica and the Andes
  • They would overthrow native rulers and put their own institutions of legal codes, municipal councils, and the catholic church
  • Spanish conquest also added a big ecological transformation via movement of plants, animals, and disease—called Columbian exchange
    • Protestant dutch and english didnt like this
• A new American World:
  • After successful conquest, leading conquistadors received encomiendas from Spanish royalty
    • Allowed them to claim tributes from natives (labor and goods)
  • Early pattern of prominent men controlling vast resources and monopolizing Indigenosus labor
  • The discovery of gold and silver deposits in mexico and Andes helped these conquistadors get very rich because of the encomiendas
  • Spanish officials co-opted the Incas mita system, which made laboresrs available to Inca empire, and now Spanish forced them to work the gold and silver mines
  • Lots of supply produced from this area
  • Two great indigenous empires of the Americas became the core of astonishingly wealthy European empire
  • Silver was sent over Pacific to China and then minted to money
  • In exchange for this silver and gold trade, Spain got chinese silks, spices, and ceramics
  • Gold from Incas and Aztecs began flowing into Spain and European catholic churches
  • Initially, Spanish royals were enriched, but then it caused a lot of inflation
  • Between 1500-1650, at least 350,000 Spaniards came to Mesoamerica and Andes area
  • Also, they sent 250,000-300,000 Africans
  • In the region, racial mixture ensued
  • A system of complex racial categories developed—the casta system
  • Indigenous were in the majority in Mexico and Peru, but their numbers declined as Spanish and mixed-race populations grew a lot
  • Spanish intially congregated in cities, but then moved to countryside and created large estates (haciendas) and networeks of market exchange
  • Most Indigenous stayed in their communities under authority of native rulers and speaking their own language
  • Spanish priests in the area suppressed Native heritage and especially religion and converted them to Christianity
  • Catholicism also transformed in the process, indigenous ideas and practices reshaped Church practices
  • A new form of Native American Chrsitinaity emerges in both regions
• Columbian Exchange
  • In desneley populated areas, Spanish diseases wiped out 90% or more of indigenous populations in the first year of contact
  • Syphillis was carried the other way around, Natives gave it to Europeans who carried it back with themselves to Europea
  • Diseases and their impacts are part of whats called the pattern of biological transformation that historians call the Columbian Exchange
  • Foods from the New World were increasingly growing their agricultural yields and reaching places like China by 1700
    • In one century, China tripled its population from 100 million in 1700 to 300 million in 1800
  • Europeans carried livestock and animals and plants with them, transforming the American agricultural landscape
  • Natives only really domesticated a few in their own cultures, but the Europeans brought so many that it was overwhelming
• Protestant Challenge to Spain
  • Spain claimed a lot of American dominions but couldn’t really hold on to them
  • They controlled the Carribean basin, essential to their transatlantic shipping routes, but it was very difficult because the eastern Carribean islands gave a lot of safe harbors for pirates and privateers
  • They had fortified outposts in Havana and Florida, but could never keep enemies back
  • Spain’s enemies were powerful. They were empowered by the Protestant Reformation and the consequent split in European Christendom
  • Gold and silver from the Americas made Spain the wealthies nation in Europe
  • In the Spanish netherlands, the people revolted against Spanish rule in 1556 to pretoect their Calvinist faith and political liberties
  • After 15 years of war, the norhtern provincces eventually declared independence becoming Hollan in 1581
  • English king Henry VIII initially opposed Protestantism
  • He eventually broke ties with the Pope because the pope refused to annul his marriage to the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon in 1534
  • Henry became the new head of the new Church of England
  • Henry’s church remained catholic, but eventually had protestant teachings conitnuing to spread
  • Based on public backlash, Queen Elizabeth I, Henry’s successor, approved a Protestant confession of faith
  • She made compromises between the two factions and this angered radical Protestants
  • Elizabeth supported English seafarers who took aggressive actions against Spanish control of Americas and its wealth
  • Francis Drake was one of the devoulty protestant people who was backed by the queen and tried to attack Spanish king Phillip
  • Drake lost three ships and 100 men, but the survivors captured two Spanish treasure ships and completed the first English circumnavigation of the globe in 1577 in the pacific near manila
  • He returned in 1580 to England and brough enough silver, gold, silk, and spices to bring his investors a 4700% return on their investment
  • Elizabeth imposed English rule over gaelic-speaking Catholic Ireland
  • She called the irish “wild savages” who were “more barbarous and more brutish in their customs… than in any other part of the world”
  • English soldiers massacred thousands of irish, foreshadowing the treatment of American Indigenous people
  • To fight back against elizabeth, Spain’s Phillip sent Spanish armada (130 ships and 30,000 men) to attack England in 1588
  • Philip wanted to restore the Roman Church in England and thenw ipe out Calvinism in Holland
  • Philip failed awfully: a storm and Engglish ships destroyed the entire Spanish fleet
  • Philip kept spending Ameri an gold and silver on religious wars, and this policy diverted workers and resources from Spain’s industries that were failing
  • More than 200,000 residents of Castile, once the most preospeours region of Spain, migrated to America because they were opppressed by high taxes on agriculture and didn’t want to serve in the military
  • When Philip died in 1598, Spain was in a serijous economic decline
  • England’s population, on the other hand, soared from 3 million in 1500 to 5 million in 1630
  • The English government aided textile enrepeeneurs by setting low wage rates and helped merchants by giving them monopolies in foreign markets
  • System of state-assisted manufacturing and trade know as mercantilism
  • Elizabeth reduced importas and increased exports by supporting and encouraging English textile production
  • This balance of trade stimulated further economic expansion for England
  • They also had increased trade with Turkey and India, boosting import duties, swelling the royal treasury and Elizabeth’s power
  • By 1600, Elizatbeth’s mercantlies policies laid the foundations for overseas colonization
• Plantation Colonies
  • Portugal, england, France, and the Netherlands creates successful plantation settlements in Brazil, Jamestown, Maryland, and the Carribean islands
