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Period 2: 1607–1754: Patterns of Empire and Resistance
Timeline
1588: England defeats the Spanish Armada
1607: Jamestown colony founded
1609: Henry Hudson explores area that will become New York
1609–1610: “Starving time” in Virginia
1619: House of Burgesses established
1620: Founding of Plymouth Colony Mayflower Compact signed
1622: Attack on Jamestown by local Algonquin Indians
1624: New Amsterdam founded by the Dutch
1630: Founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony
1630–1640: “Great Migration” of Puritans from England to Massachusetts
1632: Founding of Maryland Colony
1636: Founding of Rhode Island Colony
1638: Anne Hutchinson banned from Massachusetts
1639: The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut adopted
1649: Act of Religious Toleration passed in Maryland
1662: The Half Way Covenant
1663: Founding of Carolina Colony
1675: King Philipʼs War
1676: Baconʼs Rebellion
1679: New Hampshire Colony separated from Massachusetts
1680: Pueblo Revolt (Popéʼs Rebellion)
1681: Founding of the Pennsylvania Colony
1686: Creation of the Dominion of New England
1688: The Glorious Revolution
1689: Colonists bring down the Dominion of New England
1692: Salem witch trials
1711: Founding of North Carolina Colony
1733: Molasses Act
1735: Zenger trial
1739: Stono Rebellion
1741: Arrests and executions in the supposed “Negro Plot” in New York City Jonathan Edwardsʼs sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
European Colonization
Spainʼs New World Colonies
Spain's New World empire was based on the exploitation of native labor.
The encomienda system allowed Spanish settlers to extract labor from locals, leading to harsh treatment of Indians.
The repartimiento system replaced encomienda, banned slavery, and mandated wages for Indian laborers, but exploitation of native labor continued.
Africans were brought in as slave labor to supplement the work of Indians.
Spanish colonies had a complex social hierarchy due to intermarriage between people of different backgrounds.
Spain's New World empire was tightly controlled by the Crown, with two administrative units: New Spain (Mexico City) and Peru (Lima).
Spanish priests were aggressive in converting native communities to Catholicism, but the practice was often adapted to include traditional Indian spiritual practices and beliefs.
Catholic priests had to accept certain adaptations to better reach native people.
French and Dutch Colonies
Franceʼs New World Empire
France's North American colonies were large but had few French colonials.
New France included Quebec, the Great Lakes region, the Ohio River Valley, and the Great Basin, and New Orleans.
The first permanent French settlements were Port Royal (1605), in what would later become Nova Scotia, and Quebec (1608), founded by Samuel de Champlain.
In 1642, French traders established a small settlement in Montreal.
The French established settlements in New Orleans and the southern Great Lakes region in the latter part of the seventeenth century.
French-American Indian Diplomacy
French relied on diplomacy with American Indian groups due to their small number of colonists in the New World.
French military officers in the New World learned native languages and became well versed in American Indian diplomatic protocol.
They often married Indian wives to maintain good relations with native people.
American Indians maintained actual control of the heart of the North American continent.
French agents had to adjust to Indian ways to maintain France's colonial presence in certain areas
The Métis of the French Colonies
French and American Indian people and lifeways intermingled in these frontier communities.
Detroit fort and trading post combined French and American Indian elements in its layout and architecture.
Clothing among French colonists included both European and native elements.
Intermarriage with American Indians was common in French colonies, producing Métis children.
Métis communities had important roles for American Indian women, serving as cultural mediators and brokers in the fur trade.
They continued to exist after France surrendered its North American colonies in 1763.
The Dutch Presence in the Americas
Dutch colonies were trading outposts rather than settlements.
Dutch established forts and small settlements in Guyana in 1590 and island settlements in the Caribbean in the early 1600s.
Rival European powers often stymied Dutch colonization efforts.
Dutch obtained control of Surinam in South America in the late 17th century, focusing on sugar production and relying on African slave labor.
Treaty of Breda formally transferred control of New Amsterdam to the English.
Dutch New Amsterdam
Dutch expedition to North America was led by Henry Hudson in 1609.
Funded by the Dutch East India Company to search for Northwest Passage.
Hudson explored river that would later bear his name and past Manhattan Island.
Reports of abundant fur, timber, and fertile lands generated further interest among Dutch merchants.
Dutch claimed vast stretch of land from the Delaware River to Cape Cod.
Administrative seat and most important settlement of New Netherland was New Amsterdam.
Peter Minuit, the company director general, purchased the island of Manhattan for goods worth $24.
Doubts exist about the value of the goods, the intentions of the American Indians, and the legitimacy of the unnamed native people to "sell" the island..
