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Europeans framed Native American differences (no private property, no wealth hierarchy, no private marriage inequality) as savagery to justify conquest and displacement.
Spanish Colonization
- 1492: Spanish Crown (Ferdinand and Isabella) aims to control lands and extract wealth.
- Columbus, conquest of Aztec and Inca driven by wealth, glory, and Catholic conversion; superior weapons and introduced disease aided conquest.
- Bartolomé de las Casas (1542) critiques Christian justification for violence; highlights Christian hypocrisy.
- Black Legend: anti-Spanish propaganda criticizing cruelty; later used by English as justification for settlements (ironically the English would become crueler to Native Americans).
French and Dutch Colonization
- Similar Christian/civilizational framing but less violent; sought profits and trade.
- New France: fur trade, friendly relations with Native Americans; some religious influence; Catholics offered citizenship upon conversion.
- Dutch: profit-driven, religious freedom and freedom of the press; New Netherland respected these freedoms; later English conquest affected liberties.
Columbian Exchange (context for Unit 2 visibility):
- Exchange of diseases (smallpox) and crops; massive indigenous population decline and reshaped global ecology and economies.
- Diseases contributed to Spanish success and shift toward African slavery in plantation systems (Atlantic slave trade).

Major driver of European success: spread of smallpox in the Americas from Europeans; devastating native populations.
New World crops and commodities moved to Europe; catalyzed global exchange and labor shifts.
Disease and labor: disease undermined native labor; Africans increasingly brought to work on plantations in the West Indies and mainland colonies.

Joint-stock/charter colonies: investors pool funds with hopes of profits.
Headright system (est. 1618): $50$ acres of land for each settler a sponsor brings over; helps create elite landowners and large estates.
Indentured servitude: 5-10 years of labor for passage; 2/3 of English migrants came as indentured servants; limited freedom dues; high mortality/land scarcity.
Slave transition: first African slaves in $1619$ Virginia; later decades saw the shift from indentured servitude to enslaved labor;
- Transatlantic slave trade flourished; triangular trade: English goods to Africa for slaves, slaves to Americas, goods to Europe.
Racialized slavery solidified by laws and practices, enabling a white slaveholding elite and expanded tobacco economy.

1607: Jamestown founded by the Virginia Company.
1609-1610: Starving Time; John Smith's leadership restores the colony.
Powhatan Conflicts: 1609-1622 wars; reservation land granted as a settlement outcome.
Tobacco: John Rolfe’s marriage to Pocahontas facilitated settlement and profitability; tobacco becomes Virginia’s cash crop.
1619: House of Burgesses established – first representative assembly in English North America (elected by white male landowners).
1622: Powhatan uprising devastates colony; charter relinquished; Virginia becomes a royal colony.
1705: Slave codes codify racial slavery; slavery central to the economy.

1632: Proprietary colony under Cecilius Calvert (Lord Baltimore).
1649: Maryland Act of Toleration – relative religious freedom for Christians; later tensions shift policy.

1624: Dutch New Amsterdam founded; religious freedom and press freedom tolerated within colony.
1664: English capture; later reforms (1683 Charter of Liberties and Privileges) restore property rights, trial by jury, and Protestant toleration.

1681: William Penn receives charter; colony founded on Quaker principles.
1682: Charter of Liberty – religious freedom, equality before God, no state church; land purchased from Native Americans; fair suffrage approach.

Puritans: strict Calvinists seeking to purify the Church of England; emphasis on literacy and self-government.
Settlement pattern: self-governing towns with common land, schools, and locally elected governance; families moved during the Great Migration.
Religious and political structure: church membership tied to political participation; “visible saints” eligible for voting and office.
John Winthrop’s models: “A city upon a hill” emblem of American exceptionalism and communal ideals.
1662 Halfway Covenant: ancestry-based voting criteria weakened religious requirements for political participation.
Dominion of New England (1689): consolidation of colonial governance under English control; governance shifted away from local elected assemblies.
Anne Hutchinson (1638): banished for antinomian beliefs challenging ministers’ authority; literacy among Puritan women persisted but faced male-dominated church governance.

Plymouth (1620): Separatists; Mayflower Compact established early self-governance.
Connecticut: Hartford (1636) with broader suffrage than Puritans; Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639) – first colonial constitution; later unification with New Haven in 1662.
Rhode Island: Roger Williams (1636) established religious liberty and church-state separation; favored Native American rights and dissenters.

Massachusetts Bay (1629 charter): Puritan leadership; urban religious and civic life; strong emphasis on literacy and Bible reading.
Governance: town meetings, church membership required for political rights; social exclusivity with “visible saints.”
Salem Witch Trials (1692): reflection of religious extremism and social stresses; several executions.

Geography and economy: fertile lands and temperate climate support tobacco, rice, indigo; plantation system dominates.
Slavery underpins economic and social order; plantation hierarchy centers on large landowners.
Slavery and race: legal codifications and labor systems create a solid white-supremacist social order.

Carolina: intended as a barrier to Spanish Florida; slavery grows rapidly; 1669 Fundamental Constitutions propose feudalism but are never fully implemented; slavery becomes the defining structure; Stono Rebellion precursor (1739) highlights slave resistance; tighter slave codes follow.
Georgia: founded by James Oglethorpe (1732) as a haven for persecuted Protestants and the poor; early bans on slavery and liquor; by 1751, an elected assembly allows slavery and liquor, aligning Georgia with other southern colonies.

1619: First African slaves in Virginia; start of a labor system that evolves into chattel slavery.
1622-1676: Native-settler conflicts (Powhatan Wars, Bacon’s Rebellion) shape colonial policy and economic shifts toward slavery.
1630s-1660s: Puritan religious governance interacts with political structures; church membership and voting rights emphasize religious criteria; later relaxations occur.
1689: Dominion of New England consolidates royal control, prompting resistance and reorganization.
1739: Stono Rebellion reveals slave resistance and accelerates harsher slave controls across the South.
1700s: Slavery and plantation agriculture become central to the economy across Chesapeake and Southern colonies, while Puritan New England develops a different social and political model focused on religious-moculated governance and community order.