Main Idea: Comparing motives and methods used by Europeans to colonize the New World.

Spanish Colonization

• Spanish wanted wealth through agriculture and the mining of gold and silver

• Spanish used the Encomienda system for this, but when this didn’t work, they got Africans to do the work for them

• Resulted in Caste System based on race, reshaped society based on racial ancestry

• Mission System - Conversion of Native Americans to Christianity

  • Mixed Results - Some Natives did switch, others incorporated parts of Christianity into their own religion, and others completely fought against it

    • i.e. Pueblo Revolts

French Colonization

• Became interested in sailing West 1524

• Mainly interested for sailing route, giving access to trade in Asia

• Distracted with wars, and religious persecution

• End up Colonizing

• Samuel De Champlain colonizes Quebec in 1608 - First permanent French settlement

• French more interested in trade than in Conquest, i.e. fish and fur trade

• French just established settlements for trade, colonies not as important

• French traders would marry Native American women for connections to the tribes for trade

  • Example: Ojibwe Native Americans, taught French how to make Beaver Pelts, French gave them iron cookware, farming tools, etc.

Dutch Colonization

• Dutch send Henry Hudson for water based passage through Americans, doesn’t find one but finds the Hudson River (named after him) and claims the land near there for the Dutch

• Establishes the colony of New Amsterdam, 1624

• Dutch goals are economic, so New Amsterdam becomes a trading hub of traders, fishermen, farmers

• Dutch did not want to convert Natives, unlike the Spanish, only wanted money.

British Colonization

• Most important in study of US History

• Motivations - Economics, English economy changes a lot because of columbian exchange, along with wars with france and conquest of Ireland, causing nobles to need more money

• Nobles wanted to look for new economic opportunities

• Peasants were experiencing hardship as well

• Enclosure Movement - Peasant land being sold to private parties

• Many British people wanted to leave for religious freedom and improved living conditions

• British wanted to build homes, unlike other European colonizers

• British had an okay start with the Natives - unlike the Spanish, they would not subjugate Natives as a workforce, they would just try and remove the Natives from the land

British Colonies

• How did British Colonies develop into distinct societies

• Chesapeake Colonies:

  • First colony was Jamestown, through Joint Stock Company

  • Joint Stock Company - Pool of investors fund the exploration, share financial risks but don’t lose everything if failure

  • Jamestown goal is profit

  • Time divided into searching for gold and building a military fort to protect their wealth.

  • No focus on food, many die to famine and disease, resort to Cannibalism

  • Tobacco - learn how to plant it, saves Jamestown economically due to popularity in Britain

  • Indentured Servants do most of the work - couldn’t afford the trip to the Americas, so they work for a certain period of time to pay off debt, went free after.

  • Farmers needed land after demand for tobacco, further encroached on Native American land

  • Natives would retalliate violently

  • Bacon’s Rebellion - Leads poor farmers and indentured servants against Native Americans and the farms of Willaim Berkeley, who was leading Jamestown

    • Important, see indentured servants as threats. End up creating slave system

• New England Colonies:

  • Settled by Pilgrims in the 1620’s

  • Puritans - Protestants unhappy with Church of England, living by their own conscience

  • Pilgrims did not come mainly for religious freedom

  • Puritans were given religious freedom, but it was mainly for economic reasons - had trouble being farmers in urban Britain, so they came to America

  • New England colonists came in Family groups - didn’t come for just profit, came to establish society and create family economies as farmers

  • Still struggled - fever and disease kills half of the original settlers, ended up establishing a thriving society and economy

• British West Indies/Southern Atlantic Coast Colonies

  • 1620’s, British establish their first colonies in the Carribbean

  • These types of colonies were great for agriculture because of the weather

  • Grew tobacco and sugarcane

  • Sugarcane requires a lot of physical work - resulted in a lot of African slaves

  • Because of how many Africans there were, slave codes were made, and were very strict against the African slaves.

  • Slaves defined as property/chattel within slave codes

  • South Carolina replicates these conditions

• Middle Colonies

  • Lived near many rivers and streams, developed an economy based on exports of cereal crops

  • Diverse population - however, it grew more and more unequal due to an elite class

    • Urban Merchants → Artisans/Shopkeepers → unskilled laborers, orphans, widows, unemployed → slaves

  • Pennsylvania - Founded by William Penn, a Quaker (pacifist)

    • Religious freedom immediately recognized

    • Negotiated with Native Americans when expanding land

• All of these types of colonies had democratic governments - had to make their own governments since they were so far away from Britain

  • Examples: Virginia and the House of Burgesses, New England and Mayflower Compact - mostly run by elites of those societies

Trans-Atlantic Trade

• Late 17th and Early 18th century - Trade becomes global

• Trade done primarily through the Triangular Trade.

  • Merchant ships would start from New England, go to Africa and trade some item for slaves, go to Caribbean Island and trade slaves for sugarcane, sugarcane traded at New England, cycle

  • Slaves were packed into the boat - Compromise made, Slave Trade Act - awful conditions

• Mercantilism - Dominant economic system in Europe

  • Assumes that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world, wealth measured by gold and silver

  • Goal is to have a favorable balance of trade - more exports than imports

  • Establishment of colonies - Gives sovereign countries more raw materials that aren’t in their countries, become markets for manufactured goods

    • Navigation Acts passed for this reason - Required merchants to engage in trade with English colonies exclusively in English ships

    • Valuable trade items required to pass exclusively through British ports

  • Again - all done to maximize exports

• Trade fundamentally changes colonial society

• Gives a lot of wealth to the elites of society, such as merchants, investors, plantation owners

• Made seaports into thriving urban centers

• Consumer Revolution - Families buy more goods, changes how society shaped because your family name matters less than your financial success

Interactions Between Native Americans and Europeans

• How did these interactions change over time?

