Chapter 2 The Planting of English America
Briefing
- 100s of 1000 Africans worked in Caribbean and Brazilian sugar plantations.
- Spanish controlled much of South America.
- North America in 1600s unclaimed by Europeans besides 3 distant outposts
- Spanish at Sante Fe in 1610
- French at Quebec in 1608
- English at Jamestown, Virginia 1607.
England’s Imperial Stirrings
- In 1500s England was not Spain’s adversary
- HV King Henry VIII separated w/ Roman Catholic Church in 1530s and launched the English Protestant Reformation
§ TF conflict b/w Catholics and Protestants.
§ AR Protestant Elizabeth rose to throne in 1558, making Protestantism dominant in England.
· TF conflict began b/w Protestant-dominant England and Catholic Spain.
- Increased conflict
- England takes heavier control on Ireland
§ Ireland had been under English rule since 1100s
§ Catholic Irish asked for help from Catholic Spain
· HV there was not much help.
§ AR 1570s and 1580s Elizabeth’s troops put Irish people under control
· Confiscated Irish lands
· Est. Protestant landlords from Scotland and England.
· Was the start of a long religious conflict
· English soldiers developed contempt for “savage” natives
- Would bring to New World.
Elizabeth Energizes England
- England v. Spain
- Buccaneers (pirates) encouraged by Queen Elizabeth raided Spanish treasure ships and settlements
§ Accomplished goals of Protestantism and going against the Spanish.
- Most famous “sea dog”, Sir Francis Drake
§ Managed to return w/ profits of 4600% in 1580
§ Secret backers included Queen Elizabeth
· Whom defied Spanish protests and knighted Drake
- England attempts to colonize
- Sir Humphrey Gilbert attempted to colonize Newfoundland
§ HV died in 1583, ending the colonization.
- AR his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to colonize in warmer climates.
§ Went to colonize North Carolina’s Roanoke Island off coast of Virginia
· Virginia is named after Elizabeth
o As she was not married and hence was the “Virgin Queen”
§ HV all the people of the Roanoke colony mysteriously vanished.
- MW Philip II of Spain was benefiting from his successful colonies
- Used profits to create an “Invincible Armada”
§ For the use of invading England
§ Arrived at English Channel in 1588 and set off a violent battle with England’s “sea dogs”.
· HV England’s ships were swifter, ably manned
· There was also a devastating storm that finished off the crippled Spanish fleet.
- AR began the time when Spanish starts to decline (and fully declines after 300 more years
§ MW Spanish Netherlands (Holland) secures independence
§ Spanish Caribbean colonies would slip from grasp.
§ Spain’s fighting spirit lowered.
- English dominance over the seas
- England was now a strong, unified national state under a popular monarch.
- Religious unity (Protestantism) inspired nationalism and national destiny.
- AR there was a revolution of literature (Shakespeare)
- AR England and Spain signed peace treaty in 1604, but was now ready to successfully colonize the New World.
England on the Eve of Empire
- England’s population skyrocketed, growing unemployment along with failing economy.
- 3 mil – 4 mil in 50 years
- Economic depression in 1500s hit woolen trade
§ Landlords had to close down lands for sheep grazing.
§ TF small farmers had to move down to tenancy or lose jobs.
- MW primogeniture (first born) laws passed
§ Only eldest sons allowed to inherit land estates
§ TF motivated younger sons incl. Gilbert, Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake to explore to seek fortunes.
- Joint stock companies were perfected in the 1600s
- Were a hope for those previously failed early enterprises
- Enabled large numbers of investors to invest in explorers.
- Along with peace w/ Spain, many English were set for colonization of the New World.
- Due to population growth, rising unemployment, thirst for adventure, markets, religious freedom and the financial power joint stock companies gave.
§ Puritanism had taken a strong root in west and east England
England Plants the Jamestown Seedling
- Virginia Company of London starts colonization process
- In 1606 (2 years after peace treaty), received charter from King James I
§ Called for settlement in New World
§ Main motive was promise of gold and strong desire of finding path through Americas to Indies.
- Joint stock companies generally were high-risk
§ Stockholders would give up on the company if its promises were not soon fulfilled
§ TF Virginia Company of London faced high risk and abandonment if they did not quickly strike gold.
- There were no long-term investors then.
- The charter was a significant document
§ Guaranteed colonists equal rights as if they were in England.
- Would gradually extend to other colonies.
- The colonization was unsuccessful
§ Had set sail in late 1606.
§ Landed near mouth of Chesapeake Bay, met by attack from natives.
§ TF colonists moved north to woods filled with mosquitos, to James River. The place was Jamestown.
- Named in honor of King James I.
- Colonists face devastating stay
§ The around a hundred English settlers died quickly from malnutrition, disease and starvation.