Economy of New Amsterdam
Dutch West India Company struggled to profit from New Amsterdam colony in its first 20 years
The company offered land grants along the Hudson River to attract immigrants
Diverse groups of Europeans, including Sephardic Jews from Brazil, and African slaves were brought to New Amsterdam to address labor shortage.
Peter Stuyvesant became the colony's leader in 1647 and New Amsterdam began to thrive as a center for the fur trade and a growing seaport town.
King Charles II of England wanted to unite England's holdings in North America and sent warships to conquer New Amsterdam.
Stuyvesant surrendered in 1664 and New Amsterdam was renamed New York, granted to the Duke of York.
The formal transfer to English control occurred in 1667 as part of the settlement following the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
English Colonial Patterns
English Merchant Class and the Expansion of Trade
England faced a population surplus crisis.
A class of merchants and landowners accumulated capital.
Landowners profited from the expanding market for wool.
Entrepreneurs established a domestic wool-processing industry.
Merchants established joint-stock companies, claiming exclusive trading rights.
The Crown granted charters to these companies based on mercantilist principles.
Joint-stock companies made profits on trade.
Investors set their sights on New World colonization.
Richard Hakluyt argued that overseas expansion could benefit England by drawing off surplus population and providing new markets for manufactured goods.
Colonization of Ireland
English and Scottish colonists flooded into Ireland in the 1560s and 1570s, driving out the native population.
The English saw themselves as superior to and separate from the native populations in both Ireland and North America.
Spain and France sought to control native populations but also accepted social interaction between colonists and natives.
The English sought to transplant purely “English” societies in the New World.
The Regions of British Colonies
The Chesapeake and the Upper South
Founding of Jamestown and the “Starving Time”
Jamestown was founded in 1607 by the Virginia Company, a joint-stock company chartered by King James I to explore and colonize the New World.
The early settlers failed to find precious stones and metals, nor did they plant crops.
By 1610, only 60 were still alive, due to food shortqage, with many having perished during the “starving time.”
Jamestown and its American Indian Neighbors
The local Algonquian-speaking people, led by their chief, Powhatan, father of Pocahontas, traded corn with the settlers at first.
When the American Indians could not supply a sufficient amount of corn for their English neighbors, the English initiated raids on Powhatanʼs people.
Tobacco Economy and Labor
Virginia colonists faced difficulties at the start and successfully cultivated tobacco, led by John Rolfe.
Tobacco was profitable but required large tracts of land and led to encroachments on Native American territories.
Large-scale production of staple crops for the international market became a pattern in the South, requiring many laborers.
Indentured servitude and slavery developed to meet labor demands.
Wealthy Virginians used indentured servitude to bring lower-class workers to America.
The first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619.
Maryland
Maryland was the first proprietary colony established by England in North America.
The Crown granted a charter to George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, who was Catholic and hoped to create a refuge for Catholics in the New World.
Calvert died before the colony was established, and his son, Cecelius Calvert, became the actual proprietor of Maryland.
Protestants outnumbered Catholics in Maryland, but Catholicism continued to be tolerated.
North Carolina
North Carolina was founded in 1663 by wealthy plantation owners who created an agrarian system resembling Barbados in the south.
English settlers arrived in the north and created an economy resembling the Chesapeake colonies.
Tensions led to a split in 1712 and the establishment of North Carolina as a distinct colony from South Carolina.
The New England Colonies
Origins of Puritanism
Puritanism roots can be traced back to the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.
Martin Luther and John Calvin broke from the Catholic Church due to theological reasons.
The Protestant Reformation spread through Northern Europe, but not initially in England.
King Henry VIII of England broke with the Catholic Church in the 1530s for political control reasons.
Henry's break did not affect the traditional Roman Catholic religious practices.
Some true Protestants were upset with the "halfway reformation."
Puritans sought a full reformation in England, and wanted the Church of England to be "purified" of Catholic practices.
Some Puritans, known as separatists, argued for complete separation from the Church of England.
Puritan Beliefs and Practices
The Puritans were inspired by Calvinism.
Calvinist doctrine taught that individual salvation was subject to a divine plan.
Predestination caused anxiety as it was impossible to know God's will.
Puritans lived strict lives of piety, prayer, righteous living, and hard work
Puritans believed in the concept of "calling" - work on Earth that God intended for the individual to do. Being diligent at one's "calling" was central to Puritanism
Puritans valued community and believed that members should take care of each other and prevent others from going astray.
Individual malfeasance could result in divine punishment for the entire community.
Puritanism had a dark view of humanity and God. They believed in original sin and saw humanity as tainted with it
Plymouth and the Mayflower Compact
Pilgrims fled England in 1608 for a more hospitable religious climate in the Netherlands
They believed establishing a settlement in the New World would steel the congregants for religious piety.
They got permission from the British king to settle in the land granted to the Virginia Company.
