US Hist 2.pdf

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 2

Lecture Two

Sources of America (1492-1688)

Scope: This lecture will examine the first century of English settlements in North America. It will

discuss the English venture that began with an attempt to steal from the Spanish through privateering,

and led to the establishment of colonies all along the eastern seaboard of North America. The political,

economic, and religious imperatives for establishing colonies in New England and Virginia will be

examined with the focus on puritanism and mercantilism. The lecture will trace the emergence of the

slave economy in the south, and a mixed economy of farming and trade in the middle and northern

colonies. It will discuss the creation of new colonies throughout the 17 th century and conclude with the

examination of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and its meaning for the future of Britain’s North

American colonies.

Outline

I. England’s search for an overseas empire began during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603)

and continued through 19 th century, when Britain dominated not only North America, but much of

the world as well. The first stage of English imperial venture lasted until 1603.

B. England did not achieve the political unity that was a precondition for empire-building until

1558, with the accession of Henry VIII’s second daughter, Elizabeth I who re-established the

Anglican Church and presided over England’s accession as an imperial power.

C. Elizabeth was unwilling to risk her treasury on North American adventures. Yet, she was

willing to let individual Englishmen try to poach on the Spanish, with whom the English had

been at war since 1585. From 1585 to 1604, the English government issued licenses to state

sanctioned pirates, called privateers, sometimes as many as 100 per year.

D. English attempts to break into the Spanish-controlled slave and other trade in the Caribbean

failed, although they proved that the Spanish empire was vulnerable.

1. In 1565 a slave trade fleet commanded by an English captain John Hawkins was massacred

by the Spanish at San Juan de Uhia near Veracruz, Mexico.

2. In 1570 Sir Francis Drake set off on his first raiding expedition to Panama.

3. Between 1577 and 1580 Drake circumnavigated the globe, bringing back to England not

only treasure to pay for the voyage, but also the promise of privateering as a prosperous

business.

E. The model for England’s subsequent colonial ventures was provided by its conquest of Ireland

between 1565 and 1576.

1. England not only subdued the Irish leaders and their people, but also forcibly removed

some of them to make way for loyal Englishmen who were given grants of land as a

reward for their service to the queen.

2. The conquest provided not only practical experience in how to organize and finance a

colonial venture, but also a set of attitudes about cultural difference that were transferred to

North America and applied to the Indians. According to the English, the Irish were closer

to animals than to people which justified the policy of terrorism and extermination.

A. English search for wealth and power overseas was inseparable from the religious impulse

tinged with fervent nationalism. In England, nationalism fused with a sense of religious

mission so intense, and outrageous, that the English would insist that “God is English.”

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 2

F. England’s first colony in what became the US was Roanoke Island on the Outer Banks of

modern North Carolina.

1. Roanoke was a military venture, supposed to be a resupply base for privateers raiding in

the Caribbean.

2. The first attempt to establish a colony was made in 1585. The rowdy soldier-settlers first

alienated the local Roanoke Indians whom they bullied for food, and then abandoned the

colony, hitching a ride back to England.

3. The second attempt to establish a colony at Roanoke was made in 1587. It was doomed

from the start by the poisoned relations with the Indians, and the survival of the colony

depended upon continued support from England. By 1590 the colony was abandoned and

the lost colonists were never heard of again.

II. The first permanent English colony in North America was established in 1607 at Jamestown, on

the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia. The colony was a business venture of the Virginia Company of

London, whose charter—granted by King James I—allowed them to colonize the Chesapeake

region.

A. The early years of the new colony at Jamestown were marked by wrangling among the leaders.

Soon external conflict developed as well, as the colonists antagonized their Indian hosts.

Almost everything that could go wrong, did.

1. Poor planning and bad luck placed the colonists on swampy ground with a bad water

supply. In summer the water around Jamestown became a breeding ground for the micro-

organisms that caused typhoid and dysentery.

2. Unable to raise crops in the first few years, the colonists starved or were dependent upon

the resentful Powhatans for food. A majority of the settlers died in the first three years.

B. By 1610 the colonists were also at war with the local Indians. In Virginia, the English

encountered one of the most powerful Indian tribes on the continent, the Powhatans: a

confederacy of Algonquian tribes about 20000 Indian-strong.

C. The first Anglo-Powhatan war started in 1609 after Captain John Smith bullied the Powhatans

into giving them some food and ended in 1614 with the marriage between Pocahontas and a

farmer John Rolfe.