• Spain

  • Spanish fundamentally change society by introducing a caste system, make it seem like Native Americans only good for labor and put them at the bottom of Spanish society

  • Forced conversion against the Pueblo natives, resulted in the Pueblo Revolt, where Pueblo’s tried to purge Spanish from their territory

  • Spain conquered the massive empires, like the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans - subjected them to the encomienda system

• Britain

  • Settled where no large empires of Native Americans - unlike Spanish, they weren’t able to conquer the Natives and use them as a workforce

  • Many British weren’t interested in marrying Native Americans, unlike the Spanish and French

  • Initial coexistence - borrowed whatever they found useful, Natives taught farming and hunting, British gave manufactured goods and iron tools

    • Didn’t last long, as colonies grew, expansion necessary, went to war

  • Metacom’s War

    • Also known as King Philip’s War, 1675

    • Metacom/King Philip - Leader of Wampanoag Native Americans

    • More Europeans encroached on land meant destruction of their way of life - wanted to force the British out

    • Allied with other Native groups, and burned their fields, killed their men, captured women and children

    • British, in retalliation, ally with Mohawk and kill Metacom, basically ends the war

  • Spanish conquered Native Americans, British force them out

• French

  • French were much less invasive - military allies and trade partners

  • French didn’t really create colonies, just created trading posts for fur trade in regions they settled

  • Allied with native groups, like Heron, to fight against other groups, like the Iroqouis

• Still didn’t see them as equal, never had to worry about unified resistance due to variety of their groups

Slavery in British Colonies

• Atlantic Slave Trade - Transferred around 3 million Africans to the Caribbean and the Americas for slave labor

• Middle Passage - Journey to Caribbean and Americas, Africans were packed to the point were they was practically no room left on the boats

  • Half a million would die on the transport

• All British colonies participated in, and benefitted from, the African slave trade

• Reason for slavery boom was demand for colonial agricultural good and lack of indentured servants to perform labor

• Bacon’s Rebellion results in African slavery becoming the main source of labor in place of indentured servants

• Population distribution of Africans:

  • New England: Holds much less slave laborers because of smaller farms

  • Middle: Agricultural estates, but most were household servants - major port cities had Africans working as seamen, dockworkers, blacksmiths, etc.

  • South & Chesapeake: Had many African slaves due to the plantation system

  • West Indies: Has the most African slaves

• Chattel Slavery = Race based slavery, owned them like a domesticated animal or a tool - only way to justify it

• West Indies slavery practices influenced the North American colonies, especially in the Southern colonies

• Most notable influence is harsh slave laws

  • Leagally define African laborers as chattel

  • Slavery perpetual, passed from one generation to the next

  • Laws would become harsher - could kill laborers if they defy, couldn’t hold weapons, couldn’t leave without permission, interracial relationships were illegal

• Slave Resistance - Africans didn’t just take it

  • Covert Resistance - secretly practiced cultural customs from their homeland, maintained belief systems, spoke their native languages, kept naming practices, and slowed the pace of work by breaking tools and damaging crops

  • Overt Resistance - Open and clear rebellion

    • Stono Rebellion - small group of enslaved men steal weapons, kill owners of store, walk up the Stono River, get more enslaved men to join them, burn plantations and kill more white people

Colonial Society and Structure

• How and why did the movement of ideas and people across the Atlantic contribute to the development of an American culture?

• Religion/Philosophy

  • Enlightenment - emphasizes rational thinking over religion

  • These ideas from the Enlightenment spread to British Americans

  • Famous Enlightenment philosopher was John Locke, who creates the idea of natural rights

    • Human beings have right to life, liberty, property given to them by a creator

  • Rousseau, Kant, Voltaire long for a government with three branches with checks and balances

  • Social Contract - Citizens give some rights to the Government on the condition that it protects the people’s natural rights

  • Undermines religion

  • Great Awakening - Massive religious revival throughout the colonies

    • New Light Clergy - Group of preachers that lamented the effects of the Enlightenment, inspired by German pietism, which emphasizes the heart over the head in reference to spiritualism

    • Jonathan Edwards - New England Minister and scholar of philosophy and natural sciences - combines their ideas with religious fervor

    • George Whitefield - Travels throughout the colonies in random places, people flocked to hear him wherever he was - incredibly powerful speaker

    • Lack of wealth doesn’t mean that God isn’t with them - this idea is preached to the peasants

    • Want to resist tyranny of colonial authority

• Enlightenment awakens Americans to ideas about democratic movements, Great Awakening convinces Americans to not compromise that democracy - results in resistance against the British when they are not meeting the needs of the colonists

  • Impressment - seizing men against their will to serve in the royal navy

  • Americans disagree with the morality of this, as it could result in death by disease or warfare

  • King George’s War - War over Austrian succession, results in a lot of impressment, and heavy American resistance - riots for three days

  • Basically - Americans are beccoming more aware of violations to their natural rights