Transplantation

Transplantation Chapter 2

The French in North America • Territory called New France • New France focused on the area along the St. Lawrence River where there was an abundance of beavers and Indians wanting to trade.

Samuel de Champlain founds the first permanent French settlement in Canada called Quebec. • New France was a very large territory, but had few inhabitants. • Main activity of the colony was fur trade.

English settlement in the Chesapeake • The English chose to settle in the lower Chesapeake Bay region. • In 1606, English merchants petitioned King James I for a charter including both the Virginia Company and the Plymouth Company. • These joint-stock companies sold shares to investors to raise money for colonization.

This new area was about 50 miles up the James River (which the English named after their king). • 104 colonists, all men built a fortified settlement called Jamestown.

In 1616, the company instituted the headright system, giving 50 acres to anyone who paid his own way to Virginia and an additional 50 for each person (or head) he brought with him. • Eventually, the company began transporting women to Virginia to become wives for planters and convince them to stay in the colony. • This same year is when African slaves began arriving in Virginia.

The first legislative body in English America called the House of Burgesses was also created. • Established self-government in other English colonies. • Landowners elected representatives to the House of Burgesses, which subject to approval of the company, made laws in Virginia.

Importance of Tobacco • After a long search for a marketable product, settlers began to grow tobacco after 1610. • Between 1627 and 1669, annual tobacco exports went from 250,000 lbs. to over 15 million lbs. • Tobacco shaped Virginia’s society, from settlement to recruitment of colonists.

Tobacco kept workers busy for 9 months of the year. • Seeds were sowed in early spring, transplanted a few weeks later, summers were spent pinching off the tops of the plants and removing worms. After the harvest leaves were “cured” in ventilated sheds, then packed in large barrels.

Looking to make a larger profit, colonists imported thousands of indentured servants, or contract workers, who agreed to a fixed term of labor. Usually, 4-7 years, in exchange for free passage to Virginia.

Maryland: A Refuge for Catholics • Encouraged by Virginia’s success, King Charles I granted 10 million acres of land north of Chesapeake Bay to nobleman Cecilius Calvert. • Maryland was a proprietary colony, meaning it was in sole possession of Calvert and his heirs.

Calvert, a Catholic, wanted Maryland to be a refuge for other Catholics, since English Catholics were the minority. • Catholics paid double the taxes, could not worship in public, hold political office, or send their children to universities

In 1649, Calvert approved the Act for Religious Tolerance, the first law in America to call for freedom of worship for all Christians, but the Protestant majority continued to resist Catholic political influence, eventually passing a law that prohibited Catholics from voting.

The Founding of “New England” • Between the years 1620 and 1640, six colonies were formed and settled by thousands of people troubled by religious, political and economic issues in England. • The first New England colony was Plymouth. • Puritanswere people who believed that Queen Elizabeth has not done enough to reform the Church of England.

Puritans followed the teaching of John Calvin and his idea of predestination. • They rejected the Book of Common Prayer, which regulated Anglican worship, stating that ministers should pray from the heart and preach from the bible.

Separatists were Puritans that left to form their own congregations, because the believed the Church of England would never change. • Pilgrims were “spiritual wanders”. • Theses separatists and non separatists (about 102 men, women and children) left England on the Mayflower in 1620. • The trip took about 65 days.

These Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, where the Wampanoag village use to be before disease wiped out most of the population. • The Pilgrims started building as soon as they landed in Plymouth, but it wasn’t long until a plague (possibly smallpox) swept through the colony, killing all but 50 settlers. • Two English speaking natives, Squanto and Samoset, emerged from the woods and approached the Pilgrims on behalf of Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader.

Even the surviving Pilgrims might have perished if Squanto had not helped them adapt to their surroundings. • The Indians taught the pilgrims how to plant corn and the pilgrims gave them manufactured goods in return.

The Pilgrims joined the Wampanoag in a three day festival to celebrate the harvest and give thanks to God for their good fortune, which became know as Thanksgiving. • The Pilgrims also exchanged corn with other tribes for fur, which they shipped back to England to help pay off their debts to investors.

Massachusetts Bay Colony and Its Offshoots • The Puritans believed that the Anglican church could still be reformed. • After receiving a charter for a joint stock company, the Massachusetts Bay Company set up a colony north of Plymouth. Respected Puritan lawyer, John Winthrop was chosen as their leader.

With a fleet of eleven ships, 900 men, women and children traveled to the new colony. • Before Winthrop’s ship landed in Massachusetts he preached a lay sermon “A Model of Christian Charity.” • As conditions in England worsened, many people began to leave the country in what was later known as the Great Migration. • By 1643, it was estimated that 20,000 settlers had arrived in New England.

Winthrop described their mission in New England as a covenant, binding them to meet their religious obligations in return for God’s favor. • Puritan efforts to suppress other religious beliefs inevitably led to conflict with those who disagreed with them. Eventually, just as Anglican intolerance of the Puritans led to the founding of Massachusetts, Puritan intolerance led to the founding of other colonies in New England.

Rhode Island • Roger Williams, a young minister and teaching arrived in Boston in 1631. • Williams condemned the Puritan church and also believed that the land rightfully belonged to the Native Americans and not to the King on England. • Winthrop grew more and more concerned that William's and his beliefs. Williams was eventually asked to leave the colony, which gave him the opportunity to create his own.

In Providence, Rhode Island, the government had no authority in religious matters. Different religious beliefs were tolerated rather than suppressed. • In the midst of the Roger William uproar, a young woman by the name of Anne Hutchinson arrived in Boston.

