period 2 - 1607-1754

Period 2 (1607-1754)

Time period is 1607–1754 — growth of British colonies + rising colonial anger at British imperial policy

Four major European powers: Spanish, French, Dutch, British. Their colonies differed because each had different goals.

Spain’s main goal: extract wealth (gold, silver, later sugar/tobacco).
Spanish systems:

Encomienda = coerced labor, subjugated natives; ended due to abuse + too‑powerful encomenderos.
Hacienda replaced it = coerced labor tied to land; plantation owners owned land.
The Spanish also aimed to convert natives through missions; they used religion to maintain control.
Pueblo Revolt (1680): Pueblo resisted forced conversion; killed Spaniards, destroyed churches; Spanish returned 12 years later and re‑subdued them.
Spanish caste system: ranked people by racial ancestry; pure Spanish highest, Indigenous + Africans lowest.

French + Dutch goals: economic (fur trade). Few colonists, mostly men, built trading posts. Emphasized cooperation with natives.
French: alliances + intermarriage with natives; fur trade; few converts because they didn’t use force.
Dutch: economic focus; New Amsterdam = diverse trading port; no interest in converting natives.

British goals: far more settlers than other powers. Four reasons:

Social mobility (primogeniture laws → younger sons seek land).
Economic prosperity (Jamestown founded by men seeking gold; tobacco saved colony).
Religious freedom (Puritans + Separatists fleeing Anglican corruption).
Better living conditions (population growth + enclosure movement hurt poor farmers).
British attitude: wanted separation from natives, not cooperation.

New England colonies:

Settled by families (Pilgrims + Puritans) to build religious society.
Mayflower Compact = majority rule.
Subsistence farming (cold climate, rocky soil).
Town meetings; only Puritan freemen could vote.
Export economy: fur, timber, fish.

Middle colonies (NY, NJ, DE, PA):

Diversity + trade.
Religious toleration.
NY = ports, rivers, fertile soil → grain export.
PA = Quaker refuge; democratic; fairer to natives; diverse population; grain exports.

Chesapeake + North Carolina:

Jamestown = economic motives; single men; tobacco shaped society.
Large plantations → isolated settlements.
Labor: indentured servants → African slavery after 1619.
House of Burgesses = representative government (landowning men).

Southern Atlantic Coast + West Indies:

West Indies = sugar; huge enslaved population (4:1).
Barbados Slave Code = total control over enslaved people.
SC influenced by West Indies; rice + indigo; strict slave codes; rigid hierarchy (elite planters on top).

Triangular Trade:

Rum (New England) → Africa → enslaved Africans → West Indies → sugar/molasses → New England.
Indigenous people also sold into slavery (esp. after Metacom’s War).

Effects of trade with natives:

European goods (metal tools, guns, cloth) changed native economies + power dynamics.
Diseases (smallpox) spread further.

Mercantilism:

Goal = favorable balance of trade (maximize exports, minimize imports).
Colonies exist to supply raw materials + buy British goods.
Britain imposed Navigation Acts to control colonial trade.
Colonists resented loss of autonomy.
Salutary neglect = Britain often didn’t enforce laws due to distance + wars. Colonists got used to ignoring rules.

European + Native alliances:

All European powers allied with native groups → conflicts.
Beaver Wars: Iroquois expanded into the Ohio Valley; Europeans pulled into conflict through alliances.

Pueblo Revolt (accommodation):

After re‑conquest, Spanish allowed some Pueblo traditions + land grants.

Metacom’s War (conflict):

Wampanoag + allies attacked NE towns; destroyed 12 towns; killed hundreds.
Metacom killed; native resistance weakened permanently.

Slavery development:

Present in all colonies; increased going south.
Indentured servitude replaced by African slavery.
Bacon’s Rebellion (1676): landless former servants rebelled → elites feared instability → shift to African slavery.
Chattel slavery = enslaved people treated as property.
Slave codes: children of enslaved women enslaved; interracial marriage banned.

Slave resistance:

Covert: maintain families, work slowly, break tools, retain African culture (cowry shells).
Overt: Stono Rebellion (1739) → harsher slave codes.

Colonial society:

Highly diverse population (Germans 6%, Scots‑Irish 7%, Africans 20%).
Diversity → early American identity.

Unifying movements:

Great Awakening: emotional religious revival; first mass movement; unified colonies.
Enlightenment: natural rights + social contract; influenced political thought.

