The Emergence of Colonial Societies, 1625-1700

US History

Chesapeake Society

• Virginia and Maryland• First to prosper

• Unequal and unstable

• Difficult life

• Shift from white indentured servants to African slaves

State and Church in Virginia

• Reorganized as royal colony• Crown appointed governor

• House of Burgesses not reconvened under James I

• Charles I convenes House of Burgesses• House split into elected and appointed parts

• Church of England established church• Few priests

• Mandatory church service attendance

State and Church in Maryland

• Proprietary colony• Responsible for peopling, governing, defending colony• Lord Baltimore-Catholic• Free from taxes• Independence within colony• Catholic refuge• Headright system• Spared starving time

• Religious tension• Act for Religious Toleration-1649• Catholics discriminated against• Toleration Act repealed in 1654

03CO, p. 52

Death, Gender, and Kinship

• Sharp demand for labor• By 1700 most immigrants indentured servants• 80 percent male• Women had great advantage

• High death rate• Many widows and widowers• Widows had greater economic power• Half of children died in childhood• Complex households• Population growth limited

p. 56

Tobacco Shapes a Region, 1630-1675

• Isolated life• Residents had few neighbors

• Dependent on price of tobacco• Boom from 1618-1629• Bust after 1629• Stayed profitable at 2 pence/lb.• Large planters dominated• Prices fell below 1 pence after 1660

• Most freedmen remained poor• Often worked as wage laborers

p. 55

Map 3-2, p. 57

Bacon’s Rebellion (1676-77)• Expansion west• Tensions between settlers and Indians• Sir William Berkeley (Governor)• Attempt to protect Indian territory failed

• Nathaniel Bacon• Challenge to Virginia government• Attacked Indians• Led army to Jamestown• Died suddenly in 1677

• Struggle to define boundary• Deal with unrest• Turn to African slave trade for labor

Nathaniel Bacon

From Servitude to Slavery• First Africans were indentured servants (1619-1640)

• More Africans and Indians treated as slaves for life (1640-1660)• Some rebelled

• Some intermarried with whites

• Lifetime slavery (1661)• Maryland defines slavery as lifelong and inheritable by race in

1661

• Virginia in 1670

• Slavery formally codified

p. 60

• Wages rose in England• Difficult to attract white servants

• Royal African Company monopoly broken• Now slaves could be shipped directly to Chesapeake• Increased language and cultural barriers

Slavery Replaces Indenture

A City upon a Hill

• Massachusetts Bay-1630• John Winthrop-Governor• Essay-“A Model of Christian Charity”

• A city upon a hill-an ideal society

• Families • Few indentured servants

• Almost no slaves

• 15,000 colonists by 1642

• Broad political participation

Puritanism in New England

New England Ways

• The “New England Way” strengthened position of clergy

• Importance of education• Every town with 50 families must appoint teacher

• 100 or more must provide school

• Harvard College founded-1636

• Church must be free of state control

Roger Williams

• Religious dissenter• Advocated religious tolerance

• Separation of church from state

• Opposed compulsory attendance

• Banished in 1635• Settled in Providence, colony of Rhode Island

• Religiously tolerant

Anne Hutchinson

• Criticized church for judging members based on “good works”• Most clergy were illegitimate

• Challenged women’s roles

• Convicted of heresy• Banished her and many followers

• Settled in Rhode Island

Towns, Families, and Farm Life

• Tightly clustered communities• Built around meetinghouse (church and town hall)

• Broad political participation

• Women had more rights than in England• Married women had no property rights

• Divorces accepted, but rare

Towns, Families, and Farm Life (cont.)

• Few communicable diseases

• Lived longer

• Children survived

• Large families

• Dependent upon labor of children and adult children

Map 3-4, p. 65

Economic and Religious Tensions

• Fear colonists would abandon ideals• Economic controls

• Larger farms allocated

• New England prospered while England fell into chaos• Charles I beheaded

• Puritan Oliver Cromwell rules

• Charles II restored to throne

Restoration

• Charles II crowned

• “eyes of all people” no longer on NE• Puritan rule in Mass. Undermined

• Children not joining church

• Unwillingness to publically describe “conversion” experience

• Church baptized only Puritan saints• Halfway Covenant

• “halfway” or limited members

• Divided congregations

• Women become more important in church than men

Expansion and Native Americans

• Little early resistance• Decimated by disease

• Land ceded

• Native religions outlawed• Conversion to Christianity

• Movement to “praying towns”

Pequot War

• Conflict in Connecticut River Valley• Massachusetts and Connecticut coordinate military action

(1637)• Assisted by Narragansett Indians

• Attack on Pequot village at Mystic, CT• Hundreds killed

• Pequot crushed, survivors enslaved, land given to Connecticut and New Haven

• 3 Wampanoags hanged for killing a “praying” Indian

• Several Wampanoags shot while burglarizing a farmhouse• 2/3 of Indians support Metacom (King Philip)

• Mohawks and others join English

• Metacom defeated• Hundreds sold into slavery

• End of overt resistance to English expansion in NE

King Philip’s War

Salem Witchcraft, 1691-1693

• 2 white women and a black slave accused of witchcraft (1691)• More accusations followed• Most accusers young women