  • Demand for sugar and tobacco across the world was a huge reason for the growth of these colonies
  • The resulting influx of colonists lower Spain’s power in the New World greatly
  • These colonists imposed dramatic new pressures on natijve populations, who scrambled to survive and carve out pathways to the future
• Brazil’s Sugar Plantations
  • Portuguese colonists transofmrd tropical lowlands of coast Brazil into sugar plantation zone like the ones in Madeira, Azores, Cape Verdes, and Sao Tome
  • Took a while, but by 1590, more than 1k sugar mills established in Pernambuco and Bahia
  • Because sugarcane is extremely heavy and rots quickly, it had to be processed quickly on site
  • Sugar plantations took back breaking agricultural work with milling, extracticting, and refining processes that made them look like Industrial Revolution-era factories
  • Portuguese people thought that brazil’s indigenous peoples would supply labor required to operate their sugar plantations, but because of the smallpox epidemice in 1559, in addition to other diseases, the killed a lot of the coastal Indigenous populations
  • By 1620, they had switched from Indigenous labor to Africnan slave labor
  • Brazil’s development was pretty grueling and trial&error based
• England’s Tobacco Colonies
  • England was pretty slow to colonize the Americas
  • They had a few tattempts in 1580s in NewFoundland and Maine, privately organized and not well funded
  • Sir Walter Realeigh’s three expeditions to North Carolina ended in disaster when 117 settlers on Roanoke island vanished, still a puzzle for modern historians
• The Jamestown Settlement
  • Merchants took charge of Englishe expansion
  • 1606: King James I (reign 1603-1625) granted the Virgina Company of London all the lands stretching from present-day North Carolina to southern New York
  • To honor memory of Elizabeth I, the company’s directors named the region Virgina because Elizabeth never married and was named the “Virgin Queen”
  • The Virgina Companyw as a joint-stock-corporation hat pooled resources of many investors, spreading financial risk across many ppl and institutions
  • In 1607: Virginia company dispatched an all-male group with no ability to support itself: no women, farmers, or ministers in the first arrivals
  • First colonists hoped to demand tribute from Indigenous peoples while they searched for valuable commodities like pearls and gold
  • Their goal, one said, was to “dig gold, refine gold, and load gold.”
  • There was no gold though
  • The colonists faired poorly in the new engiornment
  • They arrived in virginia after 4 month voyage
  • Settled in swampy peninsula which they named Jamestown to honor King James I
  • They lacked accesses to fresh water, didn’t plant crops, and quickly died off
    • Only 38 of the 120 men were alive nine months later
  • Death rates remained very high: by 1611, Virginia company had sent 1200 colonists to Jamestown, with only less than half surviving
  • “For the most part they died of meere famine”
  • Their plan to dominate the indigenous population was up against Powhatan, dominant chief who oversaw 30 subordinate chiefdoms/villages between the James and potomac rivers
  • He was gonna treat the English traders as potential allies who could offer them valuable goods, but just like the English expected tribute from the indigenous, Powhatan expected it from them
  • Powhatan provided English adventurers with corn (the english were essentially literally starving) and demanded “hatchets, bells, beads, and copper” as well as “two great guns”
  • Powhatan expected Jamestown to become a dependwent community within his cheifdom
  • Powhatan arranged marreaige between his daughter, Pocahontas, and John Role, and English colonist
  • Powhatan’s tactics and strategy failed
  • The inability to decide who paid tribute to whom led to 10 yrs of uneasy relations, followed b horrible wars
  • Was was precipitated by discovery of cash crop—like sugar in Brazil—that offered colonists a way to profit but required steady expansion into Indigenous lands—tobacco
  • Tobacco was native to the Americas, used a lot by the Indigenous people as a medicine and stimulate
  • John Rolfe found West INdian strain that flourished in Virginia soil and produced a small crop
  • This suppressed the immigration of so many new colonists from England
  • The English soon came to crave the nicotine that tobacco contained
  • James I initially condemned the plant as a “vile Weed” but then changed his attitude as taxes on imported tobacco bolstered royal treasury
  • Powhatan now accused the English of coming “not to rade but to invade my people and possess my country.”
  • To encourage immigration, the Virginia Company allowed individual settlers to own land, granting 100 acres to every freeman and more to those who brought servants
  • Virignia Co also created system of representative government: House of Burgesses, first convened in 1619, could make laws and levy taxes, although the governor and company council in England could veto its acts
  • By 1622, landownership, self-government, and a judicial system based on the “lawes of the realme of England” had attracted 4500 new people
  • Virigina Company recruited dozens of women to make wives of the Inhabitants
• The Indian War of 1622
  • English and European migration sparked war with Indigenous neighbors
  • An assault led by Opechancanough, Powhatan’s brother and successor started it
  • 1607: Opechancanough attacks first English invaders
  • He resisted Enlgish proposals to place Indian children in schools to be “brought upp in Christianytie” and wouldnt make any treaties or deals with the English
  • He became paramount chief in 1621, he told rest of Potomack leaders: “Before the end of two moons, there should not be an Englishman in all their Countries.”
  • He almost succeeded
  • 1622: Coordinated surprise attack by twelve Indigenous chiefdoms
    • Killed 347 English colonists, ⅓ of population
    • English fought back by taking fields and foods
      • Also English gave them dehumanizing titles like “savages”
      • They declared war that lasted for a decade
      • They sold captured warriors into slavery and took control of “[the Indigenous’] cultivated places”
  • Based on the Indigenous uprising, James I revoked Virginia Co.’s charter and in 1624, made Virginia a royal colony
  • Because he made it a colony, the king and his ministers appointed the governor and council that controlled the laws of the colony
  • James I also decreed establishment of Church of England in Virginia colony
    • This meant residents had to pay taxes to support the clergy
  • Virginia colony became a model for governing American colonies for the English
• Lord Baltimore Settles Catholics in Maryland
  • Maryland was a second tobacco growing colony
  • King Charles I (reign 1625-1649 and James I’s successor) sympathized toward Catholicism secretly and in 1632, he granted lands bordering the Chesapeake Bay to Catholic aristocrat Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore
