Settling the Colonies and Colonial Life

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Settling the Colonies and Colonial Life

• Chapters 2,3 4
• Colonization and Settlement
• Atlantic Slave Trade
• Economics, culture gender in colonial society
• Life in early colonial settlements
• Diversity in American colonies

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Review of June 28th What we covered so far . .
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• Early American Civilizations and Cultures
• Diversity among Native American cultures
• Effect of agriculture, technology, horses, etc.
  on Native American cultures
• Effect of Europeans on interaction between and
  among Indian tribes
• New World Encounters
• Columbian exchange
• Exchange of people, disease, food, plants,
  animals
• European Exploration and early settlements
• Reasons for explorations (national level and
  personal level)
• Early settlements harsh conditions, ideologies
  and beliefs of settlers, and differences among
  New England and Chesapeake settlements

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Settling the American Colonies 17th and early
18th centuries

• Growth of Settlements
• Bacons Rebellion
• Slave Trade
• Ideas of Race Social Construction of Race

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Settlements

• Growth of English settlements along the Atlantic
  Coast
• Why here?
• Close to water
• French inland
• Indian tribes inland
• Spanish in Southern east coast Spanish also are
  in the western lands as well (we will be
  examining some of these settlements later in the
  class)

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English Settlements

• Spread out from initial settlements colonize
  new land
• New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
• Rapid development during this time period
  (mid-late 1600s)
• New England, Middle Colonies, and Southern
  Colonies (including Chesapeake and lower South)

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Settlements

• Rapid growth
• Pressures
• Economic
• Political
• Social
• Religion in the new settlements
• Quakers
• Society of Friends
• Believed all people equal in Gods sight
• Radical Egalitarianism
• No formal Clergy
• Men, women, anyone welcome to speak at meetings
• Persecuted and fled to new areas - Pennsylvania

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New Jersey

• Governor Carteret Arrives at Elizabeth, NJ
  Date 1665
• East Jersey's proprietary government began to
  exercise local authority with the arrival of
  Governor Philip Carteret at Elizabeth, New Jersey
  in the summer of 1665, portrayed here by artist
  Howard Pyle.

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Map of New Amsterdam (New York),  Date 1665This
map, drawn by Johannes Vingboons, shows the
extent of development by 1665. A large fort
dominated the western end of Manhattan, and
development had not yet expanded north of modern
Wall Street. The wall from which Wall Street took
its name appears quite clearly as the city's
northern boundary.
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Settlements

• Settlements faced turmoil and pressures
• English Civil War turmoil in colonies
• New England migration ceased around 1642, but
  natural increase resulted in growing population
• New England settlers (after initial years of
  settlement) experienced good health, longevity,
  and large family units (different experience from
  Chesapeake settlers)
• Clashes with Indian groups over land
• Penn attempted to treat native peoples fairly
  (p. 65)
• many European groups also came to Pennsylvania
• liberal and tolerant policies attracted all
  groups
• this led to clashes over land with Indians in PA

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Empire

• During the 17th century, the American colonies
  increasingly becoming a part of the international
  world
• Trade goods and people
• Increased economical stability increased wealth
• With this wealth, English leaders attempted to
  heighten their control on the colonies
• Mercantilism view of economic world as
  collection of national states who competed for
  shares of finite wealth (when 1 country gained,
  another lost)
• Each nation sought to be economically
  self-sufficient
• Colonies played important role
• Impact on slave trade
• Impact on lack of diversification in southern
  colonies (England wanted raw materials and only
  certain goods)
• Impact on colonists eventual resentment of
  English control

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1670s Time of crisis

• Turmoil in the 1670s in the American colonies
• Conflicts between and among
• English settlers and
• Indian tribes
• French
• Dutch
• Spanish
• Between and Among
• Indian tribes
• Dutch, French, Spanish

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1670s - Conflicts

• French and English conflicts with Indians
• What part did race play? Economics?
• Importance of trade and control of trade
• King Philips War New England
• Iroquois controlled trade with western Indian
  tribes
• French unhappy about this arrangement and wanted
  direct trade
• After neutrality treaty in 1701, Iroquois
  maintained their power through trade and skillful
  diplomacy
• Pueblo Revolt
• 1680 revolt by Pueblo Indians was longest-lasting
  and most successful Indian resistance movement
• Spanish changed policies no longer made them
  slaves and no longer tried to violate their
  cultural integrity and force them to stop their
  traditions

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Beginnings of Rebellion

• Nathaniel Bacon
• Small farmers and the government
• Economic situation
• Quest for power and land power with ownership
  of land
• Wealthy elite viewed as having too much control
• Rebellious sentiments

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Bacons Rebellion

• Colonial planter and rebel Nathaniel Bacon led an
  armed uprising known as Bacon's Rebellion against
  Governor William Berkeley of Virginia to protest
  the governor's tolerant policies toward American
  Indians. In 1676 Bacon raised an army and led
  unprovoked attacks on local Indian tribes before
  directing his forces against Governor Berkeley.
  Bacon took control of Virginia until he died
  later that year. Upon his death, the rebellion
  collapsed and the aristocracy returned to power.

