Colonists and Natives

• 104 out 144 men survived the journey in 1607

• The Jamestown settlers came in three ships: the Godspeed, the Discovery, and the Susan Constant

• They reached the American coast in the spring of 1607, sailed into the Chesapeake and up a river they named the James, establishing their colony, Jamestown, on a peninsula

• They chose this setting because they believed it would provide security for the natives. But they chose poorly

• They focused less on growing food and building community than on a futile search for gold.

• Community building was impossible because they had brought no women with them.

• The colony only survived because of the neighboring Indians teaching the colonists how to live in their new land

• The natives showed the colonists their agricultural technologies

• The natives have settled farmers whose villages were surrounded by neatly ordered fields on which they grew a variety of crops

• From the Indians, the English learned how to build canoes, which were good for navigating the local streams

• Despite the natives helping the English, the English were still hostile as they believed they were superior to the Natives and Natives were savages

• Within a few months of settling in Virginia, only 38 of the 104 were alive

Reorganization and Expansion

• In 1609, a fleet of nine vessels from England was dispatched to Jamestown with approximately 600 people, including some women and children.

• By 1610, the natives realized that the colonists were a threat to their civilization and stopped them from moving farther inland into Indian lands.

• Colonists lived on whatever they could find such as dogs, rats, snakes, horsehides, and even the corpses of dead men

• The settlers discovered tobacco, a crop that was new for them, in 1612

• Tobacco was the first profitable crop in the new colony for the settlers, and it encouraged tobacco planters to move farther inland deeper into the natives’ farmlands.

• Virginia was not always a happy place. But it survived and even expanded

• The expansion was partly a result of the order and discipline but also because of the marketable crop tobacco

Tobacco

• Europeans had become aware of tobacco soon after Columbus’s first return from the West Indies, where he had seen the Cuban natives smoking small cigars (tobaccos)

• John Rolfe produced crops of high quality and found ready buyers in England. Tobacco cultivation quickly spread up and down the James.

• Tobacco growers needed large areas of farmland to grow their crops; and because tobacco exhausted the soil after only a few years, the demand for land increased even more.

• English farmers began establishing plantations deeper and deeper in the interior, moving from the center of European settlement at Jamestown into the territory the natives considered their own.

Expansion

• Even the discovery of tobacco cultivation was not enough to help the Virginia Company. By 1616, there were still no profits, only land and debts.

• In 1618, they launched a last great campaign to attract settlers and make the colony profitable.

• Headrights were fifty-acre grants of land, which new settlers could acquire in a variety of ways. Those who already lived in the colony received 100 acres apiece.

• Each new settler received a single headright for himself or herself. This system encouraged family groups to migrate together, since the more family members traveled to America, the larger the landholding the family would receive.

• Women were purchased for 120 pounds of tobacco. Their status was somewhere between indentured servants and free people, depending on the goodwill, or lack of it, of their husbands

• Although Africans continued to trickle steadily into the colony, planters continued to prefer European indentured servants until at least the 1670s, when white servants began to become scarce and expensive

Exchanges of Agricultural Technology

• When John Smith and other early Jamestown residents grew frustrated at their inability to find gold, they often blamed their failure on natives.

• Natives cleared fields, not as the English did by cutting down and uprooting all the trees. Instead, they killed trees in place by “girdling” them in the areas in which they planted or by setting fire to their roots; and they planted crops not in long, straight rows, but in curving patterns around the dead tree trunks.

• Corn was also attractive to the settlers because its stalks could be a source of sugar and because it spoiled less easily than other grains.

• The English also learned the advantages of growing beans alongside corn to enrich the soil.

Maryland and the Calverts

• Maryland was founded under circumstances very different from those of Virginia

• The neighboring Indians, who were more worried about rival tribes in the region than they were about the new arrivals, befriended the settlers, provided them with temporary shelter, sold the land, and supplied them with corn.

• Unlike the Virginians, the early Marylanders experienced no Indian assaults, no plagues, no starving time.

• Politics in Maryland remained plagued for years by tensions between the Catholic minority and the Protestant majority.

Turbulent Virginia

• Its population and the complexity and profitability of its economy were increasing

• Growing more politically contentious, as emerging factions within the province began to compete for the favor of the government

• Sir William Berkeley was appointed governor by King Charles I.

• Between 1640 and 1650, Virginia’s population doubled from 8,000 to 16,000. By 1660, it had more than doubled again, to 40,000.