Anglicization:

Colonies increasingly resembled Britain (wealthy merchant class, elite planters, more poor landless people).
Government structure mirrored Britain (governor + two‑house legislature).
Colonists accustomed to local autonomy.

Growing tensions with Britain:

Territorial settlement: colonists wanted Ohio Valley; Britain restricted expansion → resentment.
Self‑rule: impressment into Royal Navy → riots (Boston 1747).
Trade: population growth strained trade; Navigation Acts restricted markets; smuggling increased; resentment grew when Britain enforced laws.

oh hey If you're here to cram your brain full of everything you need to know about a push unit 2 then baby you're in the right place And I hope you're wearing your comparison pants cuz we about to compare the crap out of some historical developments y'all So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked let's get to it Okay so the time period for this unit starts in 1607 which is the founding of Jamestown and then ends in 1754 which is the beginning of the French and Indian War And it's stated as simply as possible the first half of this unit is really about how the British colonies in North America grew and developed in relation to one another and other colonial powers and in relation to indigenous nations And then the second half is about how those American colonies got increasingly cranky over time regarding Big Mama Britain's imperial policy So that's the big idea Let's get into the details And I reckon we'll start by comparing the development of the major European colonial empires during this period And I'm sure that you remember from unit one that the four major players here are the Spanish the Dutch the French and the British But here is what you have to remember So point your ear holes this way All of those were European powers and they were all building colonial empires in the Americas Their colonies looked way different from each other because each power had different goals Okay comparison pants on Good So let's have a look at these empires And we'll start with the Spanish So as you may recall Spain's main goal in establishing colonies in the Americas was to extract wealth In other words they ked the boom boom Anyway at first that wealth came mostly in the form of minerals like gold and silver But later it was primarily through the export of cash crops like sugar and tobacco And so when they started building their empire in the Americas the Spanish tried to accomplish that goal by imposing an entirely new social order there In other words here is Spain 1.0 and then they wanted to make all of this Spain 2.0 So in order to do that the Spanish imposed certain systems that facilitated that goal First they created the encoma system for the purpose of subjugating native populations into a massive cadre of slave labor Now we talked all about encoma in unit one so I'll leave it there But after a while news reached Spain that the encomandos were brutalizing their indigenous workforce Not to mention that they were becoming too powerful for the taste of the monarchs back home So new laws were passed and the hosienda system gradually replaced incomienda in order to make some needed reforms Now it was also a coerced labor system but hienda focused more on agriculture In the encoma system the encomanderos did not own the land but in the hosienda system the plantation owner did own the land And then the indigenous laborers were tied to the land in a kind of debt repayment system But anyway the main point to remember is that the Spanish developed social systems to meet their labor needs and to consolidate their control over indigenous people And hey before I tell you Spain's second motivation I'm in the mood to mention that this video is part of a larger resource that's going to help you get an A in your class and a five on your exam in May It's my Aush Heimler review guide and it's got everything you need to study as fast as possible including exclusive videos that aren't here on YouTube practice questions practice exams and all the rest So you know if that's something you're into get your clicky finger out That link is in the description below Okay Second the Spanish were very excited to try to convert indigenous Americans to Christianity To that end they established missions throughout their American empire which organized settlements into towns with Catholic churches at the center And these missions were a key ingredient in the Spanish maintaining social and economic power over indigenous people Now this effort was met with grudging tolerance among some indigenous peoples but others violently resisted it And here's where I introduce you to the Pueeblo Revolt of 1680 Now at first the Spanish did their best to convert the crap out of the Pueeblo And many of them adapted Christianity by adding Christian beliefs and practices to their own traditional beliefs And that dear pupil is what we call synratism But the Spanish priests were all like uh that's no bueno And they responded by trying to suppress and destroy Pueblo beliefs and cultural traditions Now eventually the Pueblo got real tired of this coercion and rebelled after the Spanish killed several of their medicine men They killed hundreds of Spaniards and destroyed every church in the area and reestablished their own cultural customs Now to be fair the Spanish did return like 12 years later and again subdued the Pueblo with brutality And I'll come back to that later But the point to remember here is that the Spanish were trying to impose their culture wholesale on the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the indigenous folks were not having it And then third the best example of this imposition of Spanish values on indigenous societies was the Spanish cast system or you may have heard it called the casta system Now we talked about that in unit one as well but by way of reminder this system created a social hierarchy that ranked people in terms of the amount of white blood they had in their veins The most powerful were the pure Spanish folks and then the least powerful were indigenous people and enslaved Africans Okay so now let's compare all of that to the way the Dutch and French set up their colonial empires in the Americas And I'm kind of lumping them together because they pretty much had similar goals and outcomes Okay so compared to the Spanish the French and Dutch