Settlement of North America

Background• Between 1000 and 1650 a series of

interconnected developments occurred in Europe that provided the impetus for the exploration and subsequent colonization of America. • -These developments included the

Protestant Reformation and the subsequent Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Renaissance, the unification of small states into larger ones with centralized political power, the emergence of new technology in navigation and shipbuilding, and the establishment of overland trade with the East and the accompanying transformation of the medieval economy.

• -With the decline of the political power and wealth of the Catholic church, a few rulers gradually solidified their power.• -Portugal, Spain, France, and England were transformed

from small territories into nation-states with centralized authority in the hands of monarchs who were able to direct and finance overseas exploration.• -But the most powerful inducement to exploration was

trade. Marco Polo’s famous journey to Cathay signaled Europe’s “discovery” of Chinese and Islamic civilizations.• -The Orient became a magnet to traders, and exotic

products and wealth flowed into Europe. Those who benefited most were merchants

• -Amongst European nations, there are Four which had the biggest impact in the exploration and the settling of north America:

1. Spain 2. France 3. Netherlands4. England

Spain•-Spain initially sought to populate its far-flung northern frontier in America less by settling Spanish or mestizo people than by transforming the indigenous population into Hispanicized and loyal subjects of the Spanish Crown.•-To this end, the Spanish settlements in what is now the United States were of three mutually reinforcing types: •A. the mission, •B. the presidio (fort), •C. and the pueblo (town).

• -the Spanish Empire would expand across half of South America, most of Central America and the Caribbean Islands, and much of North America (including present day Mexico, Florida and the Southwestern and Pacific Coastal regions of the United States).•-The Spanish claim to territories that are today the United States rested upon the 16th century exploits of Ponce de Leon, Hernando De Soto, and Francisco Vázquez de Coronado.

•-St. Augustine in Florida was established as a Spanish fort in 1565, the first permanent settlement in what would become the United States.•-In 1598, Don Juan Oñante led 500 men from Mexico northward into Pueblo lands in present-day New Mexico. The invaders brought with them a labor system known as the encomienda, which had originally developed in Spain.• -Although the original intent of the encomienda was to reduce the

abuses of forced labour (repartimiento) employed shortly after the discovery of the New World, in practice it became a form of enslavement.

France•- While Spain was building its New World empire, France was also exploring the Americas.•- In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazano was commissioned to locate a northwest passage around North America to India.•- He was followed in 1534 by Jacques Cartier, who explored the St. Lawrence River as far as present-day Montreal.

•- In 1562 Jean Ribault headed an expedition that explored the St. Johns River area in Florida. His efforts were followed two years later by a second venture headed by René de Laudonnière.•- But the Spanish soon pushed the French out of Florida, and thereafter, the French directed their efforts north and west.•- In 1608 Samuel de Champlain built a fort at Quebec and explored the area north to Port Royal, Nova Scotia, and south to Cape Cod.

•New France:•- the French colonies of continental North America, initially embracing the shores of the St. Lawrence River, Newfoundland, and Acadia (Nova Scotia) but gradually expanding to include much of the Great Lakes region and parts of the trans-Appalachian West.•- In 1663 King Louis XIV decided to make New France into a royal province, with a governor as the ceremonial and military head of the colony. •- Unlike Spain’s empire, “New France” produced no caches of gold and silver. Instead, the French traded with inland tribes for furs and fished off the coast of Newfoundland.•- New France was sparsely populated by trappers and missionaries and dotted with military forts and trading posts.•- Although the French sought to colonize the area, the growth of settlements was stifled by inconsistent policies.

THE NETHERLANDS

•- In 1609, Henry Hudson led an expedition to America for the Dutch East India Company and laid claim to the area along the Hudson River as far as present-day Albany.•- In 1614 the newly formed New Netherland Company obtained a grant from the Dutch government for the territory between New France and Virginia.•- About ten years later another trading company, the West India Company, settled groups of colonists on Manhattan Island and at Fort Orange.