- Colonists were not those who knew how to survive in the wild; were “gentlemen”.
- Also, wanted to strike non-existent gold and did not use time to gather survival tools.
- Were saved in the start by Captain John Smith
§ Took over in 1608
§ “He who shall not work shall not eat”
§ Was kidnapped by Indians and underwent mock execution by Indian chief Powhatan
- Was saved by Pocahontas who put her life under the axe.
- Mock execution was to show to Smith of Indian’s power but also desire for peaceful relations.
§ AR Pocahontas acted as intermediary b/w two groups and helped provide the colonists w/ needed items.
- HV colonists continued to die and had to take desperate measures to survive
§ Of the 400 original crew, only 60 survived the starving time/winter of 1609-1610.
- The military leader Lord De La Warr exacerbated matters
§ Remaining colonists waited for rescue crew in 1610 only to be met by new governor Lord De La Warr.
- Imposed a harsh military regime on colony
- Declared war on the Native Americans
§ MW diseases continue to devastate population
§ By 1625 Virginia had 1200 survivors out of original 8000
Cultural Clash in Chesapeake
- Powhatan’s supremacy over the Native Americans
- Powhatan’s tribe had dominated the natives when English arrived in 1607
- Asserted supremacy over a dozen of small tribes, loosely united as Powhatan’s Confederacy.
- Leading to the first major conflict
- Powhatan attempted to make English allies
o HV starving colonists began to raid Indian food supplies
o Relations between remained harsh
o Lord De La Warr in 1610 used “Irish tactics” against Indians
§ Tactics were ones used in vicious campaigns against Irish
§ Colonist troops raided Native American villages, provisions, cornfields.
§ AR The First Anglo-Powhatan War in 1614
- Eventually peace settlement ended the war via intermarriage b/w Pocahontas and colonist John Rolfe.
- Relations remained tense
- Fragile relation survived 8 years, but factors led to another war
o The colonists were land-hungry and carried diseases
o TF Indians struck back in 1622
§ Left 347 dead, including John Rolfe.
- The Virginia Company retaliates with equal harshness
o Issued new orders for a perpetual war
o Drove westward w/ systematic raids
- TF started the Second Anglo-Powhatan War in 1644
o Native Americans gave one last effort against Virginians
§ HV were defeated
- An uneasy peace
- Peace treaty signed in 1646 had rid the idea of assimilating the natives or peacefully coexisting with them
o Effectively banished Chesapeake Natives from colony area
o Native population dwindled to about 10% of 1607 number by 1669
§ Extinction of Powhatan peoples declared in 1685
- Extinction of the Powhatan people were due to the 3 Ds
- Disease
o Were susceptible to European-born viruses.
- Disorganization
o Despite Powhatan’s Confederacy, did not unite to form well-organized, formidable power against colonists
- Disposability
o Could not be put to work in gold mines because there were no gold mines or plantations
o Were not a reliable slave force
o TF were disposable, as colonists only wanted their land.
The Indians’ New World
- Some of the changes were accepted by some tribes
§ Horses that were stolen, strayed or purchased from Spanish catalyzed a great Indian migration onto the Great Plaints in 18th century
· Lakotas (Sioux) moved from forest dwellers to hunters on open plains.
- However, disease continued to bring devastation
§ Killed the elders and destroyed the cultures that depended on oral traditions to hold clans together.
§ AR tribes had to reinvent themselves and had to forcibly adapt to new ways, including people from different tribes regrouping.
- Trade was also one factor that changed Native American’s life
§ Firearms were purchased by various tribes
· Gave advantage to the tribe as they were a more effective hunting
· TF could supply Europeans with skins and pelts that were wanted
§ AR there was violence between native tribes due to competition to supplying Europeans with furs and pelts.
§ HV due to the unleveled supply and demand, native Americans often faced unfair prices offered by British traders.
- Indians on east coast were most affected by settlements
§ Did not have the time or space that those of the interior had.
§ Algonquians in the Great Lakes area was able to use their strength in numbers to surround the few Englishmen who went into the interior
· TF for a while, settlers who went into the interior wanting to trade w/ Indians had to conform to Indian ways.
Virginia: Child of Tobacco
- John Rolfe starts the colony as one dependent on the tobacco trade
- By 1612 had perfected the methods of raising tobacco while eliminating the bitterness.
- AR Europe soon demanded much of this crop
- TF colonists began to fill up the land w/ tobacco crop while greedy for more land.
- Colonists pushed ever more westwards.
- Tobacco paved a path towards slavery
- The crop had put the colony on firm economic foundations
- B/c growing tobacco ruined the soil in which it was planted in, Virginia’s fortunes were directly dependent on ever-changing prices of the crop.
- AR had also called for labor
- The first slaves arrive.