had relatively few colonists in the New World and they were mostly men and they focused on building trading posts Now whereas the Spanish emphasized control over native populations the French and Dutch emphasized cooperation with them So the French emphasis in the Americas was not on establishing permanent settlements like the Spanish or the British but rather on growing wealthy through trade partnerships with the various indigenous people groups And of chief importance to the French was the beaver fur trade By allying with American Indian groups as well as intermaring with them French fur trappers were able to satisfy the growing demand among the European elite for furry hats and such Now the French did send missionaries like the Spanish did but they made relatively few converts since they didn't feel like the need to apply brutal force as did the Spanish And then as for the Dutch they like the French had primarily economic motivations for establishing colonies particularly for that juicy fur trade and had no interest in converting the native populations to Christianity They established the colony of New Amsterdam which became a significant trading port that attracted merchants from all over In fact one account says that more than a dozen languages could be heard spoken in the streets So just to sum up the Spanish French and Dutch all had economic motivations for building their empires But the Spanish sent metric buttloadads of colonizers compared to the French and Dutch in order to fundamentally remake the new world into their own image But the French and Dutch sent relatively few colonizers and were strategic and accommodating with various indigenous groups in order to fulfill their economic aims And finally we need to get the British up in this comparison party So compared to the other European powers way more people came from Great Britain to settle in North America And they did so for four reasons First they came for social mobility And if you don't know what that is think of it kind of like a high school lunchroom There are tables full of people with enormous amounts of social power And then over there are the theater kids And based on this picture I don't think I have to tell you where I sit Anyway if 17th century England was like a lunchroom then a lot of people felt like there was no way to move from the lower tables to the upper tables because there was a limited amount of tables which is to say land in a tiny lunchroom which is to say Great Britain So they looked to the colonies and thought maybe there was a better lunchroom over there And as it turns out they were right For example in England a set of primogenature laws dictated that only the oldest son could inherit the family's land And that meant that younger brothers who had some social ambition looked to the new world for the land that they were denied back home Okay Second British colonist moved to pursue economic prosperity The first British colony you'll recall was Jamestown which was established in 1607 and it was mostly populated by single young men looking to strike it rich by extracting gold Now as it turned out they wanted gold so bad that they didn't bother to plant many crops And when they found out that you can't actually eat gold many of them starved I mean that kind of suggests that they did find enough gold to eat but they really didn't find much at all Anyway it wasn't until the colony decided to start planting tobacco that wealth began flowing So put that in your pocket and we'll get back to it Okay Third British colonists came to find religious freedom Now without getting too far into the theological and political weeds you just need to know that during this period England was a hot mess religiously and going through massive changes from Catholicism to Protestantism And two major opposition groups rose in response to this lingering Catholicism in the Church of England The Puritans initially wanted to stay in England and purify the Church of England from the inside The separatists who became known as the pilgrims thought the Church of England was to use the technical historical term a smoking hot turd And therefore the pure church could only be established by separating from it And needless to say since religion and politics were emphatically not separate entities during this time King James I who also happened to be the head of the church got real cranky about these opposition groups saying that his church was corrupt So he started putting pressure on them And that led some groups to head for the new world to practice their religion without some dumb king or church authorities telling them what to do And then the fourth reason English people came to America to find improved living conditions So during the 17th century two realities were converging that made life hard for the lower classes First there was significant population growth Second the enclosure movement enabled wealthy land owners to claim public lands which had previously been reserved for poor farmers to graze their livestock So you had metric buttloads of people who were increasingly unable to scratch out a living in Britain Not to mention those pesky primogenature laws restricting land to the oldest son And so many of them started looking to the new world in order to find better living conditions So all this to say compared to the other imperial powers in the new world the English came to North America to create a new English society completely separate from the indigenous people who lived there And while profits were definitely a strong motivation for the creation of some settlements I'm looking at you Jamestown Others like Plymouth were more about establishing a religious society Okay now that was a lot to remember but maybe this might help your overloaded brain You might say that Spain grabbed at the new world They took all the people the belief systems the towns the institutions and squeezed them tight and were like "This is mine." The French and the Dutch on the other hand shook hands with the new world They could see that profit could be made in this venture And so they partnered with the people they found there and were like "Hey let's work together." And then the British shoved the new world away They came for various reasons but common to all of them is that they wanted to live their lives entirely separate from indigenous peoples and were like "Get away and if you touch me then you're going the right way for a proper British smack bottom." Okay now how about we forget that those other imperial powers exist for a minute and focus on the British colonies themselves And I hope you're still comfortable in your comparison pants cuz they're staying on for this section too Now by the end of this time period 1754 there were 13 distinct British colonies on the eastern coast of North America which we can naturally group into four distinct regions So our job here is to compare the similarities and differences between those regions and try to understand why they developed their distinct features And I'm feeling saucy so I'm going to run through this geographically instead of chronologically because I think it lends to clearer comparison So let's start up here with our friends in the New England region This area was settled by the pilgrims who I mentioned earlier And do you remember the separatists who were tired of the turd James I and the corruption in the Anglican church yeah these were the pilgrims who came to the new world to start a religious society out from under the stanky tyrannical thumb of the king So in 1620 they landed in the new world and established the Plymouth colony It's going to be important for you to know that these folks largely immigrated in family groups for the purpose of creating a whole new society And in order to facilitate that new society they drew up and signed the Mayflower Compact which was an agreement to form a simple government that ruled by the will of the majority which was an unusually democratic style of governance for the time Anyway they adopted agriculture but since the winters were long and butt cold not to mention the land was pretty rocky they were for the most part not much more than subsistence farmers which is to say they're only growing what they needed to survive Anyway fast forward 10 years and something like a thousand Puritans left England and established the Massachusetts Bay Colony And it was very similar to Plymouth in that families settled there to create a society based on biblical principles In this colony all freemen who owned property could vote on policy matters A far larger proportion of eligible voters than existed in England They debated their policies in town hall meetings and the will of the majority carried the day However to be clear only strict Puritans were considered freemen So you know it it smelled like democracy but the boundaries for exclusion were pretty clear Anyway eventually Massachusetts and Plymouth merged into a single colony And because the region made large-scale farming difficult these people created an export economy based on the abundant resources in the region like fur and timber and fish Okay so now let's head south to the middle colonies namely New York New Jersey Delaware and Pennsylvania And if you wanted to neatly summarize the chief characteristics of this region and I know that you do then I'd use the words diversity and trade So in terms of diversity this region was home to lots of different kinds of people and religious toleration became a defining feature of these colonies Now compare that to New England which was decidedly not diverse since it was mainly English Puritans and decidedly not tolerant of other beliefs I mean the Puritan colonial flag bore the motto you can believe anything you want as long as it's exactly what we believe And if you don't we'll burn you as a witch And in case it's not clear I feel like I should say that was a joke So please do not write that in your essays Anyway because New York for example had excellent seapports and rivers not to mention fertile soil the purpose of the colony was mainly economic focused on the export of grain And so merchants of many different cultures lived there in order to facilitate trade and commerce And then Pennsylvania was created by our boy William Penn and it became the poster child for religious tolerance Pen himself was a Quaker and they were a Christian sect who were also persecuted in England for their non- Anglican beliefs So Penn established this colony as a refuge for Quaker denters and all other denters who longed for the freedom to worship as they pleased Now compared to the other British colonies Pennsylvania was unusually democratic and at least in the beginning was far more concerned to treat the indigenous people fairly So decisions were made by an elective representative assembly who were chosen by land owners And given Pennsylvania's non-discriminatory practices it attracted a very diverse population as was common in the rest of the middle colonies And so in this environment Pennsylvania's economic sector grew rapidly particularly in the export of grain and other crops And now let's move south to the Chesapeake and North Carolina region and see what fodder for comparison we can find there So as I mentioned before Jamestown was the first English settlement in North America And no bones about it the people who came to what would eventually become the Virginia colony came in order to get stupid rich And that's the big difference here between this and the New England region Remember New Englanders came over as families in order to start a whole new society But in the early years most of the folks who came to Jamestown were single men They didn't come to start a society They came to find enough gold to make a leprechaun poop his miniature magical pants Now as it turned out there wasn't much gold to be found here But eventually under the leadership of John Ralph they started planting tobacco and the export of that crop made the colony all kinds of wealth Anyway that discovery shaped the society and the geographic layout of the region In order to grow tobacco in abundance they divided the land into huge plantationstyle plots which had the effect of isolating the colonists in this region Additionally in the beginning the main labor source for this region was indentured servitude in which the people sign a contract to work for a period of years and then they go free usually with the promise of a plot of land that they could own and work However starting in 1619 African slavery would gradually replace indentured servitude as the main labor system of the region Now as far as governance goes there were some democratic elements in this region too And probably the best example is the Virginia House