HIST 1310: Lecture Four & Five European Exploration of New World (French and English Experience)

French

Jacques Cartier: Sent by the French in 1534 to look for gold, however he found fur. He went back 1541-1542 to further exploit fur and create relationships with the Indians there. The French had a more soft approach to colonialism. They had to build diplomatic relations, learn the languages, etc.

Samuel de Champlain: Voyaged 1604-1616, Governor of Quebec est. 1608, they stabilize the colony by the use of it in diplomatic affairs with the Indians to protect them.

La Salle: Expanded the French empire down to New Orleans

English

John Cabot:

Sea Dogs (1560 - 1605): Pirates like John Hawkins raided Spanish ships for gold and formed a slave trade organization when he realized that the ships had slaves going and gold coming back

Sir Walter Raleigh: He got a commission from the crown to develop a colony (Roanoke) and is called “The Lost Colony” because when he came back from getting more settlers and provisions from England, his settlers were gone with a carving in a tree.

The Virginia Company (1607)

What is the Virginia Company? - It’s a business dedicated to commission colonization for England in the New World.

Early Troubles in Virginia (1607-1610)

  • Nobody know how to build farms or don’t want to work and they go to the Indians for food and they provided.

  • They dig holes in the ground for gold that didn’t exist

  • Mocked by the Indians for their incompetence

  • They import cows which are shot by the Indians and they retaliate by burning their crops.

  • No rules on where to ship which ruins their water supply and carries disease

  • After angering the Indians, they had no food and practiced in cannibalism

John Smith (1609) - Sent with a decree making rules for the colony

  1. Everyone has to work or else your punished.

  2. If you raided Indian food supply led tot he death penalty.

  3. You had to build your house and have it inspected by authorities.

Economy: Tobacco

John Rolfe - found a new strain of tobacco in the Caribbean, brought it back to grow and commodify

With the emergence of tobacco, you get:

  • Planter class (elite): a group of people who are going to become the most prominent members of society because they were the only ones to grow the crop

  • A cash crop with a high demand in England

  • Monocultural crop: the only crop Virginia grew and they relied on it

  • Led to some difficulties due to it’s land intensity, labor intensity, the space needed which would lead to war, and they ran out of space for food and they depended on New England for sustenance

Labor: Indentured Servitude

Motivation: Economic

  • Indentured Servants were largely described as underemployed, low class men

  • Since indentured servitude is a contract with “mutual gain”, the master would get 7 years of labor and the servants would be promised 50 acres of land (wealth)

  • Planter elites would find loop holes to the contract like if the servant dies in the 6th year, which they would induce by either physical punishment or swamp sitting that gave the disease malaria, or they give the servant bad land when the contract was over

  • The brutality that snuck into indentured servitude started to normalize dehumanizing servants that would later go hand in hand with the start on slavery in Virginia

  • Were socially, geographically, and economically isolated

Political: House of Burgesses (1619)

  • Representative Government; a government of the planter elites for the planter elite

Family Structure

  • The ideal English family is the patriarch, the man of the house, the mother, who does domestic work, then the children, who are raised in their respective gender roles

  • 42 was the average age of death in Virginia

  • However in Virginia, planters would buy female indentured servants out of their contract in exchange for marriage, however when the elite husband would die and the young women would inherit their land (serial widows)

  • The children of elites would eventually be orphaned

Social Life: Isolated

  • Elites would try and interact with other elites to show off status, which led to this event hosted 4 times a year called Court Week, where court cases were heard during the day and they would party at night having different contests that would diffuse indentured servants disdain