Unit 5 - AAH Study Guide

Who were the Native Americans?

  • They were the indigenous people (original inhabitants) of the Americas
  • Called Indians by the Europeans
  • They had 500+ tribes and cultures (different)

The Spanish Empire

  • Quickly built colonial empire in the Americas
  • Gold and Silver, sugar, tobacco, leather goods
    • Brought cattle
  • Forced Indian/African labor
  • West Indies, Florida, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California (WI,F,T,A,NM,C)

The British

  • The British Isles - English, Welsh, Scots, Irish (WEIS)
  • Claim in 1497 by John Cabot (Giovani Caboto)
  • Harsh climate and lack of money made settlement slower
  • The english won victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588

Mercantilism

  • Theory that states that power is derived by obtaining as much gold and silver as possible and by establishing a favorable balance of trade
    • Exporting more than importing (needs to be equal)
  • Establishment of colonies were the key

Jamestown

  • 1607
  • The first permanent English settlement in North America
  • Funded by Joint-stock companies (allowed for investors to pool their wealth in support of a colony that they hoped would yield a profit)
  • 1612: John Rolfe smuggles from Spain and grows tobacco and saves the colony
  • Labor intensive
  • 1619: The first African slave was brought to the English colonies (Virginia)
  • Slaves were not used exclusively until 1700
  • England’s original idea was to send their undesirables to America as indentured servants
  • Indentured Servants were the supply of labor to harvest crops and process tobacco
  • Colonists that came from Europe that couldn’t afford voyage costs agreed to a limited term of servitude (7 years) in exchange for passage, food, and shelter

Indentured Servitude Institution

  • 1607 - 1700
  • Headright System
    • Plantation owners were given 50 acres for every indentured servant that they sponsored to come to America
  • Indentured Contract
    • Served plantation owner for 7 years as laborer and got a passage to America in return
  • Freedom Dues
    • Once a servant completed their contract, they were freed and given land, tools, seed, and animals
    • They were not given voting rights

Race & Origins of Black Slavery

  • 1640 to 1700 the basis of the economy changed
  • Indentured servitude to African slavery:
    • England gains more control of the Slave Trade
    • Lowered price of the slaves
    • Fewer englishmen were willing to sell their freedom
    • Better opportunities droves the prices of indentured servants up
    • Discrimination - English saw themselves as superior (Irish, Indians, Africans)

The Emergence of Chattel Slavery

  • 1662 Virginia’s House of Burgesses decrees that a child’s condition follows that of their mother
  • Slavery: natural condition for blacks
  • 1660 to 1710: Slave codes further cemented Africans condition
    • Restricted movements of African Americans
    • Slave codes: unjust slave laws that denied the slaves their social rights

American Slavery Equation

  • \
    • Racial Prejudice
  • \
    • Declining availability of indentured servants
  • \
    • Increasing availability of slaves
  • \
    • Fear of white class conflict
  • \
    • Increases European demand for tobacco and other goods

Bacon’s Rebellion

  • 1676
  • Led to the enslavement of Africans in America
  • It was caused to the disagreement between Nathaniel Bacon (“new money”; wanted power) and William Berkeley over the Indian Policy
  • The effect was that the white elite changes the policy of relying on white agricultural labors
    • So that they could be freed and attain guns
  • Black slavery meant that they could control the labor force indefinitely
  • Bacon was a British aristocrat who migrated to Virginia and led a group of backcountry farmers
  • William Berkeley was the governor of Virginia and supported the tidewater planters (farmers closer to the coast; prime real estate)
  • Backcountry farmers: inland farmers
  • Bacon's followers were mostly former indentured servants
  • Blacks also rallied to Bacons cause
  • Bacon’s followers resented the control the planting elite had on the colony’s resources and government
  • Scared the elite because they saw it as blacks and whites united against them
  • Bacons died from dysentery before a biracial alliance could be fully realized
  • White americans believed that their freedom from class conflict and their prosperity rested on denying black freedom

Tobacco Colonies

  • Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and North Carolina (DVM NC)
  • Whites were a majority
  • Most worked on smaller tracts of land alongside their slaves
  • Some larger landowners divided their holdings to reduce rebellions

Low Country

  • South Carolina
  • Georgia
  • Staple crop was rice ---> Cotton (1700s)
  • White settlement was discouraged by warmer climate
  • Similar to sugar islands
  • Large acre plantations meant more slaves

Georgia

  • Est. 1732 to James Oglethorpe
  • Buffer between S. Carolina and Spanish FLorida
  • Refuge for Eng. Poor
  • 1734 - Slavery was banned
  • Economic difficulties lead to a repeal
  • Slave populations grew by importation not reproduction

Low Country Slave Society

  • Whites were fearful of revolt
  • Stricter slave codes
  • Distinct slave classes
  • Mulattoes - mixed African and European ancestry

Miscegenation

  • Interracial contact which produced people of mixed race
  • Creolization: cultural exchange
    • African Parents -> African American Children
  • Common more in Canada and low country
  • Banned to stop white women from bearing mixed race babies
    • Will result in a free black class

The Great Awakening

  • Religious revival during mid 1700’s
  • Johnathan Edwards
    • George Whitefield
    • Methodist CHurch
    • Preached to all
  • African Americans begin a gradual conversion to Christianity
  • Evangelical Anglican, Baptists, Methodist & Presbyterian

Origins of African American Culture

  • Family
  • Second generation
    • Lost language and ethnic identities
  • Kept a general west african heritage
  • Fictive Kin Relationships
    • Used to provide a family structure in the absence of biological parents
  • Sir Name
    • Original master

Language

  • Creolized languages
    • Low country
    • Heavily influence in the south
  • Yam
  • Banjo
  • Goober
  • Gumbo
  • Samba
  • Voodoo

Music

  • Antiphonal
    • Call and response influenced church and work music
  • Improvisation
  • Banned drums due to long distant communication
  • African banjo survived
  • European violin and guitar
  • Influenced all forms of American popular music

Black resistance

  • Goldbricking
  • Sabotage
  • Escape
  • Rebellion
  • Outliers
    • Slaves who escaped but stayed close
  • Maroons
    • Established their own settlements in inaccessible regions
    • Spanish florida - Seminole Indians

Additional

  • Nicole Hanna James called it slavocracy instead of democracy
  • Sharecropper: tenant farmer who gives a part of crop as rent
  • Apartheid: policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race
  • Lynch: exiled without trial