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Bacons Rebellion

• Handout Nathaniel Bacons writings
• What do you think?
• What were Bacons demands? What were his
  motivations?
• If you were an indentured servant, would you have
  followed Bacon?

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Bacons Rebellion

• Class, Race, Gender, Economics
• All these were factors
• Class small farmers didnt want elite to have
  all the wealth
• Race attitudes toward Indians, in Bacons
  opinion, was getting in the way of seeing the
  real problem of the aristocracy
• Gender wives used to shield them
• Economics wanted land with land, came wealth

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Settlement in America

• Not just English (although English settlements
  are the focus of the course)
• What about other areas that ended up becoming
  part of US?
• California

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Spanish settlements

• California
• Missionaries Report on California Missions
• 1772 and 1775
• What similarities and differences do you see
  between English conflicts and ideas (stereotypes)
  about Native Americans and these accounts from
  Spanish missionaries?

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Slavery in the Colonies

• Why?
• Labor issues tobacco cultivation
• Indentured servants - problematic (especially
  after Bacons Rebellion and similar smaller
  rebellions)
• Why not enslave Native Americans?
• Why African slaves? Why did the Atlantic Slave
  Trade develop?

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Slave Trade Timeline

• 1448 Portuguese slave traders expand their
  business, sending approximately 700 to 1,000
  slaves each year across the Sahara by the end of
  the century they were arranging the sale of
  perhaps 2,500 slaves each year.
• 1502 Portuguese slavers expand their operations
  in West Africa.
•  The first African slaves arrive in Spanish
  America, representing an expansion of the slave
  trade across the Atlantic Ocean.
• 16061700 The Dutch monopolize the slave trade.
• 1619 Africans arrive and are sold in Virginia.
• 1640s New England merchants begin their
  engagement in the African slave trade.
• 17151730 The volume of the African slave trade
  doubles.
• 1799 Leading free black Philadelphians,
  including Absalom Jones, Richard Allen, and James
  Forten, unsuccessfully petition Congress to halt
  the slave trade.
• 1807 Congress passes the Slave Trade Abolition
  Act of 1807, which outlaws the African slave
  trade.

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Slave Trade

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Slave Trade

• Examine map of Atlantic Slave trade on page 74
• Look back at the Columbian Exchange map on page
  26

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African Population in Colonies

• In the British West Indies, sugar became the
  dominant crop beginning in the mid-17th century.
  Because the sugar plantations required a large
  labor force, the islands quickly became major
  importers of enslaved Africans. The system of
  plantation slavery implemented in the West Indies
  led to a large demographic disparity on Jamaica,
  for example, blacks outnumbered whites 10 to 1 by
  the mid-18th century.
• The British colonies in Virginia, Georgia, and
  the Carolinas also developed slavery-dependent
  plantation economies, growing tobacco, cotton,
  rice, and sugar as main crops. Significant
  importation of African slaves to the southern
  colonies began in the 1670s. By 1750, about 40
  percent of the colonial population in southern
  North America was black, rising to 80 to 90
  percent in rice farming areas.

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Slave Trade

• Only 4.5 percent of Africans carried into slavery
  in the New World were imported to North America
  more than 95 percent were imported to work on
  plantations in South America and the West Indies.
  
• After 1770, wealthy planters attempted to
  suppress the slave trade. By this time, slaves on
  the largest plantations were self-replenishing
  populations. Plantation owners hoped to end the
  importation of new slaves in order to curb the
  labor supply to smaller farms, thereby
  eliminating competition from these farms.

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Slave Trade

• By the early 1700s, North American colonists
  considered Africans to be the answer to colonial
  labor shortages.
• Set apart by race, Africans were quickly
  categorized as a separate class of people.
• African resistance to European and other
  diseases, such as malariaa major problem in the
  southern colonieswas also a factor in growth of
  slavery.
• Many of North America's principal export crops,
  such as rice and cotton, were grown extensively
  in western African countries. Slaves from these
  areas were highly valued by North American
  plantation owners for their agricultural skills.
  These qualities, combined with Great Britain's
  increased role in the slave trade, inflated the
  number of slaves imported to British North
  America from less than 10,000 in 1730 to over
  60,000 in 1770.

