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!!