Unit 1 Exam
European Colonization
Columbus's arrival in 1492 marked the beginning of the Contact Period, during which Europe sustained contact with the Americas. This period ends in 1607 with the first English settlement.
Columbus's voyage pleased the Spanish Monarchs, inspiring other European explorers to set sail to the New World in search of gold, glory, and to spread their God's word.
Columbus's arrival initiated a long period of European expansion and colonialism in the Americas.
Motivations for New World exploration included: desire for wealth and resources, clerical fervor to make new Christian converts, and the race to play a dominant role in geopolitics.
The vast expanses of largely undeveloped North America and fertile soils offered potential for agricultural profits and mineral extraction.
Improvements in navigation, such as the invention of the sextant in the early 1700s, made sailing across the Atlantic Ocean safer and more efficient.
Joint-stock companies, corporate businesses with shareholders whose mission was to settle and develop lands in North America, made intercontinental trade more organized. Famous examples include the British East India Company, Dutch East India Company, and the Virginia Company.
The people of the pre-contact Americas
Bering Land Bridge (Connected Eurasia and North America)
First people to inhabit North and South America came across the Bering Land Bridge.
Ancestors of the Native Americans could walk across the Bering land bridge from Siberia (in modern Russia) to Alaska during a significantly colder period when much of the world's water was locked up in vast polar ice sheets, causing sea levels to drop.
As the planet warmed, sea levels rose, submerging the bridge and forming the Bering Strait.
Native Americans in Pre-Columbian North America
The Pre-Columbian era refers to the period before Christopher Columbus's arrival.
North America was populated by Native Americans, who had their own complex societies, cultures, and religions.
Native American Societies Before European Contact
The marker of 1491 serves as a division between the Native American world and the world after European exploration, colonization, and invasion.
North America was home to hundreds of tribes, cities, and societies.
Indigenous societies in North America before Europeans were very complex.
Permanent Settlements:
The spread of maize cultivation from present-day Mexico northward into the present-day American Southwest and beyond supported economic development.
Along the Northwest coast and in California, tribes developed communities along the ocean to hunt whales and salmon, and created totem poles and canoes.
In the northeast, the Mississippi river valley, and along the Atlantic seaboard, indigenous societies developed.
Nomadic Hunting and Gathering Tribes:
Natives in the Great Plains and surrounding grasslands retained nomadic lifestyles.
The Great Plains was more suitable for hunting and gathering food sources.
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492.
He was not the first European to reach North America (the Norse arrived around 1000).
His arrival marked the beginning of the Contact Period, sustained contact between Europe and the Americas, ending in 1607.
In August of 1492, Columbus used three caravels, supplied and funded by the Spanish crown, to set sail toward India.
After reaching land, he found a group of people called the Taino, renamed their island San Salvador, and claimed it for Spain.
Spanish conquest of the Americas
During the next century, Spain was the colonial power in the Americas.
Spanish founded a number of coastal towns in Central and South America and in the West Indies.
Conquistadors collected and exported as much of the area's wealth as they could.
Explorers, such as Juan de Oñate, swept through the American Southwest, determined to create Christian converts by any means necessary—including violence.
Spanish colonial caste system (and related labor systems)
Under Spain's encomienda system, the crown granted colonists authority over a specified number of natives.
The colonist was obliged to protect those natives and convert them to Catholicism.
In exchange, the colonist was entitled to those natives' labor for enterprises such as sugar harvesting and silver mining.
This system was effectively a form of slavery.
Extensive use of enslaved Africans began when colonists from the Caribbean settled the Carolinas, as indentured servants and enslaved Native Americans had mostly satisfied labor requirements until then.
Impact of European diseases
The Columbian Exchange involved the rapid exchange of communicable diseases.
Europeans brought diseases that often decimated the Native Americans, wiping out 85 to 95 percent of the native population.
French Jesuit priests were more likely to spread diseases than convert native peoples.
Pilgrims landed at the site of a Patuxet village that had been wiped out by disease.
French colonization
French colonized Quebec City in 1608.
French Jesuit priests attempted to convert native peoples to Roman Catholicism but tended to spread diseases.
French colonists were fewer in number compared to Spanish and English, and tended to be single men.
French settlers intermarried with native women and tended to stay on the move, especially if they were coureurs du bois (“runners in the woods”) who helped trade for furs.
The French played a significant role in the French and Indian War (1754-1763) but overall had a much lighter impact on native peoples compared to Spanish and English.
French chances of shaping British North America were slim due to the Edict of Nantes in 1598.
Columbian Exchange
The Columbian Exchange was a period of rapid exchange of plants, animals, foods, and communicable diseases.
Europe had the resources and technology to establish colonies far from home.
Flow of Trade:
It occurred between the Old World (Africa, Asia, Europe) and the New World (Americas).
Old World to New World: horses, pigs, rice, wheat, grapes.
New World to Old World: corn, potatoes, chocolate, tomatoes, avocado, sweet potatoes.