1. Pocahontas helped John improve the quality of wild tobacco, and Rolfe’s improved strain

of tobacco immediately found a ready market in England. Within a few years of Rolfe’s

first cargo, Virginia experienced an economic boom as a place where large fortunes could

in a few years.

2. To attract colonists and distribute land, the Company introduced the English common law,

which guaranteed the colonists all the rights of the English people. These inducements

attracted 3500 settlers to Virginia in three years, three times as many as had come in the

past ten.

3. By accident more than planning, Virginia had found the formula for a successful English

colony. In order for colonists to be attracted 3000 miles across the ocean, they would have

to be offered greater opportunities to make money and greater rights of self-government

than they would have had at home.

D. As the new colonists spread out in the region around Jamestown, it became clear to the

Powhatans that the English colony was both permanent and growing. On the morning of

March 22, 1622, the Indians struck at all the plantations along the James River.

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 2

1. The second Anglo-Powhatan War continued for ten years (1622-32) and marked a turning

point in English policy from bullying to extermination.

2. After the third Anglo-Powhatan War (1644-6) the English took complete possession of the

land between the James and York Rivers.

E. Virginia’s original plan, to make money from trading with the local Indians, was not entirely

forgotten. 1632 saw the establishment of a new colony at the northern end of Chesapeake Bay.

The land north of the Potomac and south of the Delaware, named after the Catholic queen of

England, became Maryland. Given by King Charles I to Sir George Calvert, the first Lord

Baltimore and a Catholic, Maryland became the first proprietary colony: a colony that was

owned by an individual and his heirs. Maryland remained the hereditary possession of the

Calvert family until the American Revolution.

F. By mid 17 th century Chesapeake society of Virginia and Maryland became slave-owning

economies.

1. The Chesapeake’s greatest problem was securing laborers to produce tobacco. The demand

for labor was almost insatiable.

2. Perhaps 90% of those who migrated to the Chesapeake in the 17 th century came as

indentured servants: bound by indentures or contracts to serve for a period of usually seven

years. Servants were worked to the point of death and half of them died before completing

their term of service.

3. Africans first arrived in 1619, when a Dutch ship sailing off its course sold its cargo of 20

Africans to the Virginians. As long as life expectancy in the region was low, it was more

profitable for a planter to purchase an indentured servant for a period of seven years than a

slave for life, as the slave was much more expensive.

III. All Puritan colonies of New England—Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New

Hampshire—grew out of two initial settlements: one at Plymouth in 1620, and one at

Massachusetts Bay in 1629.

A. The primary impetus behind the Massachusetts settlement was religious. Both the Pilgrims at

Plymouth and the much more numerous Puritans at Massachusetts Bay moved to New

England seeking to escape persecution and to establish new communities, based upon God’s

law as they understood it.

B. Puritans were Protestants who embraced the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and whose

religious convictions were more radical than those of Anglicans.

1. They wanted to “purify” the Church of England of all the remnants of Catholicism.

2. Anglicans had reduced the number of sacraments; Puritans wanted to eliminate them all.

3. Anglicans retained some church rituals and a church hierarchy, except the Pope; Puritans

rejected all rituals and all priestly hierarchy.

4. Anglicans thought that believing Christians could earn their way to heaven by good works;

Puritans believed that no one can “earn” their way to heaven, and saving grace was the free

gift of God.

5. Puritans affirmed that one can never know for certain whether they had been saved. Hence

Puritans always lived with a certain amount of anxiety.

6. Puritanism contained a powerful tension between intellect and emotion. On the one hand, it

was a highly rational religion, leading to high rates of literacy among its followers, male

and female both. On the other hand, Puritans believed that no amount of book learning

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 2

could get a person into heaven and that saving grace was as much a matter of the heart as

of the mind.

C. The first Puritan colony in North America was established in 1620 at Plymouth, by a group of

Puritans known as the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims were Separatists who had given up all hope of

changing the Church and instead were prepared to separate from it.

1. By 1620 the Pilgrims accepted the Virginia Company of London’s offer to subsidize land it

controlled to any English people who were willing to pay their own way to America.

2. Carrying 102 passengers, the Mayflower arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in November

1620, far north of its destination. Because the Pilgrims had landed in territory to which the

Virginia Company had no legal claim, all the adult men on board signed a document

known as the Mayflower Compact before disembarking. In this first political document

signed in North America the men bound themselves into a “Civil Body Politic” to make

laws and govern the colony and also to recognize the authority of the governor.