  • Maryland became a refuge for Catholics who were subject to persecution in England
  • 1634: 20 men, mostly Catholic, and 200 artisans and labors, mostly Protestants established St. Mary’s City at the mouth of the Potomac river
  • They pretty much kept it separate though to avoid confrontations
  • Maryland grew quickly due to Baltimore importing artisans and offering ample lands to wealthy migrants
  • Political conflict threatened the colony’ stability
  • Colonists elected a representative assembly and insisted on initiating legislation because the were disputing Baltimore’s powers
  • Anti-Catholic agitation by Protestants also threatened Lord Baltimore’s religious goals
  • Lord Baltimore got the assembly of representatives to enact the Toleration Act (1649) which granted all Chrsitians the right to follow their beliefs and hold church services
  • In Maryland, tobacco became main crop similar to Virginia and made the two colonies very similar
• The Carribean islands
  • English, French, and Dutch sailors began to look for a permanent colony in the Caribbean
  • 1624: small English party under command of Sir Thomas Warner established a settlement on St. Christopher (st. Kitts)
  • 1625: Warner allowed a French group to allow on the other end of the island so they could defned their position from he Spanish better
  • Within few years, the English and French colonists on St. Kitts drove out native Caribs from island, survived Spanish attack, and created common bylaws for mutual occupation of the island
  • After St. Kitts, a dozen or so colonies funded in Lesser Antilles
  • 1655: English fleet captured Spanish island of Jamaica, larger islands in the Greater Antilles, and opened it to settlement as well
  • Few islands unpopulated before conquest from Europeans, but in many places natives were wiped out or kicked out in just a decade
  • Only in larger islands did natives hold out a bit longer
  • 1640s in brazil: planters on many islands shifted to sugar cultivation
  • Many caribbean colonies soon became cash crop producers, especially sugar
• Plantation Life
  • In North America and Caribbean: plantations were initially small freeholds
    • Freeholds: farms of 30-50 acres owned and farmed by families or male partners
  • Logic of plantation agriculture soon encouraged consolidation
    • Consolidation: large planters engrossed as much land as they could and experimented with new forms of labor and discipline that maximized control over production
  • In Virginia: headright system guaranteed 50 acres of land for anyone who paid passage of new immigrant to colony
    • Essentially by buying indentured servants and slaves, you got a bunch of land
  • European demand for tobacco set 40 yr economic boom in Chesapeak bay
    • Pretty much all of their riches were from tobacco
  • Exports rose from 3 million english pounds in 1640 to 10 million pounds in 1660
  • After 1650, wealth migrants from gentry or noble families built large estates along coastal rivers, then acquired slaves and indentured servants to work on their land
  • The switch to sugar production in barbados caused the price of land there to quadruple, driving small landowners out
  • Life in plantation colonies of North America and Carribean was harsh for everyone, rich and poor
  • Not that many towns, so colonists were deprived of a community
  • There were few women and marriages ended with early death of spouse, so very few families
  • Pregnant women prone to malaria, spread by mosquitoes
  • Many mothers died after ebearing 1 or 2 kids, and there were a lot of orphaned children and unmarried young men
  • 60% of children born in the Virignia colony before 1680 lost one or both parents before the age of 13
  • 15000 English migrants arrived in Virginia between 1622 and 1640, population rose only from 2k to 8k
  • In barbados, burials outnumbered baptisms in the second half of seventeenth century 4 to 1
• Indentured Servitude:
  • Prospect of owning land lured a lot of colonists
  • By 1700, more than 100,000 English migrants had come to Virginia and Maryland and over 200,000 migrated to the islands of West Indies, mainly Barbados
  • 5000 servants left England for Chesepeake Bay
    • ¾ were young men
  • Indentured Servitited bound the people to work for a master for four or five years, after which they would be free to marry and work for themselves
  • Servants were valuable to merchants, their contracts received high prices from planters
  • Indentured servants went through a harsh first year in the new environment especially on plantations
  • For plantation owners, very lucrative
    • One male servant could produce 5x his purchase price in a year
  • Lots of masters exploited their servants to get the most value out of them
  • If servants ran away or became pregant, masters took them to court to extend their term of service
    • it even became part of VA law in 1692
  • Planters got rid of bad servants by selling their contracts
  • Only a few servants were able to escape poverty, half the male servants died before completing the term of their contract in the cheseapek
    • Another quarter didnt get the land they were promised
  • Only ¼ of male servants achieve property and respectability
  • Female servants “had it better” than the men because a lot of planters who had property would marry them
  • Just a few men and women lived a long life with land to their name
• African Laborers
  • Sugar production in Barbados and the English caribbean islands had working conditions so bad, that there weren’t enough servants/slaves to keep up with the deaths of workers
  • By 1690, black people (primarily enslaved people) outnumber white people nearly 3 to 1
  • White slave owners developed code of force and terror to keep sugar production high and maintain control of the black majority that was around them
  • Adopted in 1661, the first slave legislation for Barbados, “Act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes.”
  • In the Chesapeake, they had a more gradual shift from indentured servitude to slace labor
    • For a generation, # of Africans ini the Chesapeake remained small
    • About 400 Africans lived in Chesapakea colonies in 1649, 2% of populations
    • By 1670, it was 5%
  • Most Africans in the Chesapeake region served white English masters for life
  • Since English common law didn’t acknowledge slavery, some Africans had the possibility of excaping
  • Some were freed as result of baptism, some purchased freedom from their owners, and some won freedom through the courts
  • Once they became free, African people became landowners and purchased slaves or labor contracts of English servants for themselves
  • Social mobility for Africans was over by 1660 when the collapse of tobacco boom happened
  • Tobaco used to sell for 30 pence a pound, it became less than 1/10 of that
  • Tobacco plantation owners imported more Africans and the English elite became more race conscious
  • Legislators started distinguishing people by race, not religion anymore
  • 1671: Virginia House of Burgessses forbade Africans to own guns or join the militia
    • They also couldnt own english servants