•England: •- Traditionally, when we tell the story of “Colonial America,” we are talking about the English colonies along the Eastern seaboard.•- That story is incomplete–by the time Englishmen had begun to establish colonies in earnest, there were plenty of French, Spanish, Dutch and even Russian colonial outposts on the American continent–but the story of those 13 colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia) is an important one.•- It was those colonies that came together to form the United States.

Reasons for English expansion• -Sixteenth-century England was a tumultuous place. Because they could make more money from selling wool than from selling food, many of the nation’s landowners were converting farmers’ fields into pastures for sheep.• - The 16th century was also the age of mercantilism, an extremely competitive economic philosophy that pushed European nations to acquire as many colonies as they could.

•- Mercantilism is economic nationalism for the purpose of building a wealthy and powerful state.•- Adam Smith coined the term “mercantile system” to describe the system of political economy that sought to enrich the country by restraining imports and encouraging exports.•- One of the major contributing factors to the adoption of mercantilism were the establishment of colonies outside Europe; the growth of European commerce and industry relative to agriculture; the increase in the volume and breadth of trade; and the increase in the use of metallic monetary systems, particularly gold and silver, relative to barter transactions.

•- These policies took many forms. Domestically, governments would provide capital to new industries, exempt new industries from guild rules and taxes, establish monopolies over local and colonial markets, and grant titles and pensions to successful producers.

• - In trade policy the government assisted local industry by imposing tariffs, quotas, and prohibitions on imports of goods that competed with local manufacturers.

•-For the colonies this economic policy had enormous economic impacts: • 1. In England, the Navigation Act of 1651 prohibited foreign vessels

from engaging in coastal trade in England and required that all goods imported from the continent of Europe be carried on either an English vessel or a vessel registered in the country of origin of the goods.• 2. All trade between England and its colonies had to be carried in

either English or colonial vessels.• 3. The Staple Act of 1663 extended the Navigation Act by requiring

that all colonial exports to Europe be landed through an English port before being re-exported to Europe.

• •THE TOBACCO COLONIES•- In 1606, King James I divided the Atlantic seaboard in two, giving the southern half to the London Company (later the Virginia Company) and the northern half to the Plymouth Company.•- In 1606, just a few months after James I issued its charter, the London Company sent 144 men to Virginia on three ships: the Godspeed, the Discovery and the Susan Constant.• - They reached the Chesapeake Bay in the spring of 1607 and headed about 60 miles up the

James River, where they built a settlement they called Jamestown.• - The Jamestown colonists had a rough time of it: They were so busy looking for gold and other

exportable resources that they could barely feed themselves.• - It was not until 1616, when Virginia’s settlers learned how to grow tobacco, that it seemed the

colony might survive. • -The first African slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619.

•THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES•-The first English emigrants to what would become the New England colonies were a small group of Puritan separatists, later called the Pilgrims, who arrived in Plymouth in 1620.•- Ten years later, a wealthy syndicate known as the Massachusetts Bay Company sent a much larger (and more liberal) group of Puritans to establish another Massachusetts settlement.•- With the help of local natives, the colonists soon got the hang of farming, fishing and hunting, and Massachusetts prospered.•- As the Massachusetts settlements expanded, they generated new colonies in New England. Puritans who thought that Massachusetts was not pious enough formed the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven (the two combined in 1665).•-Meanwhile, Puritans who thought that Massachusetts was too restrictive formed the colony of Rhode Island, where everyone–including Jews–enjoyed complete “liberty in religious concernments.”

•THE MIDDLE COLONIES•-In 1664, King Charles II gave the territory between New England and Virginia, much of which was already occupied by Dutch traders and landowners called patroons, to his brother James, the Duke of York.•- The English soon absorbed Dutch New Netherland and renamed it New York, but most of the Dutch people (as well as the Belgian Flemings and Walloons, French Huguenots, Scandinavians and Germans who were living there) stayed put.•- In 1680, the king granted 45,000 square miles of land west of the Delaware River to William Penn, a Quaker who owned large swaths of land in Ireland.