- Via Dutch warship that appeared off Jamestown w/ around 20 Africans in 1619
- HV due to heavy price, only a few were purchased at the start.
- HV by the end of the century the mostly enslaved blacks would make up about 14% of colony population.
- The beginnings of democracy
- In same year of arrival of slaves, the London Company authorized settlers to make an assembly
§ Called the House of Burgesses
§ Was weakly established and its decisions were ultimately up to veto by governor and officials in London.
- James I takes matters into his own hands
- Grew hostile to the tobacco trade and the House of Burgesses
§ Called the representative assembly seditious
- TF in 1624 revoked charter of bankrupt and beleaguered (harassed) Virginia Company.
- AR made Virginia a royal colony directly under his control.
Maryland: Catholic Haven
- Briefing
- Was second plantation colony but forth colony established.
- Founded by Lord Baltimore in 1634
§ Was a prominent Catholic.
- TF motive for establishing colony was for riches but also to create a refuge for Catholics.
§ MW Catholics were being persecuted back in Protestant England
· Incl. Catholic priest could not legally marry two.
- Lord Baltimore had high hopes for the colony to be a Catholic refugee
- Wished for Maryland, founded at St. Marys on Chesapeake Bay to have huge feudal domains and large estates rewarded to Catholic relatives.
- B/c colonists (like in Virginia) were only motivated to come if they were promised land, space around Chesapeake region soon occupied.
§ TF were surrounded by Protestant backcountry planters
§ AR conflicts flared into rebellion and the Baltimore family lost rights to property for some time.
- Maryland also prospers from growing tobacco
- Had also used white indentured servants for labor
§ Were those who had to work off the payment used to pay their passage from England to colony.
§ In the later years black slaves began to be imported in large #s
- Baltimore makes Maryland a Catholic haven
- Permitted freedom of worship in colony
- HV many Protestants threatened to place severe restrictions on them
- TF, to attract more settlers, there was the Act of Toleration
- Passed in 1649 by local representative assembly
- Guaranteed toleration to all Christians
- HV also decreed death penalty to denied the divinity of Jesus
§ Incl. Jesus and atheists
- AR there was less toleration in the colony but more protection for the Catholics.
The West Indies: Way Station to Mainland America
- England gradually controls West Indies
- Spain was weakened by military overextension
- Rebellious Dutch provinces
- TF England secured several of the islands, incl. Jamaica in 1655
- Sugar was their basis of economy
- HV tobacco was a “poor man’s crop”
§ Planted, grown, processed easily.
- Sugar cane was a “rich man’s crop”
§ Required extensive planting to yield commercially viable quantities of sugar.
§ TF required extensive land clearing and laborious work
§ Also required a complicated process of refining in a sugar mill.
§ AR only rich men w/ abundant capital to invest could succeed w/ sugar
- Labor meant that a lot of slaves were imported to Jamaica
- Sugar lords important more and more numbers of Africans
- More than a ¼ million by 1690.
- Black to white radio 4:1 by 1700
- Slaves suffered a lot
- Were coded by English authorities to define the slaves’ legal status and master’s prerogatives (special rights/powers)
- Barbados slave code of 1661 denied most fundamental rights to slaves.
- The sugar economy expanded until there was no space for other things
- TF increasingly depended on N. American mainland for foodstuffs
- AR “poor farmers” who were squeezed out by the large sugar plantations began to migrate to newly founded southern colonies
- The new colonists carry the systems of West Indies to mainland
- Arrived in Carolina in 1670
- Had brought Barbados slave code along
§ Would eventually inspire other statues that governed slavery through other colonies.
§ Code was officially adopted by Carolinas in 1696.
- Test of encomienda system by Spanish on West Indies that was eventually brought to Mexico and South America was parallel to this.
Colonizing the Carolinas
- Colonization was briefly interrupted in mid 1600s
- Civil war torn England in 1640s
§ King Charles I dismissed Parliament in 1629
· Upon recalling parliament back in 1640, members were rebellious.
· TF under the political leader and Puritan-soldier Oliver Cromwell, Charles I was beheaded.
§ AR Cromwell ruled England for a decade until Charles II eventually restored to the throne in 1660.
- Restoration Period resumed empire building and royal involvement.
- Carolina formally created in 1670
- King granted 8 of court favorites to the area which became Carolinas
§ Court favorites were called Lords Proprietors
§ Carolinas was named for Charles II.
§ The aristocrats hoped to grow crops to supply sugar plantations in Barbados and export non-English goods.
- Carolina prospers due to close ties with sugar islands and slave trade
- Colonists had included many emigrants from Barbados
- Carolina was like a West Indies outpost
§ Many emigrants had emigrated from Barbados
§ Est. slave trade
· Searched for captives in the interior after allying with coastal Savannah Native Americans.