  • Black race and slavery had become to grow Homogenous and convertible as terms
• Neo-European Colonies
  • Some colonies that replicated Euorpean economics and social organization patterns started to emerge in the North American Atlantic Coast
• New France
  • 1530s: Jacques Cartier went up St. Lawrence reiver and claimed it for France
    • His claim survived for 75 years
  • 1608: Samuel de Champlain returned and founded fur-trading post of Quebec
    • Traded with Montagnais and Iroquois, giving French access to furs (mink, otter, and beaver) that were in high demand for Europeans
  • Hurons (Indigenous group) became first focus of French Catholic missionary activity
  • Many of the Catholic french started to live with and in Indigenous communities to spread their faith
    • They learned Indigenous languages very well and understood, and sometimes respected, Indigenous values
  • Lots of Natives initially welcomed the french, but then when the Christian prayers didn’t protect them from disease, the started to become skeptical
  • Whenever something bad, like a drought, struck, the Indigenous leaders would blame the french missionaries
  • New France was an expansive center for fur trading and missionary work, but it didn’t really survive as a farming settlement
  • 1662: King Louis XIV (r. 1643-1714) turned New France into a royal French colony and started sending indentured servants to Quebec
  • French servants worked under contract for three years with salary, and eventually could lease a farm
    • These were much better terms than for the English colonial servants
  • Not many people moved to New France because it was a very cold and “forbidding” country
  • Some state policies discouraged migration
  • Louis XIV drafted tens of thousands of men for military cervice and didn’t allow Huguenots (French calvinist Protestants) from moving to New France
    • He was scared they would try to convert everyone there basically
  • French legal system gave peasants strong rights to their village lands
    • Migrants, though, had oppressive and church-dominated aristrocratic oversight system
  • In Village of Saint Ours, in Quebec, peasants paid 45% of their wehat crop to nobles and the Catholic Church
  • By 1698: just 15200 Europeans lived in New France, compared to 100,000 in England’s North American colonies
  • Explorers and fur traders drove a French expansion despite the low population inland
  • 1673: Jacques Marquette reached Mississippi River in present-day Wisconsin
  • 1681: Robert de La Salle traveled down the majestic river to the gulf of mexico
    • To honor King Louis XIV, La Salle named the region Louisiana
  • 1718: French merchants founded port of New Orleans at moth of Mississippi
  • Grew a network of about two dozen forts in Great Lakes and Mississippi where they would run soldier and missionary operations
• New Netherland
  • By 1600, Amsterdam had become financial and commercial hub of northern Europe
  • Dutch financiers dominated the European banking, insurance, and textile industries
  • Dutch merchants had more ships and employed more sailors than combined fleets of England, France, and Spain
  • Dutch pretty much ran the commerce show
  • In their indpednence battle, dutch seized portuguese forts in Africa and Indonesia and sugar plantations in Brazl
  • 1609: Dutch merchants sent English mariner Henry Hudson to locate a route to the East Indies
  • Hudson went through what is now called the Hudson River and ended up building Fort Orange in Albany in 1614 to trade furs with Indigenous people
  • 1621: Dutch government chartered West India Company, who founded the colony of New Netherland, set up New Amsterdam (on Manhattan Island) as its capital, and brought farmers and artisans to make the enterprising self sustaining
  • The population of the Dutch Republic was too small to support enough immigrartion to the colony to allow it to thrive
    • Just 1.5 million people lived in Dutch republic
  • West India Company granted lots of land along the Hudson to wealthy Dutch people who promised to populate New Netherland
    • The partially did this to protect the colony frm rival nations
  • By 1664, New Netherland had only 5,000 residents and less than 50% were dutch
  • New Netherland flourished as a fur-trading enterprise, but that was about it
  • Dutch settlers didn’t have respect for the natives, who were also their trading partners
  • The Dutch took over prime farming land and disrupted the indigenous trade
  • 1643: In response, Algonquians launched attacks on the Dutch that nearly wiped them out
  • In Dutch response, they started a vicious and violent war — maiming, burning, and killing hundres of Algonquians and other indigenous—and froemd an alliance with the Mohawks who were the same amount of brutal as them
  • Ever-worsening Euro-Indigenous relations were hurting everyone, even the seemingly insigfnicant dutch
  • West India Company ignored New Netherland and expanded its trade in African slaves and Brazilian sugar after the INdian War
  • In New Amsterdam, Govern Peter Stuyvesant was an authoritarian ruler and didn’t allow for a representative government
  • England invaded the colony in 1664 and the New Amsterdam residents actually didn’t mind it that much
  • New Netherland became New York and fell under English control
• Rise of the Iroquois
  • Five Nations of the Iroquois suffered as result of Euorepan colonization
  • They capitalized on strategic location in central New York to dominate region between French and Dutch colonies
  • They got goods and guns from the Dutch merchants at Fort Orange (albany)
    • Iroquois soldiers terrorized their neighbors in wars and battles
  • In response to a smallpox epjidemic in 1633, which cut their population into ⅓ of its previous size, they started a series of devastating wars against the Hurons (1649), Neutrals (1651), Eeries (1657), and Susquehannocks (1660)
    • All of the aforementioned groups were Iroquoian speaking people
  • In these battles, the iroquois burned villages, killing lots of people and taking the survivors captive
  • The Iroquois conitnued to fight into the rest of North America, making their controlled territory larger and larger
    • They would dominate indian groups along the way
    • They dramaticlaly changed the map of northeastern North America
  • Many Iroquois raids came at the expense of French-allied Algonquian Indians
  • In 1660s, New France committed to all out war against the Iroquois
  • 1667: the Mohawks were the last of the five nations of the iroquois to admit defeat to the french
  • As part of peace settlemtn, the Five nations accepted Jesuit missionaries into their communities
  • Minority of the iroquois (20%) converted to Catholicism and moved to St.Lawrence valley
  • Iroquois of New York didn’t collapse though
    • They forged alliances with the english who took over New Netherland and continued to be a dominant force in politics of the Norhteast for many generations to come
• New England
  • 1620: 102 english protestants landed at a place they called Plymouth, near Cape Cod