• By the 1670s, many young men had finished their term as indentures and found themselves without a home or money (leads to Bacon’s Rebellion)

Bacon’s Rebellion

• In 1676, backcountry unrest and political rivalries combined to create a major conflict

• Nathaniel Bacon, a wealthy young graduate of Cambridge University, arrived in Virginia in 1673.

• Bacon purchased a substantial farm in the west and won a seat on the governor’s council. He established himself, in other words, as a member of the backcountry gentry.

• They disagreed on many issues but, above all, on policies toward the natives.

• The backcountry settlements were in constant danger of attack from Indians because many of them had been established on lands reserved for the tribes by treaty

• What had started as an unauthorized assault on the Indians became a military challenge to the colonial government, a conflict known as Bacon’s Rebellion.

• It was the largest and most powerful insurrection against established authority in the history of the colonies, one that would not be surpassed until the Revolution.

• The Rebellion showed part of the continuing struggle to define the boundary between Indian and white lands in Virginia; it showed how unwilling the English settlers were to abide by earlier agreements with the natives, and how unwilling the Indians were to tolerate further white movement into their territory

Starving Time: severe winter of 1609-1610

Headright System: to recruit new settlers and workers to the colony.

Girdling: making deep incisions around the base

2.1: The Growth of New England

• Religious Repression was a big reason that many people including Separatists moved to New England.

Plymouth Plantation

• It was illegal to leave England without the consent of the king.

• Separatists wanted to spread “the gospel of the Kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world.”

• The migrating Puritans “knew they were pilgrims” even before they left Holland

• In September 1620 they left the port of Plymouth, on the English coast, in the Mayflower with thirty-five “saints” (Puritan Separatists) and sixty-seven “strangers”

• Their original destination was probably the mouth of the Hudson River, in what is now New York. But they found themselves instead of on Cape Cod

• They chose a site for their settlement just north of the cape, an area Captain John Smith had named “Plymouth”

• Forty-one male passengers signed a document, the Mayflower Compact, which established a civil government and proclaimed their allegiance to the king

• On December 21, 1620, the immigrants, called Pilgrims, stepped ashore at Plymouth Rock.

• They settled on cleared land that had once been an Indian village until “the plague”, a disease most likely brought by other Europeans, depopulated the land

• A smallpox epidemic caused by English carriers almost eliminated the Indian population in the areas around Plymouth in the early 1630s

• The English demand for furs, animal skins, and meat greatly depleted the number of wild animals in the areas around Plymouth

• The Pilgrims’ experience with the Indians was, for a time, very different from the experiences of the early English settlers farther south.

• Indians' numbers were thinned by disease. They were significantly weaker than their southern neighbors and realized they had to get along with the Europeans

• The survival and growth of the colony depended crucially on the assistance they received from natives.

• After the first harvest, in 1621, the settlers marked the alliance by inviting the Indians to join them in an October festival, the first Thanksgiving

• But the good relationship between the settlers and the local Indians did not last

• Thirteen years after the Pilgrims’ arrival, a devastating smallpox epidemic, a result of contact with English settlers, wiped out much of the Indian population around Plymouth

• In 1622, military officer Miles Standish established a semi-military regime to impose discipline on the settlers

• Eventually, the Pilgrims began to grow enough corn and other crops to provide them with a modest trading surplus

• They developed a small fur trade with the Abenaki Indians of Maine.

• With new colonists arriving, the population reached 300 after a decade

• The people of “Plymouth Plantation,” chose William Bradford again and again to be their governor

• The Pilgrims were always a poor community.

• They clung to the belief that God had put them in the New World to live as a truly Christian community, and they were content to live their lives in what they considered godly ways.

The Puritan Experiment

• Turbulent events in England in the 1620s (combined with the example of the Plymouth colony) created strong interest in colonization among other groups of Puritans.

• The Massachusetts Bay Company soon transformed itself into a colonial government.

• Unlike the Separatist founders of Plymouth, the founders of Massachusetts had no intention of breaking from the Church of England.

Congregational Church

• The Puritans, although nominally members of the Anglican Church, were in fact worshipers of a very different faith.

• Puritans did not accept the authority of either the Roman Catholic hierarchy or the Church of England

• The Massachusetts Puritans were not grim or joyless, as many observers would later portray them.

• Puritans strove to lead useful, conscientious lives of thrift and hard work, and they honored material success as evidence of God’s favor.

• John Winthrop and the other Massachusetts founders believed they were founding a holy commonwealth—a “city upon a hill”—that could serve as a model for the rest of the New World.

• If Massachusetts was to become a beacon to other emigrants, it had first to maintain its own “holiness.”