· Lords Proprietors protested
· HV Native Americans soon part of slave trade
§ Slave trade eventually grew to New England
- Savannah Indians do not meet a fortunate fate
- 1707 decided to end alliance with Carolinians and migrate near Pennsylvania
§ William Penn had promised better relations b/w whites and Indians
§ HV Carolinians “annihilated” the natives of Carolina before they could depart, by 1710.
- Rice emerges as an important asset to Carolinian economy
- Rice trade influences slave trade
§ Was an exotic food to England.
§ B/c rice was grown in Africa, Carolinians paid a lot for slaves w/ experience in rice growing.
· Also Africans were genetically immune to malaria
· TF more effective workers
§ AR slaves soon became majority of Carolinians
- Charlestown becomes a busy seaport
§ Named for the king
§ Aristocrats and French Protestant refugees and others were attracted to Charlestown by religious toleration.
- Conflict rises b/w Carolina and Florida
§ Catholic Spaniards were irritated by Protestants.
§ TF were many Anglo-Spanish wars.
§ HV by 1700 Carolina was too strong to be wiped out.
The Emergence of North Carolina
- Refugees from Virginia
- Those under poverty line and religious dissenters fled to Carolina
- Were repelled by big plantation gentry belonging to Church of England.
- TF North Carolinians have been called “squatters”
§ Had no legal right to land yet raised tobacco on small land and w/o much need for slaves
- North Carolina separates from Carolina due to distinctive traits
- Were poor and irreligious but hospital to pirates
- Also developed a strong resistance to authority.
- Were b/w aristocratic Virginia and South Carolina.
- TF due to conflict w/ governors, North Carolina officially separated from South Carolina in 1712.
- AR each colony became a royal colony.
- North Carolina is similar with Rhode Island in several ways
- Two were most democratic, independent minded
- Least aristocratic of original 13 colonies.
- Conflict with the Native Americans
- Though did not import large numbers of Africans at first
- When Tuscarora Native Americans fell on new settlement in Carolinas, North Carolinas teamed w/ South Carolinians devastated natives.
- Sold many to slavery, others went to Iroquois for protection.
- AR became 6th tribe of Iroquois Confederacy, the Sixth Nation.
- Similar fate w/ Yamasees and other Native American tribes in southern colonies
- Most tribes destroyed by 1720
- HV in interior, Cherokees, Creeks and Iroquois remained.
- Were in hills and valleys of Appalachians
- More numerous and stronger.
Late-Coming Georgia: The Buffer Colony
- Briefing
- Was the last colony formed, founded in 1733
- 126 years after first colony of Virginia and 52 years after 12th, Pennsylvania.
- Named in honor of King George II
- Georgia was established to be a buffer against the Spanish
- Would protect Carolinas against Spaniards in Florida and French in Louisiana.
- When war broke out b/w Spain and English, Georgia was used as vital link in imperial defense.
- AR received monetary support from British government.
§ Was only colony to enjoy this benefit in founding stage.
- Georgia was founded as a haven for debtors
- Colony founded by philanthropists (those who care for promotion of human welfare)
§ Were determined to keep slavery out of Georgia at first
§ Est. to be a haven for those imprisoned for debt.
- Most able of founders was James Oglethorpe
- One of friends died in debtors’ jail
- Was able militarily and successfully repelled Spanish attacks.
- Georgia enjoyed religious toleration
- TF German Lutherans, Scots Highlanders enjoyed religious toleration
- HV all Christian worshipers but Catholics (Spanish) enjoyed this
- AR many missionaries came to work among debtors and natives
- Incl. John Wesley
§ Who later founded the Methodist Church
- Georgia grew slowly
- Was least populated of colonies.
- Development of plantations impeded by unhealthful climate
- Also b/c of restrictions on slavery
- Spanish attacks also slowed down growth.
The Plantation Colonies
- All the southern mainland colonies shared similar features
§ Incl. Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia
- Were dependent on exporting commercial agricultural products
§ Mostly included tobacco and rice
§ Though not as prominent in North Carolina w/ small farms
- Slavery was existent in all colonies
§ Georgia later reformed after 1750
- Large areas and land were in the hands of a few aristocrats
§ W/ exception of Georgia, which was filled w/ debtors
§ Also excluded the poor but sturdy North Carolinians
- Colonies were dotted w/ plantations
§ TF est. of churches and schools difficult and expensive
· Growth of cities were also slow
- All permitted some form of religious toleration
§ HV Church of England became dominant faith
· Though was not the case in the non-conformist North Carolina
· Church of England was tax-supported
- Were all undergoing some sort of expansionism
§ Incl. tobacco growers in need of more and more land
§ AR more confrontation w/ Native Americans.
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