  • 10 yrs later, much larger group began arriving just north of Plymouth in the newly chartered Massachusetts bay colony
  • By 1640: region had attracted more than 20,000 migrants
  • Unlike early parties in the Chesapeake and Barbados, these weren’t young male adventurers, they were family groups so that they could create communities like the ones they left behind
    • Excepted they wanted it to be based on protestant principles
  • Their numbers were pretty small compared to Carribean and Chesapeake, but they had a balanced sex reatio and organized approach to community formation, allowing them to multiply quickly
  • Distriuted land broadly, so they could build a society of independent farm families
  • By establishing a “holy commonwealth”, they gave a moral dimension to American history that sruvives today
• The Pilgrims
  • The pilgrims were religious separatists–Protestants who left the Church of England
  • 35 of the english exiles resolved to maintain their English identity by moving to America
  • Led by William Bradford and joined by 67 migrants from Egnland, the Pilgrims sailed to America on the Mayflower ship
  • They didn’t have a royal charter like the Virignia Company, so they combine themselves “toether into a civil ody politick”
  • Mayflower Compact used Pilgrims’ self-governing religious congregation as model for political strccture
  • Only ½ of first migrant group survived until spring, but afterwards Plymouth thrived
  • Piligrims’ religious discipline encouraged strong work ethic
  • Smallpox epidemic in 1618 devastated local Wampanoags, minimizing danger they posed to the Pilgrims
  • By 1640, 3000 settlers in Plymouth
  • Establisehd representative self-government, broad political rights, property ownerhip, and religious freedom of conscinece to ensure political stability
  • At same time, England went deeper into religious turmoil
    • English Puritans were Protestants who ddin’t seaparate from Church of England fled to America
• John Winthrop and Massachusetts Bay
  • Puritan exodus began 1630 with departure of 900 migrants led by John Wintrhop
    • John Winthrop: educated countryman who became first governor of Masachusetts Bay Colony
      • He called England morally corrupt and “overburdened with people”
  • Wintrhop was trying to find land and a place in Christina history for his children and people
  • Puritans hoped to inspire religious reform throughout Christendom
  • Winthrop and associates governed Massachusetts Bay Colony from town of Boston
  • Similar to Virginia Company, Massachusetts Bay Company was join-stock corporation
    • Colonists transformed company into a representative political system with governor, council, and assembly
  • Puritans limited right to vote and hold office to men who were members of church
  • Rejecting Plymouth colony’s policy of relgious tolerance, Mass Bay colony established Puritanism as state-supported religion
    • Didn’t allow other faiths from conducting services
    • Used bible as legal guide
  • Over next decade, about 10,000 Puritans migrated to colony, along with 10,000 others running away from tough times in Europe
  • New England Puritans place power in congregation of members
• Roger Williams and Rhode Island
  • To maintain God’s favor, Massachusetts Bay magistrates got rid of religious dissidents in their colony
  • One of these dissident targets was Roger Williams, Puritan minister in Salem
  • Williams opposed decision to establish officaila religion and praised pilgrims’ separation of church and state
  • Williams advocated toleration, citing that political magistrates had authority over only the “bodies, goods, and outward etates of men”, not their spiritual lives
  • Williams also questioned Puritans’ seizure of Indian lands
  • Magistrates banished him from colony in 1636
  • Williams and followers setlled 50 miles south of Boston, founding town of Providence on land purchased from Narragansett Indians
  • Other “dissidents” settled nearby at Portsmouth and Newport
  • 1644: settlers obtained corporate charter from Parliament for a new colony —Rhode Island—with full authority to rule themselves
  • No legally establisehed church in rhode island and inviduals could worship God as they pleased
• Anne Hutchinson
  • Massachsuetts Bay saw second threat to authority in Anne Hutchinson
  • Anne Hutchinson: wife of a merchant and mother of seven kids. Held weekly prayer meetings for women and accused various boston clergymen of placing undue emphasis on good behavior
  • Similar to Martin Luther, Hutchinson denied that salvation could be earned via good deeds
  • There was no “covenant of works” that would save the well-behaved, only a “covenant of grace” through which God saved those he predestined for salvation
  • Magistrates resented Hutchinson bcause she was a woman
  • Puritans belived that both men and women could be saved, but gender equality stopped there
  • 1637: Magistrates accused Hutchinson of teaching that inward grace freed on an individual from the ruels of the church and found her guilty of holding heretical views
  • She was banished and went to Roger Williams’ settlement in Rhode Island
• Puritan-Pequout War
  • Lots of rivalling Indigenous groups in New England before Europeans arrived
  • By 1630s, these groups bordered by Dutch colony of New Netherland to the west and various English settlements to the East
  • New England’s Indigenous leaders created alliances for trade and defense
    • Examples: Wampanoags and Plymouth, Mohegans with Massachusetts abnd Connecticut, Pequots with New Netherland, and Narraganset with Rhode Island
  • b/c of alliance with Dutch, Pequots became thorn in side of English traders
  • Series of violent encoubters began July 1636 and escalated until May 1637, when combineed force of MA and CT militiamen, accompanied by Narragansett and Mohegan warriors, attacked a Pequot village and massachred 500 people
  • In months following, New Englanders drove surviving Pequots into oblivion and divided their lands
  • Puritans believed they were god’s chose ppl and considered trheir presence to be divinely ordained
  • Initially, something didn’t sit right about invading on Native lands, but then they thought that god is “letting them do it” by increasing their population and land while decreasing the natives’
  • Like Catholic missionaries, Puritans believed that their church should embrace all peoples
  • However, their strong emphasis on predenstination made it ahrd for them to acceptr that Indians could be counted among the elect
  • A few Puritan ministers committed to trying to convert Indians
  • On Martha’s Vineyard, Jonathan Mayhew helped create an Indigenous-led community of Wampanoag Christians
  • John Eliot translarted the Bible into Algonquian and created fourteen Indigenous praying towns
  • By 1670, more than 1000 Indigenous lived in these praying towns, but few Native Amercians were ever permittedd to become full members of Puritan congregations
• Puritan revolution in England
  • At this time, there was a religious civil war in england
  • Archbishop Laud imposed Church of England prayer book on Presbyterian Scotland in 1637