• Ministers had no formal political power, but they exerted great influence on church members, who were the only people who could vote or hold office

• But more rapidly than Jamestown or Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay Colony grew and prospered

The Expansion of New England

• As the population grew, more and more people arrived in Massachusetts who were not Puritan “saints” and hence could not vote

• Newcomers had a choice of conforming to the religious practices of the colony or leaving.

• The Connecticut Valley, about 100 miles west of the edge of European settlement around Boston, began attracting English families as early as the 1630s

• Williams, a confirmed Separatist, argued that the Massachusetts church should abandon all allegiance to the Church of England.

• Hutchinson developed a large following among women, to whom she offered an active role in religious affairs

Settlers and Natives

• The surviving Indians sold much of their land to the English

• Some natives—known as “praying Indians”—even converted to Christianity and joined Puritan communities.

• Indians provided crucial assistance to the early settlers as they tried to adapt to the new land.

• Natives also served as important trading partners to European immigrants, particularly in the creation of the thriving North American fur trade

• Indians were an important market for such manufactured goods as iron pots, blankets, metal-tipped arrows, eventually guns and rifles, and often alcohol.

• Tensions soon developed as a result of the white colonists’ continuing appetite for land.

• The expanding white demand for land was also a result of a change in the colonists’ agrarian economy

• At first, many white New Englanders had looked at the Indians with a slightly condescending admiration. Before long, however, they came to view them primarily as “heathens” and “savages,” and hence as a constant threat to the existence of a godly community in the New World.

• Some Puritans believed the solution to the Indian “problem” was to “civilize” the natives by converting them to Christianity and European ways

• Other Puritans, however, envisioned a harsher “solution”: displacing or, if that failed, exterminating the natives.

• English farmers often let their livestock run wild, and the animals frequently destroyed natives’ crops

• Land and food shortages exacerbated the drastic Indian population decline that had begun as a result of epidemic diseases

The Pequot War, King Philip’s War, and the Technology of Battle

• The first major conflict came in 1637 when hostilities broke out between English settlers in the Connecticut Valley and the Pequot Indians of the region as a result of competition over trade with the Dutch

• For the war, English settlers allied with the Mohegan and Narragansett Indians (rivals of the Pequots).

• The war greatly weakened both the society and economy of Massachusetts

Strangers: people who were not full members of the Puritan church

Plymouth: after the English port from which the Puritans had sailed

Council for New England: the successor to the old Plymouth Company, which had charter rights to the territory

Freemen: the eight stockholders

Antinomianism: hostile to the law

2.2: The Restoration Colonies

• By the end of the 1630s, English settlers had established six significant colonies in the New World: Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.

The English Civil War

• The conflict between the Cavaliers (the supporters of the king) and the Roundheads (the forces of Parliament, who were mostly Puritans) lasted seven years.

• Finally, in 1649, the Roundheads defeated the king’s forces, captured Charles himself,

• To replace the king, they elevated the stern Roundhead leader Oliver Cromwell

• Two years later, King Charles II, son of the beheaded monarch, returned from exile and claimed the throne.

• Charles II faced some of the same problems as his father, mostly because of the belief held by many that secretly he was a Roman Catholic

The Carolinas

• Carolina was a name derived from the Latinate form of “Charles”

• Charles II awarded the territory to a group of eight court favorites

• They hoped to attract settlers from the existing American colonies and thus avoid the expense of financing expeditions from England.

• They called it Charles Town. It was later renamed Charleston.

• The Earl of Shaftesbury, troubled by the instability in England, wanted a planned and well-ordered community

• The colony was never united in anything more than name

• The northern and southern regions remained socially and economically distinct from one another.

• Barbados was Carolina’s most important trading partner

• During the first ten years of settlement, most of the new settlers in Carolina were Barbadians, some of whom arrived with large groups of African workers

• African slavery had taken root in Barbados earlier than in any of the mainland colonies

• For several decades, Carolina remained one of the most unstable English colonies in America.

New Netherland, New York, and New Jersey

• James, the Duke of York, his title to New Netherland now clear, renamed the colony, New York

• By 1685, New York contained approximately 30,000 people, about four times as many as when James had received his grant twenty years before

The Quaker Colonies

• Pennsylvania, like Massachusetts, was born out of the efforts of dissenting English Protestants to find a home for their own religion and their own distinctive social order

• The Society of Friends originated in mid-seventeenth-century England and grew into an important force

• Unlike the Puritans, Quakers rejected the concepts of predestination and original sin.

• The Quakers were unpopular enough in England as a result of these beliefs and practices.

• They increased their unpopularity by occasionally breaking up other religious groups at worship. Many were jailed.

• As a result, like the Puritans before them, the Quakers looked to America for asylum.

