AP World History POD #15 – Europe Encounters America

1. AP World HistoryPOD #15 – Europe Encounters America Colonial North America

2. Class Discussion Notes Bulliet – “English and French Colonies in North America”, pp. 492-499 Bulliet – “Colonial Expansion and Conflict”, pp. 499-501

3. Early English Experiments • English efforts to gain control of the Americas were a failure in the late 16th century • A new attempt in the 17th century was more successful as they copied the model employed in Ireland • England relied on private capital to finance settlement and hoped that the colonies would become sources of high-value products such as silver, citrus, and wine • Plantations were seen as an investment by the rising bourgeoisie and they handled the recruitment of settlers

4. Virginia Company • “In 1606 London investors organized as the Virginia Company took up the challenge of colonizing Virginia. A year later 144 settlers disembarked at Jamestown, an island 30 miles up the James River in the Chesapeake Bay region. Additional settlers arrived in 1609. The investors and settlers hoped for immediate profits, but the location was a swampy and unhealthy place where nearly 80 percent of the settlers died in the first fifteen years from disease or Amerindian attacks. There was no mineral wealth, no passage to Asia, and no docile and exploitable native population …. The profits from tobacco soon attracted new immigrants” (Bulliet, p. 492)

5. Labor • Colonist in Latin America relied on forced labor (encomienda) of the Amerindians • African Slave Trade forced the migration of millions of forced laborers to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies • British colonies relied on Indentured Servants (a migrant to a British colony in the Americas who paid for passage by agreeing to work for a set term ranging from 4 to 7 years and ended with small parcel of land, some tools, and clothes) • Indentured servants were racially and religiously indistinguishable from free settlers and eventually accounted for approximately 80% of all English immigrants to Virginia and Maryland (nearly

6. Changing Face of Labor • “During the seventeenth century approximately fifteen hundred indentured servants, mostly male, arrived each year. Planters were more likely to purchase the cheaper limited contracts of indentured servants rather than African slaves during the initial period of high mortality rates. As life expectancy improved, planters began to purchase more slaves because they believed they would earn greater profits from slaves owned for life than from indentured servants bound for short periods of time. As a result, Virginia’s slave population grew rapidly from 950 in 1660 to 120,000 by 1756.” (Bulliet, p. 493)

7. House of Burgesses • Virginia was administered by a Crown-appointed governor and by representatives of towns meeting together as the House of Burgesses • After elected representatives began to meet alone as a deliberative body they initiated a form of democratic representation that distinguished the English colonies of North America from the colonies of other European powers

8. The Carolina’s • Initial settlers relied on profits from the fur trade who were pushing inland to compete with the French fur traders in New Orleans and Mobile • The northern part of the Carolinas, settled from Virginia, followed that colony’s mixed economy of tobacco and forest products • Charleston and the interior of South Carolina developed and economy based on plantations and slavery in imitation of the colonies of the Caribbean and Brazil • As profits from rice and indigo rose, the importation of African slaves created a black majority in South Carolina (Gullah culture and language – a combination of English and African language and traditions began to emerge) • Colonial South Carolina was the most hierarchical society in British North America

9. New England • “The colonization of New England by two separate groups of Protestant dissenters, Pilgrims and the Puritans, put the settlement of this region on a different course. The Pilgrims, who came first, wished to break completely with the Church of England, which they believed was still essentially Catholic. As a result, in 1620 approximately one hundred settlers – men, women, and children – established the colony of Plymouth on the coast of present-day Massachusetts. Although nearly half of the settlers died during the first winter, the colony survived until 1691, when the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony of Puritans absorbed Plymouth.” (Bulliet, p. 494)

10. Puritans • Desired to “purify” the Church of England, not break with it • Goals – abolish hierarchy, end governmental interference, limit membership to those who shared their beliefs • Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Company (a royally chartered joint-stock company) carried the charter with them spelling out the company rights and obligations, protected them from the Crowns effort to control them