of Burgesses which acted as a representative government for the colonist although it was generally limited to landowning men Okay And finally let's head all the way down south and consider the British colonies on the southern Atlantic coast and the British West Indies Now by far the highest concentration of enslaved labor was found in the British West Indies Thanks to its proximity to the equator these islands enjoyed long warm growing seasons And it quickly became apparent that the most profitable crop to grow here would be sugarce Now geographically that situation led to the chief feature of the land namely large sprawling plantations And as demand for sugar spiked throughout Europe that intensified demand for enslaved laborers from Africa And soon the black population outnumbered the white population 4 to1 And to put it mildly that made the white folks more than a little twitchy So in response they passed the Barbados Slave Code which stripped all rights from black workers and granted white planters complete power over them which led to brutal and vicious punishments for the enslaved Now I started with the West Indies because they kind of dictated how society and economics would go up here on the mainland What I mean is South Carolina's main job for a while was growing and exporting food to the West Indies However planters from the West Indies started showing up in South Carolina and bringing their slave codes with them And in doing so South Carolina was gradually transformed into a kind of mirror image of the West Indies except instead of majoring in sugarcane they focused on growing rice and indigo And since their growing number of African slaves had experience in rice cultivation slavery became downright entrenched in their society And so these strict slave codes quickly created a rigid social hierarchy in which a few wealthy planters were on top and then common white planters were in the middle and the dominant black population was on bottom And as such these elite planters with their massive tracks of land dominated the affairs of local politics Okay now let's talk about the wider world of economics into which these colonies fit So by the middle of this period the American colonies had more or less found their economic footing and were doing pretty well As a result their participation in a highly profitable transatlantic trade generated economic interdependence for them and fabulous profits for all involved Now one of the major systems of trade in which the American colonies participated was known as the triangular trade which is a good name because the routes roughly formed a you know triangle And to be clear this was just one of many transatlantic trade routes that shipped manufactured goods from Europe Anyway the basics of the triangular trade went like this New Englanders would ship rum to West Africa Then the rum was traded for enslaved Africans And then the enslaved Africans were shipped to the British West Indies via the Middle Passage to be traded for sugar or molasses which was then sent to New England to be distilled into rum And then on and on around the triangle it went And it's also going to be important for you to know that American Indians were also sold into slavery by the millions especially after Metacom's war But I'll tell you more about that later Now although British colonists were tied into a growing global network of trade you're going to need to remember that they continued to trade with indigenous groups in North America and that had some significant effects First trade introduced European goods like metal tools and firearms and cloth to native societies and that fundamentally altered their traditional economies and the power dynamics between various groups Then the second effect of this trade was that it continued to spread European diseases like smallox to native people which devastated some populations Okay now back to the transatlantic trade And I know the question you're asking at this point But Heimler was there some kind of European economic ideology that dictated the rules of this growing and globalized trade system what an insightful question my dear people And the answer is there was So one of the most significant effects of the growth and development of the transatlantic trade was Big Mama Britain's increasing efforts to control its colonies economically And the big fat cause for that was everybody's favorite state-driven economic ideology known as mercantalism Now by definition mercantalism was an economic system that operated on a very simple principle namely to maintain a favorable balance of trade And basically that means that a mercantalist economy wants to maximize exports while minimizing imports And why says you well says I because mercantalist economies measure wealth in terms of gold and silver And that means that there's only a limited amount of wealth in the world So if you're exporting goods that means that gold and silver is coming in but if you're importing goods gold and silver is going out and the big thing to remember here is that mercantalism was very much a statriven economic system which is to say the government made all the decisions So then it shouldn't surprise you that in the world of mercantalism the main purpose of establishing colonies was to make them servants of the imperial parents economy mainly as suppliers of raw materials and buyers of finished manufactured goods And that started causing some problems when Britain used the system to try to impose control over the colonies who at this point in their development were kind of like in their teenage years Whatever mom this is my life But big mama in no mood to abide adolescent sass clamped down on the colonies in order to tightly integrate them into the British economy And to that end Britain imposed the navigation act which forced colonial economies to serve big mama Britain And that had the effect of stripping the American colonists of their autonomy and making economic decisions that best served them And needless to say they started getting a little saucy about that So Connors resented what they considered an infringement on their economic independence But soon they found that in a lot of cases they could ignore the navigation acts without punishment And that is known as salutary neglect which means that due to Britain's distance across the ocean and the distraction of the nearly