Over a hundred separatists set sail on the Mayflower in 1620, arriving on Cape Cod eleven weeks later.
They drew up and signed the Mayflower Compact for orderly government.
An agreement calling for orderly government based on the consent of the governed.
Colony of Plymouth struggled the first year and failed to attract large numbers of Puritans.
Massachusetts Bay Colony—“A City Upon a Hill”
Puritans were eager to leave England in the 1620s due to religious persecution.
King Charles I, with the encouragement of Archbishop William Laud, sought to suppress their religious practices.
In 1629, the king granted a charter to the Massachusetts Bay Company to establish a colony in northern British North America.
The charter gave the colony a high degree of autonomy and allowed its governance to be located in the colony instead of in England.
The leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was John Winthrop.
Before the colonists' ship landed in present-day Salem in 1630, Winthrop gave a sermon called “A Model of Christian Charity.”
He stressed the importance of the colonists' mission and referred to the colony as being "a city upon a hill."
The “Great Migration” and the Growth of New England
Massachusetts Bay Colony had a difficult first year, similar to Plymouth.
Over 20,000 settlers came to Massachusetts Bay Colony in the "great migration" of 1640
The settlers were mostly farmers, carpenters, and textile workers.
The colony tended to attract families, unlike the male-dominated settlement of Jamestown.
The settlers were eager to build cohesive communities and were willing to work hard.
The colony grew rapidly, with ten new towns in the first decade and over 130 by the end of the century.
New Hampshire
Puritans migrated to the area that became New Hampshire.
English fishing villages existed in the region in the 1620s.
Massachusetts claimed the area and gained jurisdiction over New Hampshire in 1641.
A royal decree in 1679 separated New Hampshire from Massachusetts.
Roger Williams and the Founding of Rhode Island
Puritan society emphasized the intensive study of scripture.
The Puritan hierarchy enforced a rigid conformity to their own religious doctrine.
This led to conflicts in New England.
Roger Williams was a devout Puritan minister who became an important dissenter in Massachusetts.
Williams was concerned about mistreatment of American Indians by Puritans.
He was critical of church involvement in civil governance.
He fled to Narragansett Bay and founded Rhode Island.
Rhode Island separated church and state in its governance.
The Banishment of Anne Hutchinson
Anne Hutchinson challenged gender norms by holding meetings to discuss theology with men and women.
She argued that ministers were not needed for interpreting and conveying Biblical teachings.
She accused Puritan leaders of backsliding on the idea of salvation determined solely by God's plan.
In 1638, Puritan leaders excommunicated and banished Hutchinson and her family.
Hutchinson and her supporters established a settlement in Rhode Island.
In 1643, Hutchinson and some of her children were killed in a military conflict in Dutch New Netherlands.
The Founding of Connecticut
Some settler sought to rid themselves due to John Winthrop’s heavy-handed rulership.
Reverend Thomas Hooker disagreed with Winthrop over who should be admitted to church membership.
Hooker advocated for a less strict qualification, claiming that living a virtuous life was adequate for consideration for church membership.
In 1638, Hooker led a group to Connecticut River Valley, establishing the town of Hartford.
Other towns formed along, combining with Hartford to form the colony of Connecticut.
In 1639, The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut were adopted.
In 1662, the town of New Haven merged into the Connecticut colony.
The Splintering of Puritanism
By the end of the seventeenth century, tensions were seen in the Puritan experiment.
The second and third generations of Puritans lost some of their ardour.
By the 1650s, Puritan leaders saw church membership drop.
New England's economic growth may have drawn some away from Puritanism.
Puritanism split in the Halfway Covenant and Salem witch trials.
The Halfway Covenant (1662)
Fears about Puritan fervour led to the Halfway Covenant (1662).
Incoming newcomers and children of early Puritan church members in New England had to prove to church elders that they had converted. It was hard to show a conversion.
Partial membership arose due to diminishing membership.
Even without a conversion experience, they might be baptized and become partial, nonvoting church members.
Salem Witch Trials (1692)
The Salem witch trials in 1692 exposed divisions in the once-united Puritan community.
Teenage girls were the first to be accused of witchcraft in Salem, and this meant the accused were thought to be working with Satan.
In Puritan beliefs, misfortune could be explained as divine punishment for sin, or the work of an enemy who channeled Satan's power.
The high number of accusations (over 100) in Salem reveals a perceived lack of godly piety in New England.
The fact that neighbors turned on their neighbors, men turned on women, and poor turned on wealthy, reflects a fractured community.
The Middle Colonies
Pennsylvania
In 1681, King Charles II gave William Penn 25,000 square miles of property to pay off a debt to Penn's father.
Notwithstanding Penn's conversion to Quakerism and conflict with the Church of England, the monarch and Penn were friends.
