England’s Imperial Stirrings

• North America was largely unclaimed in 1600

• In America, Spain had only founded Santa Fe, while France had founded Quebec and Britain founded Jamestown.

• Britain failed to effectively colonize America due to internal conflicts in the 1500s

• King Henry VIII launched the English Protestan Reformation after breaking up with the Roman Cathloic Church in the 1530s

  • Britain became protestant after Elizatbeth I became queen, intensifying a rivalry with Spain

Elizabeth Energizes England

• Elizabeth I knighted Francis Drake on his ship after he had pirated spanish ships for gold and proceeded to circumnavigate the globe, angering the Spanish

• The English attempts at colonization in the New World failed

• The Roanoke Colony was also known as “The Lost Colony”

• Spain attacked Britain

  • The Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588, allowing for Britain to cross the Atlantic, leading to them going to America and taking the lead in terms of colonization and power

  • England won, with victory leading England to have a stronger government/a popular monarch, religious unity, and a sense of nationalism

  • This victory was the beginning of British dominance at sea (until U.S. overpowered them in 1900)

  • In 1604, Britain and Spain signed a peace treaty

England on the Eve of the Empire

• A new policy of enclosure for farming in Britain meant that there was less or no land for the poor

• The woolen districts faced economic hardships

• At this time many workers lost their jobs

• The tradition of primogeniture meant that the first born son inherits of the father’s land leading to younger sons of the rich who couldn’t inherit money to try their luck in America

• The Joint-Stock Company was perfected by the 1600s

England Plants the Jamestown Seedling

• The Virginia Company received a charter from King James I in 1606, to create a settlement in the New World

  • The charter guaranteed settlers the same rights as the Englishmen in Britain

• Approximately 100 English settlers founded Jamestown on May 24, 1607 with 40 settlers having perished during the journey

  • Problems in the colonies consisted of Jamestown having poor drinking water, mosquitoes causing malaria and yellow fever, men wasting their time looking for gold, and there being no women on the first ship

• Due to the chaos, Captain John Smith took charge in the colonies

• Smith was kidnapped by local Indians and forced into a mock execution by the chief, Powhatan, with him being “saved” by Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas

  • The kidnapping was meant to show that Powhatan wanted a peaceful relationship with the colonists

• John Smith had a “no work, no food” policy

• Colonists had to eat cats, dogs, rats, and even other human beings in order to survive

• In 1610, a relief party led by Lord De La Warr arrived and alleviated the suffering

• Out of the initial 8,000 colonists only 1,200 remained by 1625

Cultural Clash in the Chesapeake

• While Powhatan had initially wanted peaceful relations with the colonists, war occured due to colonists raiding Indian food supplies

• The First Anglo-Powhatan War ended in 1614

  • The war ended with a peace settlement being put in place, with it being sealed by the marriage of Pocahontas and colonist, John Rolfe

• In 1622, the Indians attacked the colonists leading to the death 347 settlers, including John Rolfe

• The Second Anglo-Powhatan War started in 1644 and ended 2 years later in 1646

  • The second war banished Chesapeake Indians from their ancestral lands because they became useless to the colonists once the colonists started growing their own food
    

Virginia: Child of Tobacco

• Tobacco becomes Jamestown’s version of gold (a cash crop)

• Tobacco created greed for land as it heavily depleted soil and ruined land

• In 1619, settlers created the House of Burgesses with its purpose being to deal with local issues

  • The House of Burgesses had a representative self-government

• The first African Americans arrived in the America in 1619 with it being unclear if they were indentured servants or slaves

Maryland: Catholic Haven

• Maryland was founded in 1643 by Lord Baltimore with it being the second plantation colony, and the fourth overall colony

  • Maryland was founded to be a safe haven for persecuted Catholics, it prospered with tobacco, and had many indentured servants

• Slavery became popular in the late 1600s in both Maryland in Virginia

• The Act of Toleration guaranteed religious toleration towards all Christians and served the death penalty to Jews, atheists, and others that didn’t belive in Jesus’ divinity

The West Indies: Way Station to Mainland America

• Britain also settled into the West Indies

• By the mid-1600s, England was able to secure a claim to multiple West Indies islands including Jamaica

• Thousands of African slaves were required to work the plantations

• Initially Indians were supposed to be the labor force, but African slaves became a replacement when disease decimated 90% of the Indian population

• In order to maintain control of African Americans, “slave codes” were put in place

  • The “slave codes” defined legal status of slaves and the rights of their masters with them being strict and enacting severe punishments to offenders

Colonizing the Carolinas

• King Charles I (who was beheaded), had been replaced with Oliver Cromwell for ten strict years of rule before Englishemen restored Charles II to the English throne in “The Restoration”

• The Carolinas were named after Charles II and were formally created in 1670

• Carolina thrived due to close economic ties with the West Indies, due to the port of Charleston

• Original Carolina settlers from Barbados brought strict “slave codes” with them

• Slaves were sent to the West Indies and New England to work

• Rice emerged as the Carolina’s principal crop

• African slaves were hired to work on rice plantations as they possessed resistance to diseases such as malaria and were familiar with rice

The Emergence of North Carolina

• Many newcomers from Carolina owned no land

• There were two types of people in the Carolinas: the wealthy and aristocratic who lived around Charleston and rice and indigo plantations and the independent and strong-willed that lived in the north, on small tobacco farms

• North and South Carolina were officially separated in 1712

• Tuscarora Indians attacked North Carolina in 1711 with the people of Carolina retaliating by selling hundreds of Indians to slavery and leaving the remaining Indians to wander north

  • The wandering Indians eventually became the 6th Nation of the Iroquois

Late-Coming Georgia: The Buffer Colony

• Georgia was was founded with the intention of it being a buffer state between the British colonies and the Spanish settlements in Florida and the French in Louisiana

  • Georgia was the last colony to be founded (1733) and was founded by high-minded philanthropists (such as James Oglethrope)

  • Named after George II and was meant to be a place offering a second chance for those in debt

• Oglethrope was the the most able of the founders of Georgia and a soldier-statesman

  • He repelled Spanish attacks and saved the colony with his energetic leadership and with the use of his own fortune

• All Christians enjoyed religious toleration, with the exception of Catholics

• Many missionaries tried to convert the Indians with John Wesley being one of them (later returned to England and founded Methodism)

The Plantation Colonies

• Slavery could be found in all the plantation colonies

• Plantation colonies allowed some degree of religious toleration

• Forests inhibited the growth of cities

• People were spread out, making it hard to establish schools and churches

• Tobacco and rice were the main crops of the South

• Some indigo could be found in South Carolina

• Confrontations between the colonists and the Native Americans were frequent

Makers of America: The Iroquois

• The Iroquois Confederation was a great power in what is now known as the state of New York with it consisting of Mohawks, Onondagas, Oneidas, Cayugas, and Senecas

  • The Iroquiois Confederation competed with neighboring Indians, French, English, and Dutch for ultimate supremacy with the Iroquois living in longhouses (25 feet wide and over 200 feet long) that were occupied by a few blood-related families

• Mohawks were middlemen with European traders and the Senecas were fur suppliers

• The Iroquois allied with British and French throughout 1600s and 1700s with them siding with whichever side was more beneficial to them

• When the American Revolution occured, most Indians sided with the British

• In the aftermath of the Revolution, the Iroquois were forced to inhabit reservations