constant wars with France enforcement of the navigation acts was at times somewhat lax And as you might expect colonists kind of got used to this arrangement of skirting or outright ignoring British laws And I have a feeling that might cause some problems later So you know stay tuned Okay Now let's turn the corner and bring our focus back to what's going on in North America And specifically let's see how it's going between Europeans and American Indians And the short answer is that it was uh complicated You see during this period all major European powers allied with American Indian groups And that at times led to conflict especially since indigenous groups already had complex sets of alliances before the Europeans even showed up And maybe one of the best examples of that kind of conflict was the Beaver Wars which was a series of conflicts that occurred intermittently throughout the 17th century So basically the Irakcoy Confederacy facing the depletion of beavers in their territory sought to expand their dominion into the Ohio River Valley and the Great Lakes region And so since Europeans were allied with groups on both sides of this conflict they got yonked right into it Just for poops and giggles here are the alliances France was allied with this massive list of groups and the Dutch and British were allied with the Ira Doth my ears deceive me or do I hear the faint twitchings of your brain's gray matter trying to make an interunit connection i do So let me help Now remember that I said that I showed you this list for poops and giggles but I must correct myself There were no poops and emphatically no giggles in my decision to show you this list of alliances You don't need to memorize all of this or anything but it's a great illustration of what we talked about earlier Do you remember the difference between French and British attitudes towards indigenous groups the French shook hands with them while the British shoved them away And you can see those different attitudes reflected in this alliance system of the war Neurop pathway unlocked Anyway these alliances were to many indigenous groups kind of a necessary evil Them white folks keep on coming So I guess we better figure out what to do with it But in general European intrusion into the Americas was to put a mildly an unwelcome development And so that tension usually resulted in one of two outcomes Accommodation or conflict And probably the best example of accommodation is the Pueblo revolt which I mentioned earlier but I didn't finish telling you the story Now what I told you earlier was definitely a conflict response What with the Spanish brutalizing the pueblo and the pueblo brutalizing the Spanish right back Anyway 12 years later the Spanish returned and subdued the pueblo again and reestablished control of Santa Fe However in doing so the Spanish accommodated some aspects of Pueblo culture For example they offered land grants to the Pueblo and appointed a representative to monitor and uphold Pueblo interests and rights Additionally although the Spanish priests did return they were far more lenient about allowing the Pueblo to hold their traditional belief system And to be clear I am not saying that we need to give some kind of humanitarian of the year trophy to the Spanish for the unfathomable depth of their colonial tolerance of people different from them It's nothing like that It's more like the Spanish just didn't want to get their pantalooned butts handed to them again by the rest of Pueblo warriors But even so you know accommodation But then the other response to European intrusion was straight up conflict and eventual removal And here let me introduce you to Metaccom's war also known as King Phillips War Because why have one name for a war when you can confuse students by giving it two names anyway after decades of threats from New England settlers pushing further and further west into Wampenog territory a conflict erupted Now our boy Metacom was their chieftain whom the British called King Phillip And in order to oppose the British settlers he forged an alliance with other American Indian groups in the area And after doing so Metacom's forces attacked English settlements all over the New England region completely destroying about a dozen Puritan towns and killing hundreds of colonies Now eventually Metaccom was captured and killed And though his efforts dampened colonial expansion westward for a while the amount of deaths sustained by the Wampenog and their allies meant that resisting these white settlers in the future would be nearly impossible So that's kind of a bummer And guess what it's time for yet another bummer because it's time to talk about the development of slavery in the British colonies Now I know it's natural to associate slavery with the southern colonies but slavery was present in all the British colonies of the Americas on account of the terrific demand for labor that produced colonial goods for export Even so slavery was not equally distributed among the colonies And in general if you start in the north and go south you get the least amount of enslaved labor to the most Additionally while indentured servitude was the dominant labor system early in the era of colonial life it was gradually replaced by African slavery Why says you well says I One of the major events that hastened this transition was Bacon's rebellion in 1676 which was a conflict every bit as salty as the man after whom it is named Anyway one of the conditions of an indentured servants's contract was that after serving a period of years they would be granted land to work for themselves However toward the middle of this period as land in Virginia was becoming more and more scarce the newly freed workers were giving less desirable land on the frontier some of which was already promised to indigenous groups Because this band of former endangered servants seemed to be causing trouble Virginia's governor William Berkeley went ahead and led the legislature to revoke these men's voting rights Or if you're feeling sassy he disenfranchised As a result a group of these landless farmers led by Nathaniel Bacon launched an attack against American Indian settlements because the indigenous people were defending their land against the encroaching settlers and Bacon wanted the colonial government to take a stronger stand against them Anyway after that Bacon and his men came