11. New Englanders • “Lacking in a profitable agricultural export like tobacco, New England did not develop extreme social stratification of the southern plantation colonies. Slaves and indentured servants were present but in small numbers. While New England was ruled by the richest colonist and shared the racial attitudes of the southern colonies, it was also the colonial society with fewest differences in wealth and status and with the most uniformly British and Protestant populations in the Americas.” (Bulliet, p. 495) • Most immigrants to the region arrived with their family (normal gender balance compared to 84% male in Virginia) • Healthiest colony allowing for natural population expansion

12. Political & Economic Organization • Settlers elected a governor and council of magistrates from the Board of Directors from the Massachusetts Bay Company • Due to disputes between the council and elected town representatives led to the creation of a lower legislative house that selected its own speaker based on the House of Commons in England • Lacking in agricultural land that could support little more than subsistence crops – the fur, timber and fishing industry provided the initial economic foundation of the colony

13. Middle Atlantic Region • Played an enormous role in the economic development of the American colonies • Dutch West India Company established the colony of New Netherland and located its capital on Manhattan Island • Dutch merchants established a profitable trade relationship with the Iroquois Confederacy (an alliance among the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca peoples) • Challenged by the English military in 1664 and surrendered without a fight becoming New York • New York City at the mouth of the Hudson River would play an essential role in connecting the interior grain farmers to the booming markets of the Caribbean and southern Europe • Pennsylvania began as a refuge for Quakers who were a persecuted minority • Healthy climate, excellent land and peaceful relations with native peoples allowed the colony to prosper and Philadelphia would grow to rival New York and Boston as ports of trade

14. French America • “Patterns of French settlement more closely resembled those of Spain and Portugal than of England. The French were committed to missionary activity among Amerindian peoples and emphasized the extraction of natural resources – furs rather than minerals. Between 1534 and 1542 the navigator and promoter Jacques Cartier explored the region of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence in three voyages. A contemporary of Cortes and Pizzaro, Cartier hoped to find mineral wealth, but the stones he brought back to France turned out to be quartz and iron pyrite, “fools gold”.” (Bulliet, p. 496) • New France was founded 50 years later by Samuel de Champlain at Quebec on the banks of the St. Lawrence River

15. Life in New France • Champlain allied New France with the Huron and the Algonquin in their wars against the Iroquois Confederacy • Young Frenchmen were sent to live among the native peoples and master their languages and customs as coureurs de bois to facilitate the fur trade • Amerindians became reliant on the goods (firearms, metal tools, textiles, alcohol) they received in exchange for the furs • The high demand for furs and pelts in Europe led to overhunting (depletion of beaver and deer populations) transformed the environment and promoted competition and warfare between the native peoples • The availability of firearms made these wars more deadly and destructive

16. Catholic (Jesuit) Missionaries • Jesuits led the effort to convert the native peoples by mastering native languages, establishing boarding schools and agricultural communities • Native culture was reluctant and resistant to embracing the religious conversion sought by the missionaries

17. Expansion of French Canada • The French aggressively expanded to the south and west, eventually founding the Louisiana territory • France’s North American colonies were threatened by war between England (and the growing English colony to the south) and France • French and Indian War (Seven Years’ War) – England defeated the French both in the New World and the Old World forcing France to yield Canada to the English and cede Louisiana to the Spain • France would refocus its efforts on its’ Caribbean colonies

18. Settler Resistance in British North America • “During the eighteenth century the English colonies experienced renewed economic growth and attracted a new wave of European immigration, but social divisions were increasingly evident. The colonial population in 1770 was more urban, more clearly divided by class and race, and more vulnerable to economic downturns. Crises were provoked when imperial wars with France and Spain disrupted trade in the Atlantic, increased tax burdens, forced military mobilizations, and provoked frontier conflicts with the Amerindians. On the eve of the American Revolution, England defeated France and weakened Spain. The cost, however, was great. Administrative, military, and tax policies imposed to gain this empire-wide victory alienated much of the American colonial population.” (Bulliet, p. 501)