America and the British Empire, 1650
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Transcript America and the British Empire, 1650
Unit 1: Transatlantic Encounters and
Colonial Beginnings to 1754
APUSH
Mrs. Baker
By the early 1600s, England was finally in the
position to colonize in North America.
Resulted from:
• After defeating the Spanish Armada, Britain was known as
a major naval power.
• England’s population was growing rapidly while the
economy was depressed.
Gave rise to a large number of poor and landless people who
were attracted by the economic opportunities of North
America.
• Practical method for financing the founding of new
colonies.
Joint-stock
companies: business in which
investors pool their wealth in support of a
colony, that would, hopefully, create a profit.
• Obtain a charter
• Accept responsibility for maintaining colony
• In return the investors will receive back most of the
companies profits.
Results:
• Attracted large numbers of English settlers.
Chesapeake Region
The
Charter of the
Virginia Company:
• Guaranteed to colonists the
same rights as Englishmen as
if they had stayed in England.
• This provision was
incorporated into future
colonists’ documents.
• Colonists felt that, even in the
Americas, they had the rights
of Englishmen.
Late 1606 VA Co. sends out 3 ships
Spring 1607 land at mouth of Chesapeake Bay.
•
Attacked by Indians and move on.
May 24, 1607 about 100 colonists [all men]
land at Jamestown, along banks of James River
•
Easily defended, but swarming with diseasecausing mosquitoes.
Geographical and environmental problems?
The early hardships of Jamestown settlers included…
• Poor land selection
James River was surrounded by swamp land
• Disease
Water surrounding the colony was contaminated
Resulted in outbreaks of malaria and dysentery.
Diseases were fatal for many.
• “Starving Time”
Resulted from colonists unaccustomed to manual labor
Refused to clear fields, plant crops, or gather shellfish
Refused to hunt because they were busy seeking gold
Led to famine in the colony
• Poor relations with Natives
•
1607: 104 colonists
•
By spring, 1608: 38 survived
•
1609: 300 more immigrants
•
By spring, 1610: 60 survived
•
1610 – 1624: 10,000 immigrants
•
1624 population: 1,200
•
Adult life expectancy: 40 years
•
Death of children before age 5: 80%
Through
the forceful
leadership of Captain John
Smith and the establishment
of the tobacco industry by
John Rolfe, the colony
survived.
• Rolfe and his Indian wife,
Pocahontas, developed a
new variety of tobacco
Became very popular in
Europe and brought financial
prosperity to the colony.
1618 — Virginia produces 20,000 pounds of
tobacco.
1622 — Despite losing nearly one-third of
its colonists in an Indian attack,
Virginia produces 60,000 pounds of
tobacco.
1627 — Virginia produces 500,000 pounds
of tobacco.
1629 — Virginia produces 1,500,000 pounds
of tobacco.
Headright system
• 50 acres of land was granted to anyone who paid
their own way or another’s passage to Virginia.
• Introduction of plantations on North America
Indentured servants
• Hired to work on the plantations
• In exchange for passage, food and shelter
Individual agreed to work for a specific term
Usually 5 to 7 years.
Not allowed to marry
1610-1614: only 1 in 10 outlived their indentured contracts!
Settlers and the Powhatan Confederacy
Relations between Indians & settlers grew worse.
• General mistrust because of different cultures &
languages.
• English raided Indian food supplies during the
starving times.
1610-1614 First Anglo-Powhatan War
• De La Warr had orders to make war on the
Indians.
Raided villages, burned houses, took supplies, burned
cornfields.
1614-1622 peace between Powhatans and the English.
• 1614 peace sealed by the marriage of Pocahontas to
Englishman John Rolfe.
1622-1644 periodic attacks between Indians and
settlers.
• 1622 Indians attacked the English, killing 347
[including John Rolfe].
• Virginia Co. called for a “perpetual war” against the
Native Americans.
Raids reduced native population and drove them further
westward.
•Plymouth
•Massachusetts
Bay
Both
were settled by English Protestants
who were influenced by John Calvin’s
teaching
vs.
John Winthrop
The 1st Thanksgiving
Puritans
Calvinism
Religion
Institutes of the Christian
• Predestination
Good works could not save those predestined for hell
No one could be certain of their spiritual status
Gnawing doubts led to constantly seeking signs of
“conversion”
• Puritans:
Want to totally reform [purify] the Church of England
Grew impatient with the slow process of Protestant
Reformation back in England.
Separatists
Belief:
• Puritans who believed only “visible saints”
[those who could demonstrate in front of their
fellow Puritans their elect status] should be
admitted to church membership.