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During the transatlantic slave trade, ships from
Europe arrived on the African coast carrying an
abundance of trade goods, such as gold, rum, and
firearms. Sometimes European captains themselves
captured natives to be enslaved. More often,
however, they acquired these captives from local
dealers in exchange for the European goods they
brought. This print shows traders haggling with
dealers. The caption reads, "Fort des Maures Sur
l'Isle Moyella."
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During the development of the African slave
trade, Europeans established settlements along
Africa's west coast known as "slave factories."
The factories were like compounds, manned by
agents called factors, who negotiated to gather
slaves and initiated slave-hunting expeditions.
This drawing shows four slave factories set up
by traders from different European countries in
what is now Nigeria.
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Slaves Thrown Overboard

• Many Africans sold into slavery died from disease
  and malnutrition during the "Middle Passage," the
  journey by ship from Africa to the Americas.
  Traders, who saw their slaves as property, lost
  potential profit for each slave that died along
  the way. However, if slaves died through
  unnatural causesif, for instance, the captain
  threw them overboard to avoid supposed
  insurrectionsthe financial responsibility fell
  to the insurer. Accordingly, traders sometimes
  threw weak slaves overboard to guarantee
  insurance payments that they would not receive if
  the slaves died of disease. The practice is
  depicted in this print.

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Why slaves? Why Africa?

• Indentured servants had provided most of the
  labor on the plantations and farms prior to 1680s
• English men and women no longer as willing to
  indenture themselves
• Population pressures lessened in England
• More choice in where to settle as new colonies
  founded
• Scarcity of land in the Maryland and Virginia
  made it unappealing
• Caribbean islands sugar plantations
• Since 1640s, Dutch, French, English and Spanish
  planters had purchased slaves
• Spanish colonies Catholic Church prevented
  enslavement of Indians turned to Africans

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Atlantic Slave Trade

• Triangular Trade
• Middle passage
• Complex commercial relationships that linked
  Europe, Africa, North and South America and the
  Caribbean
• Complicated web of exchange
• Oceanic slave trade was new (even though slavery
  itself was not new)
• Expanded network of commerce

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Atlantic Slave Trade

• Middle Passage voyage
• Death en route 10-20
• Disease prevalent on ships
• Majority of slaves came from West Africa long
  tradition of West African leaders trading with
  Europeans
• Land, location why West Africa?
• Warfare in Africa increased with demand for
  slaves
• Europeans benefited the most from slave trade
• Europeans vying for power in new world
• Vying to control trade and looking to increase
  wealth of colonies

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Atlantic Slave Trade

• While Europeans benefited the most from slave
  trade, coastal kings in West Africa also did
  benefit
• Highly profitable for kings to trade slaves with
  the Europeans brought them great wealth and
  power

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Slavery in North America

• First laws in Virginia related to religion and
  geography, not race
• all servants not being Christians imported to
  this colony by shipping shall be slaves for their
  lives (African)
• Servants who shall come by land would serve only
  for a term of years (Indian)
• By 1682, Racial terminology used to distinguish
  slaves and non-slaves
• Virginia Negroes, Moors, Mollatoes or Indians
  arriving by sea or land could all be held in
  bondage for life
• By 1700, African slavery firmly established in
  economy of Chesapeake and South Carolina

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Slavery in America

• Text on pages 72-73 states
• The convoluted and contradictory early attempts
  to define slave status and how it would descend
  to the next generation suggest that seventeenth
  century English colonists nevertheless initially
  lacked clear conceptual categories defining both
  race and slave. They developed such categories
  and their meanings over time, through their
  experience with the institution of African and
  Indian slavery, originally adopted for economic
  reasons.
• What are the authors arguing?
• Do you agree? Why or why not? Why do you think
  slavery started in America?

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Social Construction of Race

• Race is socially constructed
• Race is a creation of the society - Race is
  culturally invented
• Ideas about race are dependent on the particular
  society and culture
• Latin America has vastly different notions of
  race than the US
• Power and difference
• Race changes as the dynamics of power change and
  as people need to find and label others as
  different
• Economics, gender roles, social beliefs,
  religious beliefs, demographics, family life,
  social classes
• All affect how race is defined in a society
• Race and views on racial groups change as
  conditions change

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Slaves Indian v. African

• Why did Latin America and the American colonies
  end up with completely different systems of
  slavery?
• Why did the enslavement of Africans prevail in
  the American colonies?
• Why was Indian slavery not as prevalent as
  African slavery in America? Why not capture
  Indians and use for slaves, rather than slaughter
  them? This would have eliminated the need to
  trade for slaves.
• RACE and IDEAS OF RACE

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Slavery in English, French and Spanish territories

• Why did it differ?
• Some reasons offered by historians (still much
  debate)
• Spanish
• one of their main goals was converting Indians to
  Christianity
• Religious reasons led to less hash treatment??
• Mainly males came with no intent to stay long and
  formed relationships with Indian women
• English
• Not all settlers wanted to or tried to convert
  Indians was not a top goal
• Came with families and intended to stay
• Wanted to establish new life and new community
  structures, not posts mainly for trade
• Interests lay beyond just trade, yet trade was key

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Slavery in America and Legacy

• Decisions by early Americans profoundly impacted
  the development of this country, the dichotomy of
  northern and southern societies and the current
  state of race relations and tensions in the
  United States.
• When did slavery end?
• What legacy did the racial ideologies of the 17th
  century leave on modern day racial ideologies?