  • 5 years later, rebel scottish army invaded england
  • Thousands of English and American Puritans joine dthe Scots, and demanded religious reform and parliamentary power
  • After long civil war, parliamentary forces led by Oliver Cromwell won the war
  • 1649: Parliamentary forces (puritans and scots) beheaded King Charles I, proclaimed republican Commonwealth, and banished bishops and elaborate rituals from Church of England
  • Puritan win in England was short-lived, though
  • Popular support for Commonwealth went down after Cromwell became a dictator in 1653
  • After he died in 1658, moderate Protestants and resurgent aristcracy restored monarch and hierarchy of bishops
  • Charles II (r. 1660-1685) came onto the throne and England’s experiment in radical protestant government ended
  • For Puritans in America, restoration of monarchy ment new phase of “errand run into wildness”
  • They came to New England expecting return to Europe in triumph, but with the english revolution failed, the ministers exhorted congregations to create godly republican society in America
  • Puritan colonies now stood as outosts of Calvinism and Atlantic republican tradition
• Puritanism and Witchcraft:
  • Like Native Americans, Puritans thought that physical world was full of supernatural forces
  • Christians saw signs of God’s power in stars, brith defects, and other unusual events (coincidences)
  • Puritans were hostiel toward people who they believed tried to manipulate these forces, and were willing to condemn neighbors as Satan’s “wizards” or “witches”
  • People in town of Andover “were much addicted to sorcery” according to Puritan observer
  • Between 1647 and 1662, civil authorities in New england hanged 14 people for witchcraft, most of them older women
  • The most dramatic episode of witch-hunting was in Salem in 1692
    • Several girls who had experienced strange seizures accused neighbors of beweitching them
    • Judges at accused witches trials allowed use of “spectral” evidence, spinning the accusations out of control
      • Spectrral means things and visions of evil beings and marks seen only by the girls
    • Massachusetts bay tried 175 people for witchcraft and executecd 19 of them
  • Causes of this mass hysteria are still debated because of how complex they are
    • Some historians point to group rivalries: many accusers were daughters or servants of poor farmers, wheareas many of alleged witches were wealthier church members or their friends
    • Because 18 of thsoe put to death were women, other historians saw episode as part of broader effort to subordinate women
  • Salem episode marked major turning point
  • Because there were so many deaths, governments discouraged legal prosecutions for witchcraft
  • Also, many ppl tooka dvantage of Euroepan Englithenment, a majro intellectual movement beginning around 1675 and promoted a rational, scientific view of world
  • Educated men and women started to explain strange happenings and usdden deaths by reference to “natural causes,” not witchcraft or wizardry
• A Yeoman Society, 1630-1700
  • New Enland puritans rejected feudal practices of English society
    • Came from negative personal experience in England feudal system
  • They had “escaped out of the polutions of the world”
  • General Courts of Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut bestowed land on groups of settlers, who then distributed it among male heads of families
  • Widespread ownership of land didn’t mean wealth or status equality
  • “God had ordained different degrees and orders of men” - boston merchant John Saffin
  • Town proprietors awarded largest land plots to men of high social status who would become selectmebt and justices of the peace generally
  • All families who received some land (mostly men but some women too) had vote in town meeting, main institution of local government
  • Ordinary farmers had much more political power than Chesapeake yeomen and European peasants did
  • Farmers also selected town’s representatives to General Court, which gradually displaced governor aS celter of political authority
• Instability, War, and Rebellion
  • Conflits arose over control of resources, legitimacy of colonial leaders’ claims to power, and attempts to dfefin social and cultural norms everywhere in European American colonies
  • Sometimes conflicts would turn into episodes of violence, and each time the episode had its own story
• Native American Resistance
  • In English Northeast and Spanish Southwest, European claims to power and territory prompted Native American wars of resistance
  • Wampanoags and other Indian groups maintained alliances with neighboring colonies for years in New England
    • Sometimes these relations were unstable and potential for violence was always a very real possibility
  • In Spanish colony of New Mexico, soldeirs and missionaries conquered Pueblo communities and ruled by force, causing violence to become woven into colonial relations
• Metacom’s War 1675-1676
  • By 1670s, Europeans in new England outnumbered Indians 3 to 1
  • English population multiplied to 55k, naticves diminished from 120k in 1570 to just 16k
  • For Wampanoag leader Metacom, he didn’t see a path to coexistence
  • Puritan officials restricted the natives’ trade when natives used English ways of raising hogs and selling pork
  • When Natives killed pigs that were hurting their corn crops, English people prosecuted them for violating property rights
  • Metacom eventually said that they English had to be expelled
  • 1675: Wampanoag leader forged military alliance with narragansetts and Nipmucks and attacked white settlements throughout New England
  • Every day, settlers heard about Indians “burning houses, taking cattell, killing men & women & Children: & carrying others captive”
  • Vilence continued into 1676, only ending when the Indians ran out of gunpowder and the Mass Bay Government hired the Mohegan and Mohawk warriors to kill Metacom
  • Metacom’s War of 1675-1676 (which English settlers called King PHilip’s War) was very deadliy
  • Indians destroyed ⅕ of English towns in MA and RI, killing 1000 settlers (5% of adult population)
  • Natives lost much more though, 4500 Indians died, ¼ of an already diminished population
  • Many survingin Wampanoag, Narragansett, and Nipmucks moved west, marrying into Algonquian tribes allied with French
  • Over next 100 yrs, the displaced Indian peoples would take their revenge, joingin French Catholics and attacking Puritan enemies
  • Metacom’s War didn’t eliminate presence of Indians in southern new England, but it pretty much destroyed their existence as independent peoples
• Pueblo Revolt
  • From time of first arrival in Pueblo country 1540, Spanish soldiers and Franciscan missionaries attempted to domainate the Indian communities there
  • Demanded tribute, labor, and forced conversions to Catholicism, all while suppressing resistance
  • Small minority ruling over population of 17,000 people, Spanish were mistrusted and often hated
  • Drought beginning 1660 made Pueblo misery even worse