for Berkeley himself And Berkeley summoned all his bravery and fled like a chump But when he heard that Bacon had gotten sick and died he returned with a militia and crushed the rebellion So in the grand scheme of things this was a somewhat small conflict but it had a major effect on the transition from the reliance of indentured servitude to African slavery Not surprisingly wealthy planters in the Chesapeake and Southern regions got real twitchy about this growing problem with indentured servants And so they began to increasingly rely on African slaves to work their fields instead So the planters were like "Woo problem solved." And now we got a labor force that can happily work for us and never rise up against us And that relief lasted about 5 minutes because when it started to dawn on planters that enslaved blacks began to outnumber them southern flop sweat began to pour forth liberally They came up with new ways to control this population and make sure that their slaves remained in their places in the social hierarchy First they developed a new definition of slavery namely chatt slavery Now the word chatt means property which means that the slave master owned a slave as one might own a piece of farm equipment and this became the dominant form of slavery in the British colonies Second new laws were put into place to protect the institution which in many cases resembled the slave codes from other colonies like Barbados For example in Virginia a law was passed decreeing that the children of enslaved women were also perpetual slaves Or in Maryland laws were passed prohibiting the intermarriage of whites and blacks And I could go on but here I need to tell you something that you cannot afford to forget Namely that enslaved blacks didn't just accept this situation nor were they happy about You have to remember that the enslaved black population the Americas found many ways to resist this system And there are two main flavors of resistance that you need to know The first is covert resistance Along these lines black workers attempted to maintain their family structures in secret even though they were under the constant threat of separation if a planter decided to sell one or the other Or sometimes they worked slowly or broke tools They also retained some of their own cultural elements from their ancestral home For example cowry shells which were used in African ritual practices have been found in many slave quarters But then the second flavor of resistance is overt And here let me tell you about the Stono rebellion So in 1739 a small group of recently imported slaves in South Carolina gathered by the Stoneo River and launched an attack throughout the region They killed any white people they found and burned their houses and barns to the ground Now I'm a simple man but that does not sound like the behavior of people contented and happy with their lot in life But you know what do I know anyway eventually the South Carolina militia met the group in battle and they quickly suppressed the rebellion And like Bacon's rebellion this wasn't a massive conflict in the grand scheme of things but it had a significant consequence See the chief effect of this rebellion was to drive fear into the hearts of southern planters that their own slaves would revolt And thus South Carolina's slave codes were made more severe to suppress any future rebellions And now for something completely different Let's consider what you need to know about colonial society and culture And there are two big themes here The first theme is diversity and unity So in terms of diversity you're going to need to know that the 13 British colonies in America contained an exceedingly diverse population compared to many other places in the world So German immigrants made up about 6% of the population and they came on account of religious persecution and economic oppression back home The ScotsIrish made up about 7% of the population and many of them settled in the Appalachian frontier Now many of these were land Scots forced into Ireland by Britain and so they were no fans of the British government And then another 5% included a handful of other European groups And then people of African descent made up by far the largest population minority at 20% and they were heavily concentrated in the southern colonies And the point here is not to commit those percentages to memory but to remember that this poperri of people and cultures and languages contributed to a fundamental identity of these colonies Namely that we are not just one people we're lots of different kinds of people And that is one of the most fundamental roots of American identity But on the other hand despite that terrific variety two movements occurred during this period that would contribute to a unifying identity among the diversity of American colonists The first was a religious revival known as the Great Awakening Now by most standards the vitality of the Christian belief system had declined for about a century prior to this But starting in the 1730s preachers like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield encouraged listeners of all backgrounds to respond to God not merely with their minds or behaviors but with their emotions and on an individual personal level And the people responded emotionally for sure like fainting and shouting and rolling on the floor And this kind of emotionalism would come to define American Christianity But the point is the great awakening was essentially the first mass movement in the American colonies that affected people more or less everywhere and that had a way of creating a national shared identity and belief system throughout the colonies And then the second movement that helped create a national identity in America was the influence of the enlightenment which was a European intellectual movement that emphasized rationality Now many of the educated colonists got positively giddy about the ideas pedled by writers like John Lockach and Jean Jacqu Rouso ideas like natural rights and the social contract which played a significant role in the creation of an American political philosophy And thanks to a robust transatlantic print culture the ideas of the enlightenment crossed the Atlantic and played a role in uniting the colonists as a truly unique people And so taken together both the Great Awakening and the spread of enlightenment ideas represented more