3. The Plymouth Colony survived due to the assistance of friendly Indians, but it grew very

slowly. It remained a separate colony until 1691, when it was absorbed into much larger

and more influential Massachusetts.

D. In 1629 a group of London merchants calling themselves the Massachusetts Bay Company

received a charter from King Charles I to establish a colony.

1. A number of Puritans who were looking for a new home saw their chance in a loophole in

the Company’s charter, which failed to specify where its headquarters were to be. Taking

advantage of it, they plotted to take over the Company and move it to Massachusetts. Their

objective was to make the colony entirely self-governing, with the directors of the

Company and the governors of the colony being one and the same.

2. The expedition began in 1630, and by the end of that year Boston and ten other towns had

been founded. As planned, the government of the colony was soon taken over by the

Puritans.

3. Within a few years of the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, small groups of

Puritans were spreading out in all directions. The parent colony of Massachusetts produced

offshoot colonies of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire and it absorbed

Plymouth as well.

4. By 1660s, New England and the Chesapeake had populations of a similar size—around

35,000. New England was able to catch up and keep pace with the Chesapeake because of

two factors: it was a much healthier region, and Puritans migrated as families.

A. Mercantilism defined wealth exclusively as gold and silver. Since there was only a finite

amount of gold and silver in the world, one nation’s gain could come only by another’s loss.

Mercantilism led naturally to rivalries with other nations.

B. The chief expression of mercantilism was the regulation of foreign trade. Between 1651 and

1696, the British government passed a series of trade regulations known as the Navigation

Acts. These acts required that all goods shipped to England and to her colonies be carried in

ships owned and manned by Englishmen, including colonists. In addition, all goods going to or

from the colonies had to be shipped via Britain, where they could be taxed.

IV. Throughout the 17 th century, Britain’s economic policies were guided by a theory called

mercantilism. This theory held that the chief object of a nation’s economy was to serve the state,

rather than its inhabitants in general.

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 2

V. The second half of the 17 th century saw further expansion of the English-speaking colonists along

the eastern seaboard of the Atlantic.

A. In 1664 the English took over the Dutch colony of New Netherland wedged between their New

England colonies in the north and their southern colonies of Virginia and Maryland in the

south. The territory of New Netherland was soon divided into new colonies: New York, East

Jersey, West Jersey (combined in a single royal colony called New Jersey in 1702) and

Pennsylvania.

B. Pennsylvania, chartered to William Penn in 1681, was a Quaker colony. Together with

Delaware, and New Jersey it became part of a larger cultural region settled by Quakers and

Quaker-sympathizers.

1. The Quakers, or Friends as they called themselves, were a radical Protestant sect,

considerably more extreme in their rejection of authority than the Puritans.

2. The cornerstones of the Friends’ “holy experiment” were liberty of conscience, the

renunciation of war, and economic opportunity.

C. Further down south, below Virginia, a new colony of Carolina was established in 1670.

1. In a series of brush wars over trade and territory, the Carolinians quickly established

control over the entire southeast, eliminating Spanish influence in the region.

2. Carolina traders soon found the most valuable commodity in the sale of slaves: is the

Indian inhabitants of the Spanish missions captured by the Carolinians in raids on the

Spanish territory.

D. By 1690s African slavery had developed in Virginia.

1. In 1700 as much as 28% of Virginia’s population was African in origin, and half the labor

force was enslaved.

2. Between 1680 and 1700 Virginia had become a slave society, one in which slavery was

central to the political economy and the social structure.

E. American slavery was different from both ancient slavery and Latin American plantation

slavery.

1. Like all forms of slavery, it had certain common elements: perpetuity, kinlessness,

violence, and the master’s access the slave’s sexuality.

2. Like South American slavery, it made slavery hereditary, passed on through a mother.

3. Unlike in other slave systems, Southern American slavery was racial—reserved for

Africans, some Indians, and their children—and it made manumissions, the freeing of

slaves, very rare.

A. The first important consequence of the Glorious Revolution for the American Colonies was

that it restored to them self-government that had been denied in the past decade.

B. The second important consequence was that the Revolution became a model of Constitutional

government.

VI. In 1688 Britain went through a political coup called The Glorious Revolution. In what became a

turning point in the political history of Britain, King James II Stuart was evicted and parliament

transformed Britain into parliamentary monarchy.

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