  • Many pueblos turned away from Christinaity and back to own spiritual ways eduring the devastation
  • 1675: Spanish officials hanged 3 pueblo priests and whipped dozens of others as punishment for sorcery in response to them uncovnerting from Catholicism
  • One convictred sorcer was religious leader from San Juan peublo anmed Popé
    • Five years later, he organized military offensive called Puebo Revolt (also Popé’s rebellion)
  • The revolt took warriors from 24 pueblos across several hundred miles, speaking six languages
  • Popé’s revolt liberated pueblos and culminated in capture of Santa Fe
  • 400 Spaniards killed, reamining 2100 fled south
  • New Mexico came under Pueblo hands
  • Under leadership of Diego de Vargas, Spanish returnd and recaptured Santa Fe in 1693
    • Three years later, they pretty much recaptured most of pueblos in New Mexico
  • Spanish policy was redirected by Pueblo revolt though
  • Officials reducedlabor demands on Pueblo communities and relied on Indians to create defnsive perimieter against Ute, Apache, and Navajo neighbors
  • In next century, Jesuit and Franciscan missionary built dense network of missions extending north from Mexico along coast of Baja and Alta california
  • Many of these missions/institutions aimed to bring piece to Native peoples and transform ways of life
  • Massive waves of disease like smallpox & typhus drove survinving Indians to missions
  • Mission communities brought Indians sustenance and protectin they wanted
• Bacon’s Rebellion
  • At about same time as Metacom’s War in new England and Pueblos revolt, Virginia was in a rebellion that almsot toppled its government
  • This also grew out of conflict with next door Indians
  • The uprising highlighted the way that land-intensive settler colony created friction with natives
  • By 1670s, economic and political power in Virginia was in hands of a small circle of men who amassed land, slaves, and political offices
    • They pretty much controlled half of all settled land in Virginia
  • Any land they couldn’t plant for themselves, they leased to tenants
  • Freded indentured servants found it harder to get land of their own, most forced to lease lands, or even sign new contracts to survive
  • Price of tobacco fell until planters received only one penny a pound for crops in 1670s
  • Atop Virginia’s social pyramid was William Berkely, governor between 1642 and 1652 and again after 1660
  • To consolidate power , Berkeley bestowed large land grants on members of his council
  • Councilors exempted lands from taxation and appointed friends as justice of the peace and country judges
  • To win support in House of Burgesses, Berkeley bought off legislators with land grants and lucrative appointments as sheriffs and tax collectors
  • When Burgesses took vote away from aldnless freemen, social unrest erupted
  • Alhthough property-holding ppl retained voting right, they were angry as rsult of falling tobacco prices, political corruption and high taqxes that were ruining them
  • They were ready to rise up against Berkely and his friends
• Frontier War
  • Indian conflict ignited social rebellion
  • In 1607 when english invaded, 30,000 Natives resided in virgina, by 1675, Natives werre only 3500 population
  • By then Europeans were 38k in population and Africans 2500
  • Most Indians lived on treaty-guareanteed territory on the frontier, where poor freeholders and landless former servants wanted to settle, demanding that Natives be expelled or exterminated
  • Their demands ignored by wealthy planters, who wanted supply of tenants and laborers, and by Governor Berkeley who traded w/ Occaneechee Indians for beaver pelts and deerskins
  • Fighitng broke out in late 1675
  • Vivilante band of Virginia militament murderd 30 indians
  • A larger force surrounded a fortified Susquehannock village and killed five leaders who were coming out to negotiate, defying Berkeley’s orders
  • Susquehannocks retaliated by attaking outlying plantations and killing 300 colonists
  • IN response, Berkely proposed defiensive strategyL series of frontier forts to deter Indian intrusions
  • Settlers dismissed scheme as militarily use-less plot by planter-merchans to impose high taxes and take all of peoples’ tobacco
  • Nathanial Bacon: young, well-connected migrant from England who emerged as leader of rebels
  • Bacon was on governor’s council, but shut out of Berkeley’s inner circle and differed with berkeley on Indian policy
  • When governor didn’t give him military commission, Bacon mobilized neighbors and attacked any Indians he could find
  • Berkeley expelled Bacon from council and had him arrested
  • But bacon’s army forced governor to release bacon and hold legislative eletions
  • Newly elected house of hurgesses enacted far-reaching reforms that curbed powers of governor and council and restored voting rights to landless freemen
  • Reforms came too late though
  • Poor farmers and servants resented years of exploitation by wealthy planters
  • Backed by 400 armed men, bacon issued “Manifesto and Declaration of the People” that demanded removal of Indians and end to rule of wealthy “parasites”
  • When Bacon died suddenly of dysentery in October 1676, governor took revenge, dispersing rebel army, seizing esates of well-to-do rebels, and hanging 23 men
  • In wake of Bacon’s rebellion, irginia’s leadedrs worked harer to appease humble enighbors
  • But rebellion also coincided with time when Virginia planters switching from servants to slaves
  • In 18th century (1700s), wealthy planters made common ause with poor whites, while slaves became colony’s most exploited workers
  • Rebellion was reminder that these colonies were unfinished worlds, still searching for viable foundations
• Summary Chapter 2
  • During 16th and 17th century, 3 typeses of colonies took shape in Americas
    • Mesoamerica and Andes: Spanish colonists made indigenous empires their own, capitalizing on preexisging labor systems and using tributes and discovery of precious metals to generate enormous wealth
    • Tropical and subotropical regions, colonizers transferred plantation complex to places suited to growing exotic cash crops like sugar, tobacco, and indigo
      • Rigors of plnation gariculture demanded large supply of labor, first filled in English indentured servants, then in African slaves
    • Neo-Eruopean settlements: developed in North America’s temperate zone, where Euorepan migrants adapted familiar systems of social and economic organization in new settings
  • Everywher in Americas, colonziation was process of expderimentation first and foremost
  • Monarchies strengthened and competition gained new force and energy b/c of American goods and wealth flowing back to Europe
  • Establishing coloniees needed political, social , and cultural innovations that rthrew everyone together in bewildering circumsetances, triggered massive ecological change via Columbian exchange, and demanded radical adjustments
  • In Chesapeak and New England, adjustment to new circumstances started conflict with neighboring Indians and indstability within colonies