The introduction of new crops to Europe helped to increase food production and stimulate growth.
Early British Colonies
England’s first attempt to settle North America came in 1587, when Sir Walter Raleigh sponsored a settlement on Roanoke Island (now part of North Carolina). The colony had disappeared by 1590, becoming known as the Lost Colony.
The English did not try again until 1607, when they settled Jamestown.
English colonization was largely motivated by financial reasons and the desire for wealth and resources.
Jamestown
Jamestown was settled in 1607.
It was funded by a joint-stock company called the Virginia Company, named for Elizabeth I (the Virgin Queen).
The settlers, many being English gentlemen, were ill-suited to the New World and prioritized searching for gold over planting crops.
Within three months, over half the original settlers died of starvation or disease; Jamestown survived only because new colonists kept arriving.
Captain John Smith implemented the rule: “he who will not work shall not eat,” which temporarily improved conditions.
John Rolfe married Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas, briefly easing tension with natives.
Rolfe pioneered the practice of growing tobacco as a cash crop for export to England. This success considerably brightened prospects for English settlement in Virginia.
Tobacco required vast acreage and depleted soil, leading to rapid expansion and the development of plantation slavery.
Chesapeake vs New England colonies
Immigration Patterns:
Entire families tended to immigrate to New England.
Chesapeake immigrants were often single males.
Climate & Life Expectancy:
The climate in New England was more hospitable, leading to longer life expectancy and larger families.
Community Structure:
A stronger sense of community and the absence of tobacco as a primary cash crop led New Englanders to settle in larger towns.
Chesapeake residents lived in smaller, more spread-out farming communities.
Religion:
New Englanders were more religious, settling near meetinghouses.
Slavery:
Slavery was rare in New England.
Farms in middle and southern colonies (including Chesapeake) were much larger, requiring large numbers of enslaved Africans.
South Carolina had a larger proportion of enslaved Africans than European settlers.
Economy:
A plantation economy dependent on slave labor developed in Chesapeake and southern colonies.
New England became a commercial center.
Headright System & indentured servitude
Indentured Servitude:
Individuals agreed to work for a period of time (typically 4-7 years) in exchange for passage to the colonies.
It was difficult, and many indentured servants did not survive their term.
It provided a path to land ownership and voting rights for working-class men in Europe.
Over 75% of the 130,000 Englishmen who migrated to the Chesapeake during the 17th century were indentured servants.
As tobacco and rice growing expanded, more laborers were needed than indentured servants could provide.
Events such as Bacon’s Rebellion showed landowners it was not in their best interest to have an abundance of landless, young, white males in their colonies, leading to a turn towards enslaved Africans.
Headright System:
In 1618, the Virginia Company introduced the headright system to attract new settlers and address the labor shortage created by tobacco farming.
A "headright" was a tract of land, usually about 50 acres, granted to colonists and potential settlers.
New England Puritans
English Calvinists led a Protestant movement called Puritanism in the 16th century.
Puritans sought to purify the Anglican Church of Roman Catholic practices.
English monarchs of the early 17th century persecuted Puritans, leading them to seek a new place to practice their faith.
Separatists:
One group of Puritans, decided to leave England and start fresh in the New World.
In 1620, Separatists set sail for Virginia on the Mayflower, but went off course and landed in modern-day Massachusetts at Plymouth.
Led by William Bradford, they signed the Mayflower Compact, which created a legal authority and assembly. This document asserted that the government's power derived from the consent of the governed, not God.
They received life-saving assistance from local Native Americans, specifically Tisquantum/Squanto, an inhabitant of the Patuxet village (wiped out by disease), who became their interpreter and taught them how to plant.
Great Puritan Migration (1629-1642):
Established by Congregationalists (Puritans who wanted to reform the Anglican church from within).
Led by Governor John Winthrop.
Developed along Puritan ideals; Winthrop delivered the famous sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity," urging colonists to be a "city upon a hill."
Puritan Philosophy:
Believed in a covenant with God.
The concept of covenants was central to their entire philosophy (political and religious).
They viewed government as a covenant among people.
Work served a communal ideal and the Puritan church was always to be served.
Their strict Calvinist principles dictated daily lives, leading to the Protestant work ethic and influencing the market economy.
Religious Intolerance:
Both Separatists and Congregationalists did not tolerate religious freedom in their colonies, despite having fled religious persecution themselves.
Anne Hutchinson
Anne Hutchinson was a prominent proponent of antinomianism (the belief that faith alone, not obedience to moral law, is necessary for salvation).
She was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for challenging Puritan beliefs and the authority of the Puritan clergy.
Being a woman in a patriarchal society also turned many against her.
Bacon’s Rebellion
Events such as Bacon’s Rebellion, particularly its demonstration of a large, restless, landless white male population, showed Chesapeake landowners it was not in their best interest to continue relying on indentured servitude.
This contributed to the shift towards enslaved African labor as the primary labor force in the southern colonies.