• Most accused middle-aged wives and widows/potential economic power

• 20 executed/50 others confess

• Clergy, led by Increase Mather, object

• Governor William Phips suspends trials, pardons convicted

p. 70

Sugar and Slaves: The West Indies

• Competition for islands with Dutch and French

• Dutch bring sugar to islands

• African slaves preferred to white servants• British islands become predominantly a slave society

• Slaves outnumber white almost 4 to 1 by early 1700s

• English merchants and shippers gain near monopoly on sugar trade

• Land becomes too expensive

The Spread of Slavery• Most English go to Caribbean

• Most slaves go to Caribbean to work on sugar plantations

• After 1670, many English islanders move to Carolina

Map 3-7, p. 75

Rice and Slaves: Carolina

• Proprietary Colonies (Restoration Colonies)• The Carolinas (1663 and 1665)• Northern• Backwoods farmers• Isolated• Few slaves

• Southern• Close ties to Barbados• Plantation society• Large number of slaves• Charles Town (Charleston)

• Unstable • Conflict between small northern farmers and wealthy planters in

south• Split into 2 colonies (N and S) in 1729

The Middle Colonies

• Between Chesapeake and New England• New Netherland and New Sweden• New Sweden taken over by Dutch

• New Netherland seized by English in 1664• New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania created

New Netherland and New Sweden

• New Netherland multiethnic• Dutch, Germans, French, Scandinavians, Africans

• Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims

• 18 languages

• New Amsterdam-thriving port

• “Beaver wars” between Iroquois and Hurons (with French)

• New Sweden in Delaware Valley• Finns introduced log cabin

p. 78

New York and New Jersey

• English fleet sails into New Amsterdam (1664)• Peter Stuyvesant surrenders• Articles of Capitulation• British control

• New Netherland renamed New York• Dutch remain• Conflict, but prosperous

• New Jersey (1702)• Small farmers• No important class of large landowners or cities

Map 3-9, p. 79

Theocratic Society• Maintain holiness• Taxes for church

• Required service attendance

• Moral code

• Little tolerance for dissidents

Quaker Pennsylvania

• Home for dissenting Protestants• Society of Friends• Rejected predestination and original sin• Anarchistic and democratic• Church meetings, not church hierarchy

• Quakers not welcomed in colonies, except northern Carolina

• William Penn (1681)-Pennsylvania• Success in attracting immigrants• Swedes and Finns (New Sweden), Germans• Penn imprisoned for debt and dies in poverty

• Delaware (3 counties separate in 1703)

Rivals for North America: France and

Spain

• Established far-flung inland networks

• Natives often trading partners and military allies

• More success at converting Indians to Christianity than English

• Much of Canada, American Midwest, Southeast, and Southwest

New France

• Seigneuries-large land tracts to landlords• Farming along St. Lawrence River to Montreal

• Success in spreading Cathiolicsm

• French immigration encouraged• Indentured servants

• Slow growth

• Many independent traders-voyaguers

SISTER MARIE DE L’INCARNATION As Mother Superior of the Ursuline order in

New France, Sister Marie oversaw missionary work among female Native

Americans and became one of the colony’s most powerful women.

(Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto)

French Explorers

• Robert Joliet and Jacques Marquette• Reach upper Mississippi River

• Travelled to junction of Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers

• Robert Cavelier de la Salle• Travels down entire Mississippi R. to Gulf of Mexico

• Louisiana founded• Biloxi and Mobile founded

New Orleans

New Mexico: The Pueblo Revolt

• Pueblo Revolt-1680• Natives continued to practice own religion• Attempt to suppress native rituals

• Hundreds of Europeans killed

• Santa Fe captured

• Drove Spanish from region

• 1696-Spanish return and crush revolt

• Change of policy• Tolerance of tribal rituals

• Permitted to own land

• End of ecomienda system

"Pueblo Revolt" by Kim Wiggins

TAOS PUEBLO, NEW MEXICO Although this photo was taken in 1880, Taos’s appearance had changed little during

the two centuries since the Pueblo Revolt. (Palace of the Governors, New

Mexico History Museum)

Southwest

• Spain’s Northern colonies• Most sparsely populated• New Mexico-10,000 non-Indians by early 19th century

• California• Missions and forts (presidios)

• San Diego, Monterrey, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara

• Frequent revolts by natives

• Agricultural economy

• Natives decimated

• Christianize population

Spanish Soldier c. 1790

Presidio of San Francisco

Florida

• Spanish built forts in FL and GA• St. Augustine-first permanent European settlement• Tension between Spanish and English and Spanish and

French• English pirates (privateers) harass Spanish settlements• English encourage Indian revolts

• Spanish offer freedom to slaves• Undermine English colonial economy• Use former slaves to defend Spanish colony

• English acquire Florida after Seven Years’ War

• Province of Texas created by Spanish in Mexico

• Counter French establishment of Louisiana

• No Spanish settlements until 1716

Texas

p. 84