OVERALL SUMARRY

Overview of Key Questions

1. What do these sources reveal about colonial America?
   • They illustrate the complex interactions between Indigenous peoples, Europeans, and Africans, highlighting the social, political, and economic foundations of early American society.
2. What details and practices seem significant to the political, social, and economic contexts of the pre-collision and early colonial periods?
   • The development of hierarchical societies, the importance of trade and agriculture, and the pivotal role of European colonization in shaping early American society.
3. What themes in these readings remain relevant to the contemporary United States?
   • Issues of racial inequality, the impact of colonization, and the legacy of slavery continue to influence modern American society.
4. Key Language and Noteworthy Phrases
   • "Chattel slavery," "Columbian Exchange," "Matriarchal societies," and "Puritan work ethic" are critical terms that highlight the social and economic structures of the time.

Chapter 1: The New World and Early Encounters

Indigenous Societies

• Population and Geography:
  • Approximately 60 million people lived in the Americas before European contact, with the largest civilizations like the Aztecs in Mesoamerica and the Incas in the Andes.
  • The majority of Indigenous groups in North America were hunter-gatherers, with some developing sophisticated agricultural societies, particularly in the Mississippi Valley.
• Cultural Practices:
  • Agriculture: The cultivation of maize was central to many Indigenous societies, supporting large populations and complex societies.
  • Social Structures: Societies ranged from hierarchical chiefdoms to more egalitarian, council-led groups. Some societies, like those in the Northeast, were matriarchal, with women holding significant power.
• Trade and Social Hierarchies:
  • Extensive trade networks connected different Indigenous groups, allowing for the exchange of goods like food, tools, and luxury items.
  • Leaders often redistributed wealth within their communities to demonstrate their power, a practice that helped maintain social cohesion.

European Background

• Feudal Europe:
  • European society was characterized by a strict social hierarchy, with a small elite class of landowners and a large population of peasants.
  • The fall of the Roman Empire led to the fragmentation of Europe into various kingdoms and republics, with Christianity becoming the dominant religious and social force.
• Religious Dynamics:
  • Christianity, particularly after the Crusades, played a central role in European society. The church's power influenced all aspects of life, from politics to education.

European Exploration and Colonization

• Portuguese and African Trade:
  • Portuguese exploration along the African coast laid the groundwork for European colonization. Early trade focused on gold and slaves, with the Portuguese establishing trading posts and eventually participating in the transatlantic slave trade.
• Columbus and the Caribbean:
  • Christopher Columbus’s voyages, sponsored by Spain, led to the European discovery of the Americas. His arrival marked the beginning of European colonization and the exploitation of Indigenous populations.
• Spanish Conquest:
  • The Spanish, led by conquistadors like Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, conquered the powerful Aztec and Inca empires. The introduction of European diseases, like smallpox, decimated Indigenous populations, facilitating Spanish control.
• The Columbian Exchange:
  • The transatlantic exchange of goods, people, and diseases between the Old and New Worlds led to profound changes. European crops like wheat and livestock transformed American agriculture, while New World crops like maize and potatoes revolutionized European diets.

Chapter 2: English Colonization and Early American Society

Types of Colonies

• Tribute Colonies:
  • Spanish colonies in Mexico and Peru relied on the labor and wealth of Indigenous peoples, often through brutal systems like the encomienda, which allowed Spaniards to extract labor and tribute.
• Plantation Colonies:
  • English colonies in the Caribbean and the American South developed plantation economies based on cash crops like sugar and tobacco. These economies depended heavily on slave labor, particularly after the transition from indentured servants to African slaves.
• Neo-European Colonies:
  • Colonies in New England and the Mid-Atlantic sought to replicate European social and economic structures. These colonies were more focused on establishing communities based on religious and cultural ideals, particularly in Puritan New England.

English Colonization

• Jamestown and Virginia:
  • The first permanent English settlement in North America, Jamestown, was established in 1607. The colony struggled initially due to disease, starvation, and conflicts with Indigenous peoples but eventually prospered through the cultivation of tobacco.
• Chesapeake Society:
  • The Chesapeake region, including Virginia and Maryland, relied on tobacco cultivation, which drove the economy and social structure. The labor system transitioned from indentured servitude to African slavery as planters sought a more stable labor force.
• Conflict with Indigenous Peoples:
  • English expansion led to numerous conflicts with Indigenous populations, such as the Powhatan Wars and King Philip’s War (Metacom’s War), which resulted in significant casualties on both sides and the further displacement of Native Americans.

Social and Religious Developments

• Puritan New England:
  • The Puritans, who settled in Massachusetts, established a theocratic society with strict religious conformity. They believed in creating a "city upon a hill" that would serve as a model of Christian virtue.
• Religious Dissent and Tolerance:
  • Not all settlers in New England agreed with the Puritan orthodoxy. Dissidents like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson challenged the religious and political authorities, leading to the establishment of more tolerant colonies like Rhode Island.
• Salem Witch Trials:
  • The Salem Witch Trials in 1692 were a result of mass hysteria and social tensions in Puritan New England. These trials, which resulted in the execution of 19 people, highlighted the dangers of religious extremism and the vulnerability of marginalized individuals.

Colonial Instability and Rebellion

• Bacon’s Rebellion:
  • Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 was a revolt against the colonial government in Virginia, led by frontier settlers who were frustrated with the government's policies towards Indigenous peoples and land distribution. The rebellion highlighted the growing tensions between wealthy planters and poorer settlers.
• Metacom’s War:
  • Also known as King Philip’s War, this conflict between Indigenous peoples and New England settlers in 1675-1676 was one of the deadliest wars in American history. It resulted in the near-destruction of Native American power in southern New England.
• Pueblo Revolt:
  • The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was a successful uprising by Indigenous Pueblo people against Spanish colonizers in present-day New Mexico. The revolt temporarily drove the Spanish out of the region and forced them to adopt more lenient policies towards Indigenous peoples upon their return.