• Penn’s North American holdings became the colony of “Penn’s Woods,” or Pennsylvania.

•THE SOUTHERN COLONIES•By contrast, the Carolina colony, a territory that stretched south from Virginia to Florida and west to the Pacific Ocean, was much less cosmopolitan.•- In its northern half, hardscrabble farmers eked out a living. In its southern half, planters presided over vast estates that produced corn, lumber, beef and pork, and–starting in the 1690s–rice.•- These Carolinians had close ties to the English planter colony on the Caribbean island of Barbados, which relied heavily on African slave labor, and many were involved in the slave trade themselves.•- In 1732, inspired by the need to build a buffer between South Carolina and the Spanish settlements in Florida, the Englishman James Oglethorpe established the Georgia colony. In many ways, Georgia’s development mirrored South Carolina’s.

Slavery in early America•-The years 1450-1750 brought enormous changes to the North American continent.•-European explorers not only ventured to the lands and natural wealth of the Americas; they also traveled to Africa, where they began a trans-Atlantic slave trade that would bring millions of Africans to the Americas as well.•- This slave trade would over time lead to a new social and economic system: one where the color of one's skin could determine whether he or she might live as a free citizen or be enslaved for life.

Europeans and Western Africa•-The history of the European seaborne slave trade with Africa goes back 50 years prior to Columbus' initial voyage to the Americas.•-It began with the Portuguese, who went to West Africa in search of gold.

-In 1441, for the first time, Portuguese sailors obtained gold dust from traders on the western coast of Africa. The following year, Portuguese explorers returned from Africa with more gold dust and another cargo: ten Africans.

•-Forty years after that first human cargo traveled to Portugal, Portuguese sailors gained permission from a local African leader to build a trading outpost and storehouse on Africa's Guinea coast.•- Africans were either captured in warring raids or kidnapped and taken to the port by African slave traders.

•- When Europeans arrived along the West African coast, slavery already existed on the continent.

-However, in his book The African Slave Trade, Basil Davidson points out that slavery in Africa and the brutal form of slavery that would develop in the Americas were vastly different.- African slavery was more akin to European serfdom --the condition of

most Europeans in the 15th century.•- By the start of the 16th century, almost 200,000 Africans had been transported to Europe and islands in the Atlantic.•- But after the voyages of Columbus, slave traders found another market for slaves: New World plantations.

•New World Exploration and English Ambition

•- At the end of the 16th century, Spain and Portugal dominated the South American continent and parts of the Caribbean. They had also gotten a foothold in Central America and the southern portions of North America, in Florida and the Southwest.•- England, with colonizing ambitions of its own, was eager to establish a foothold on the North American coast.•- English colonial ambition set the stage for England's first lasting settlement in the New World: Jamestown.

• - Only three years later, a staggering 55,000 pounds of tobacco reached English markets. Jamestown had found a way to survive: by growing and selling tobacco.• - But all these new tobacco fields required many hands and hard labor. At first, the men needed in the fields came from the working classes of England.•- One was to hire or exploit the native Americans. But such workers were susceptible to new diseases and often proved unreliable, as they could always choose to leave work behind and return to their people.•- There was also a second option. In 1619, a Dutch ship that had pirated the cargo of a Spanish vessel -- captive Africans --anchored at Jamestown in the mouth of the James River.

•- The English who had settled in Jamestown and, over the rest of the 17th century, in the other British North American colonies soon reached a turning point. -Would they continue to hire Europeans and Africans as indentured servants? Or would they rely on Africans as enslaved workers for life, the model that had developed in the Caribbean?•-We sometimes imagine that such oppressive laws were put quickly into full force by greedy landowners. But that's not the way slavery was established in colonial America. It happened gradually -- one person at a time, one law at a time, even one colony at a time.