Hutchinson was intelligent, charismatic, and widely admired. • A devout Puritan, Hutchinson began to hold prayer meetings in her home. • Her groups discussed sermons and compare ministers. • As her followings grew, she began to claim to know which ministers had salvation from God and which did not. • Puritan leaders were threatened by Hutchinson and accused her of being a heretic.

In 1636, the Reverend Thomas Hooker asked the General Court of Massachusetts for permission to move his entire congregation to the Connecticut River Valley; they migrated due to lack of land near their town to raise cattle • Hooker believed that everyone should be allowed to vote, not just church members.

Once settlers started entering the Connecticut River Valley, tensions grew with the Indians and the PequotWar erupted in 1637. • The Dutch traders who were already in theses areas were dealing only with the Pequot Indians as partners. • The Pequot's had recently lost a large amount of people due to smallpox and resented losing their trading rights and began fighting with the Dutch.

For almost 40 years after the Pequot War, the New England settlers and Native Americans had good relations; fur trade, in particular, facilitated peace. • It enabled Native Americans to acquire tools, guns, metal and other European products in exchange for furs. • At the same time, colonial governments began to demand that Native Americans follow English laws and customs. Such demands angered Native Americans, who felt that the English were trying to destroy their way of life.

Tensions peaked in 1675 when Plymouth Colony arrested, tried, and executed three Wampanoag for a murder. • Angry and frustrated, Wampanoag warriors attacked the town of Swansea. • This started what came to be known as King Phillips War, after the Wampanoag leader Metacomet, whom the settlers called King Phillip.

Metacomet was killed in 1676, but fighting continued in Maine and New Hampshire. • New England now belonged to the English settlers.

Families, Farms, and Communities in Early New England • The average family in New England had seven or eight children. • Most New Englanders were spared from diseases that killed Virginia’s settlers and the Indian populations. • Unlike the Chesapeake colonists, who spread on tobacco lands, New Englanders lived in close towns. • Towns made up fifty to a hundred families. Towns provided context for religion, politics and economic activity.

Children began working just after their fifth birthday. Older siblings cared for younger ones, fetched tools, and minded cattle. • Around the age of 10, girls learn household skills from their mothers and boys learn farming skills from their fathers. • No family could produce all the goods they needed, so New Englanders had to trade with their neighbors.

Without a stable crop like tobacco, New Englanders prospered by exploiting a variety of resources, which developed a very diversified economy less vulnerable to depression like Virginia.

Competition in the Caribbean • The Spanish claimed all of the Caribbean islands by right of Columbus’s discovery, but during the early seventeenth century, French, Dutch, and English adventurers defied them. • France retained Guadeloupe, Martinique, Haiti, and several smaller islands. • The Dutch retained Aruba, Curacao, St. Martin and St. Eustasius.

England retained Antigua, Barbados, Montserrat, Nevis, and St. Christopher. • Spain held on to Jamaica. • The first English colonists who came to the West Indies in the 1630’s raised tobacco and imported indentured servants to work their fields.

However, in the 1640’s sugar cane became the preferred cash crop. • Sugar crops led to a scramble for much needed labor. • Planters continued to import white indentured servants, but soon African slaves became the labor of choice. • Africans were use to agricultural work in a hot tropical climate.

Laws declared slavery to be a lifelong condition that passed from slave parents to slave children. • Slaves had no legal rights and were under total control of their masters. • Slaves could be whipped, branded, beaten, or maimed for stealing food or harboring a runaway. • Crimes such as murder or arson was immediate execution without a trial.

Slaves who rebelled were burned to death. • Slave families tried to preserve their African culture and traditions. • Children were given African named, celebrations included African music, and burial ceremonies were often kept intact.

The Proprietary Colonies • Four new colonies were created due to land grants given by King Charles II – Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. • One of the proprietors, Anthony Ashley Cooper, working closely with his secretary, John Locke, devised the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, a plan to ensure the stability o the colony by balancing property ownership and political rights.

The colonists at first raised livestock to be sold to the West Indies, but the introduction of rice in Carolina gave the settlers’ a more stable economy. • South Carolina rice planters became the wealthiest colonists on the mainland. • As Carolina became overrun by slaves, slave codes were introduced to stop potential slave rebellions.

William Penn received a large area of land north of Maryland as payment for a royal debt owed to Penn’s father. • Penn wanted his colony to be a model for justice and peace, as well as a refuge for members of the Society of Friends or Quakers, a persecuted religious sect which he belonged to.

Quakers abandoned the Church of England as hopelessly corrupt. • They rejected predestination, they maintained that every soul had a spark of grace and that salvation was possible for all who heeded the “Inner Light.” • They rejected a trained clergy and elaborate church rituals.

They help meetings in silence until someone, inspired by the “Inner Light”, rose to speak. • Quakers granted women spiritual equality with men, allowing them to preach, hold separate prayer meetings, and authority over “women’s matters.”

After begin harassed by English authorities, William Penn conceived his plan for a New World “holy experiment,” a harmonious society governed by brotherly love. • In the Frame of Government, his constitution for Pennsylvania, Penn remained true to his Quaker principles with a provision allowing for religious freedom.

Penn’s opponents, some who were fellow Quakers—objected his proprietary privileges, including his control over foreign trade and his collection fees for landholders.

The Dutch overseas Empire • The Dutch Republic served as a major center of world trade. • The Dutch next set their sights on the Americas, created the West Indies Trading Company in 1621. • Its claim to the Connecticut, Hudson, and the Delaware Valleys stemmed from the 1609 voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman sailing for the Dutch, who discovered the river that bears his name.

The first permanent Dutch settlers on mainland North America arrived in 1624 to set up a fur-trading post at Fort Orange (now Albany, NY). • Among the colony’s Dutch, German, French, English, Swedish, Portuguese, and African settlers were Calvinists, Lutherans, Quakers, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims.

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