• Because the Church of England enrolled all the
king’s subjects, Separatists felt they had to
share churches with the “damned.”
• Therefore, they believed in a total break from
the Church of England.
1620 a group of 102
people [half Separatists]
• Negotiated with the
Virginia Company to
settle in its
jurisdiction.
• Non-Separatists
included Captain Myles
Standish.
Plymouth Bay outside the domain of the Virginia Company.
• Became squatters without legal right to land & specific authority
to establish a govt.
Written and signed before the Pilgrims
disembarked from the ship.
Not a constitution, but an agreement to form a
crude government and submit to majority rule.
• Signed by 41 adult males.
Led to adult male settlers meeting in assemblies
to make laws in town meetings.
Winter of 1620-1621
• Only 44 out of the original 102 survived.
None chose to leave in 1621 when the Mayflower
sailed back.
Fall of 1621 First “Thanksgiving.”
• Colony survived with fur [especially beaver], fish, and
lumber.
Plymouth stayed small and economically unimportant.
• 1691 only 7,000 people
• Merged with Massachusetts Bay Colony
Self-taught scholar
Chosen governor of
Plymouth 30 times in
yearly elections.
Worried about
settlements of nonPuritans springing up
nearby and corrupting
Puritan society.
1629 non-Separatists got a royal charter to form the MA
Bay Co.
• Wanted to escape attacks by conservatives in the Church of
England.
• They didn’t want to leave the Church, just
its “impurities.”
1630 1,000 people set off in 11 well-stocked ships
• Established a colony with Boston as its hub.
“Great Migration” of the 1630s
• Turmoil in England [leading to the English Civil War] sent
about 70,000 Puritans to America.
• Not all Puritans 20,000 came to MA.
“We shall be as a city upon a hill…”
Well-off attorney and
manor lord in England.
Became 1st governor of
Massachusetts.
• Believed that he had a
“calling” from God to
lead there.
• Served as governor or
deputy-governor for 19
years.
Low mortality average life expectancy was
70 years of age.
Many extended families.
Average 6 children per family.
Average age at marriage:
• Women – 22 years old
• Men – 27 years old.
Authoritarian male father figures controlled each household.
Patriarchal ministers and magistrates controlled church
congregations and household patriarchs.
Young, popular minister in
Salem.
• Argued for a full break with the
Anglican Church
• Condemned MA Bay Charter
Did not give fair compensation to
Indians
• Denied authority of civil
government to regulate religious
behavior
Roger Williams
1635
• Found guilty of preaching newe &
dangerous opinions and was excited.
1636
– Roger Williams fled there
• MA Bay Puritans had wanted to exile him to England
to prevent him from founding a competing colony.
• Remarkable political freedom in Providence, RI
Universal manhood suffrage privilege of any kind
Freedom of opportunity for all
RI
became known as the “Sewer”
• Seen by the Puritans as the dumping ground for
unbelievers and religious dissenters
More liberal than any other colony
Intelligent, strong-willed, wellspoken woman.
Threatened patriarchal control
Antinomianism [direct revelation]
• Means “against the law.”
• Carried to logical extremes Puritan
doctrine of predestination
• Holy life was no sure sign of salvation
• Truly saved did not need to obey the
law of either God or man
Anne Hutchinson
1638
• She confounded the Puritan leaders for days.
Eventually bragged that she had received her beliefs
DIRECTLY from God.
Direct revelation was even more serious than the
heresy of antinomianism.
• WHY???
Puritan leaders banished her
• She and her family traveled to RI and later to NY.
She and all but one of her family members were killed in an Indian
attack in Westchester County
John Winthrop saw God’s hand in this!
Indians especially work in New England
• Epidemics wiped out 1/3 of the native population
Wampanoags
the settlers
[near Plymouth] befriended
• Cooperation between the two helped by Squanto
1621
– Chief Massasoit signed treaty with
the settlers.
• Autumn, 1621
Both groups celebrated the First Thanksgiving
Pequots
• Very powerful tribe in CT river valley
1637
– Pequot War
• Whites with Narragansett Indian allies, attacked
Pequot village in Mystic River
• Whites set fire to homes & shot fleeing survivors!
• Pequot tribe virtually annihilated
An uneasy peace last for 40 years.
Only
hope for Native Americans to resist
white settlers was to UNITE.
Metacom
[King Philip to white settlers]
• Massasoit’s son united Indians and stages
coordinated attacks on white settlements
throughout New England
• Frontier settlements forced to retreat to Boston.
The war ended in failure for the Indians
• Metacom beheaded and drawn out and quartered
• His son and wife were sold into slavery
• Never a serious threat to New England again!!