• Penn wanted Pennsylvania to be profitable for him and his family

• Pennsylvania soon became the best known of all the colonies among ordinary people in England and on the European continent, and also the most cosmopolitan.

• Philadelphia helped set the pattern for most later cities in America

Cavaliers: the supporters of the king

Roundheads: the forces of Parliament, who were mostly Puritans

Patroons: large landowners

The Society of Friends: Quakers

2.3: Borderlands and Middle Grounds

• The English colonies along the Atlantic seaboard of North America eventually united, expanded, and became the beginnings of a great nation

The Caribbean Islands

• Before the arrival of Europeans, most of the Caribbean islands had substantial native populations—the Arawaks, the Caribs, and the Ciboney

• The Spanish Empire claimed title to all the islands in the Caribbean

• English, French, and Dutch traders began settling on some of the smaller islands early in the sixteenth century, although these weak colonies were always vulnerable to Spanish attack.

• The Caribbean colonies built their economies on raising crops for export.

• Within a decade of the introduction of sugar cultivation to the West Indies, planters were devoting almost all of their land to sugarcane.

Masters and Slaves in the Caribbean

• A small, mostly wealthy white population and a large African population held in bondage made for a potentially explosive combination.

• A master could even murder a slave with virtual impunity.

• Establishing a stable society and culture was extremely difficult for people living in such harsh and even deadly conditions.

• Many of the whites were principally interested in getting rich and had no long-term commitment to the islands

• The Caribbean settlements were connected to the North American colonies in many ways

The Southwestern Borderlands

• By the end of the seventeenth century, the Spanish Empire had established only a small presence in the regions that became the United States

• In Mexico and regions farther south, however, the Spanish had established a sophisticated and impressive empire.

• The Spanish residents, numbering well over a million, enjoyed much greater prosperity than all but a few English settlers in North America

• New Mexico was the most prosperous and populous of these Spanish outposts

• The Spanish began to colonize California once they realized that other Europeans were beginning to establish a presence in the region.

• Already decimated by disease, the tribes in California now declined further as a result of malnutrition and overwork at the hands of the Spanish missions.

• In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Spanish considered the greatest threat to the northern borders of their empire to be the growing ambitions of the French

• The Spanish colonies were committed not to displacing the native populations but, rather, to enlisting them.

The Southeastern Borderlands

• There was no formal war between England and Spain in these years, but that did not dampen the hostilities in the Southeast

• Both sides in this conflict sought to make use of the native tribes

The Founding of Georgia

• Georgia was unique in its origins.

• Its founders were a group of unpaid trustees led by General James Oglethorpe, a member of Parliament and military hero.

• And when hostilities broke out again between Spain and England in 1701the fighting renewed in America as well.

• Settlers in Georgia—many of whom were engaged in labor-intensive agriculture—needed a workforce as much as those in other southern colonies

• Georgia continued to grow more slowly than the other southern colonies, but in other ways, it now developed along lines roughly similar to those of South Carolina

• By 1770, there were over 20,000 non-Indian residents of the colony, nearly half of them African slaves.

Middle Grounds

• The struggle for the North American continent was, of course, not just one among competing European empires.

• It was also a contest between the new European immigrants and the native populations.

• Europeans and Indians lived together in regions in which neither side was able to establish clear dominance. Aka “middle grounds,”

• To the Indians, the European migrants were both menacing and appealing.

• The Indians feared the power of these strange people: their guns, their rifles, their forts

• British settlers became the dominant European group in the “middle grounds.”

2.4: The Evolution of the British Empire

• The English colonies in America had originated as separate projects, and for the most part, they grew up independent of one another

The Drive for Reorganization

• Imperial reorganization, many people in England claimed, would increase the profitability of the colonies and the power of the English government to supervise them

• Colonies would provide a market for England’s manufactured goods and a source for raw materials it could not produce at home

• In theory, the mercantile system offered benefits to the colonies as well by providing them with a ready market for the raw materials they produced and a source for the manufactured goods they did not.

• The system created by the Navigation Acts had obvious advantages for England.

The Dominion of New England

• Enforcement of the Navigation Acts required not only the stationing of customs officials in America but also the establishment of an agency in England to oversee colonial affairs

The “Glorious Revolution”

• By 1688, the opposition to the king was so great that the Parliament voted to force James II from the throne.

• This bloodless coup came to be known as the “Glorious Revolution.”

• they combined Massachusetts with Plymouth and made it a royal colony

• As a result of the Glorious Revolution, the colonies revived their representative assemblies and successfully thwarted the plan for colonial unification