democratic movements in the colonies And that's because both movements in their different ways emphasized the power of the individual and thus encouraged people to view elites of any ilk with suspicion Okay And then the second major cultural theme during this period is the gradual anglicization of the colonies over time Now stop right there What in the fresh heck does anglicization mean well without getting too complicated it just means English or British So when I talk about the Anglicanization of the colonies I just mean that in some ways they were starting to resemble English customs and culture And you know like here's what I mean In some ways the culture of the American colonies was entirely different than the culture in Great Britain In the beginning while there were certainly different classes there was no class of titled nobility doineering those beneath them And then the landless poppers were far more numerous in Britain than they were in America And more to the point in America more opportunities for social mobility existed for some people like not all but some However by the end of this period the American colonies were showing signs of resembling British culture more and more For example a class of merchants in the New England and middle colonies had become so rich that they began to look like the English nobility and their customs and their dominance of the social hierarchy And their counterparts in the south were the handful of elite planters that were wealthy enough to own many enslaved people and thus dominate local politics And then as land grew more scarce more people at the bottom of the hierarchy became landless and poor And I don't know about you but that's starting to sound pretty British to me Anyway by the end of this period all the colonies shared the same basic governmental structure which included a governor and a legislative body divided into two houses which was the same structure of government found in England Now to be clear there were differences in who appointed those governors and the members of the legislative bodies but the structure was very British in nature even if the more local forms of government were more American and representative in nature And equally important these local governments got colonists accustomed to a certain degree of local autonomy Okay now in this final section let's get to the juicy stuff that's going to set us up for all the developments in unit 3 Now I've already alluded to some of the growing tensions between Big Mama Britain and our American colonies But now let's look them straight in the face And these tensions can basically be arranged under three headings First there was a growing tension regarding territorial settlements So due to the incredible population increase through natural reproduction and immigration that I mentioned earlier land became scarce in the original colonial boundaries Therefore many colonists desired to push west into the Ohio River Valley to create a better life for themselves Like that's the whole stinking reason that they crossed the ocean in the first place But that desire created two big honking problems for Great Britain First they wanted peace after so many bloody conflicts with the indigenous peoples who lived west of their colonial territory and further westward migration would only reignite those hostilities Second Britain feared that by encroaching on French claims in the region it would spark a conflict with them And spoiler alert it did But we'll save that for unit 3 Anyway the British government went ahead and put the official kibash on colonists claiming land in that region which led to a whole lot of resentment on the part of the American colonist Second there was a growing tension regarding the colonist desire for self-ruule You remember the whole salutary neglect thing yeah there were long stretches of time where the American colonists felt like they were independent making their own economic and political decisions But then every once in a while mama came home and was all my house my rules And there are a lot of events I could mention to illustrate this but I'll stick with Britain's nasty habit of impressment Essentially impressment was the act of forcing American men against their will to serve in the Royal Navy for Great Britain's various wars So England fought a series of three wars concerning disputed colonial borders And when they ran short of men the British Navy relied on the practice of impressment of American colonists who lived in seapports to fight their wars To put it mildly colonists resented this practice and that resentment boiled over in 1747 when colonists in Boston rioted for 3 days to resist British impressment for King George's war The big idea to remember here is that this rioting was an indication that colonists had developed their own sense of natural rights and refused to allow an imperial power to infringe on those rights But I wonder if those beliefs will have any consequences in the next period Foreshadowing And third tension was building over the parameters of trade Now since the colonial population in America was growing like mad that started to strain the system of trade which afforded them the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed More Americans meant that they were importing more Britishmade goods But Britain's population was relatively stagnant and the market for American colonial goods was reaching a saturation point So with such an industrious population with goods to spare what were the Americans to do well they needed to find other countries with whom they could trade Ah crap I forgot about the navigation acts which restricted colonial trade to Britain alone So obviously that led to more and more resentment because colonists could not explore other markets for their goods So they began smuggling goods to other buyers that fell outside the authority of the Navigation Acts because the American colonists resented being told whom they could and could not trade with And this worked just fine while Britain was all salutary neglecty But once they started cracking down and enforcing these laws it led to more resentment Well okay Click here to grab my A Push Heimler review guide if you need help studying quick fast and in a hurry Or you can click here to watch my other unit 2 videos And I appreciate you coming around and I'll catch you on the flip-flop.