Charles probably liked the idea of a colony for Quakers to escape England.
The monarch called the province Pennsylvania after William Penn's father, which embarrassed Penn the younger.
Quakerism and the “Holy Experiment”
Quakerism guided Pennsylvania's founding.
Its religion and life were non-hierarchical.
Quakers believed God treated them equally.
"Friend" was their address to each other.
The formal name of Quakerism, the "Religious Society of Friends".
Penn sought to start a "holy experiment" in the New World to apply their egalitarian precepts. They were religiously tolerant and opposed slavery.
In the 17th century, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's largest city, outranked New York as a commercial center.
New Jersey and Delaware
In 1631, the Dutch first settled New Jersey and Delaware, but all of the original settlers were murdered in a conflict with American Indians.
In 1638, Sweden founded a trade port and colony in Delaware
In 1651, the Dutch acquired control of the colony, including it into their North American possessions, New Netherland.
In 1664, the Duke of York granted Delaware to William Penn, and Penn included it in his Pennsylvania land grant.
The Duke handed Sir George Carteret and Lord Berkeley of Stratton, two allies, the land between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers near New York to form New Jersey.
In 1704, the Lower Counties of Pennsylvania established their own legislative body and thus became independent of Pennsylvania.
New York
In 1664, the Dutch dubbed New Amsterdam as New York.
It was a major commercial port, and English rulers increased slave labor.
New York had more slaves than North Carolina by the mid-1700s.
Before the American Revolution, 3,000 slaves made about 14% of the city's population.
The “Negro Plot of 1741”
In 1741, many occurrences in New York highlighted white-enslaved African American tensions.
Unsolved city fires raised suspicions of a slave conspiracy. 20 whites and 150 blacks were arrested.
30 persons were executed, more than during the Salem witch trials.
The "Negro Conspiracy of 1741" has been contested by historians.
The Lower South and the Colonies of the West Indies
Sugar and Slavery in the West Indies
In the 1630s, English colonists settled Barbados and sold high-priced sugarcane to London.
At the end of the seventeenth century, English Caribbean possessions exported about five million pounds of sugar annually.
Barbados had four times the slave population of Virginia and four times the wealth of its tobacco growers.
Barbados had more slaves than Virginia. There has different gender and family relations than Virginia.
Plantation labour was physically hard.
Barbados slaves were less likely to create families than Virginia slaves because men outnumbered women two to one.
Carolina
In 1663, King Charles II established Carolina as a prize for eight noblemen who helped him restore monarchy.
Planters from Barbados brought slavery with them.
In the 1670s and 1680s, the northern and southern economies of Carolina began to diverge, causing political turmoil.
In 1691, the northern section was administered by a deputy governor, and the break was official in 1712.
In 1719, South Carolina became a royal colony, and aristocratic landowners controlled thousands of slaves.
Georgia
In 1732, Britain handed a license to James Oglethorpe to create the colony of Georgia, seeking to construct a paternalistic colony for Britain's "deserving poor".
He required all males to serve in the military and sought to mobilize the poor colonists to protect the wealthy planters of South Carolina from Spanish aggression, but his intentions fell through.
Instead, Carolinians seeking fresh territory poured into Georgia, bringing slavery with them, forcing him to cede authority of the colony to the Crown.
The Development of Self-Government in Britainʼs New World Colonies
Evolution of Governance in Colonial North America
Because of their remoteness and negligent attention to its New World empire, Great Britain did not establish a comprehensive administrative system in its North American colonies.
The majority of the thirteen colonies developed in a different way, with several becoming royal colonies under the Crown's authority.
In all cases, a colonial legislature existed, with the authority to tax the colony's residents.
The colonial legislatures were able to wield considerable power over the royal rulers, establishing in many colonies a sense of self-government.
Town Meetings in New England
New England town meetings were face-to-face decision-making assemblies open to all free male residents.
These annual assemblies elected "selectmen" to administer the town until the following meeting.
Direct democracy encouraged citizen participation in decision-making.
The House of Burgesses in Virginia
In 1619, the Virginia Company established the House of Burgesses.
In 1607, the firm launched Virginia as a profit-making endeavor. This representative assembly was founded by the firm to administer the colony's residents.
Voting privileges were later restricted to affluent men.
In 1624, the monarch authorized the House of Burgesses to continue.
As smaller planters were prohibited from voting, the House of Burgesses grew less influential and more elitist.
Transatlantic Trade
The Atlantic Economy and the Evolution of Colonial Economies
The African Slave Trade
In the eighteenth century, sub-Saharan Africa's slave trade flourished.
In African coastal cities, European traders encouraged African males to kidnap members of other tribe groups.
Kidnapping, ethnic and communal problems, and regional instability were all caused by the slave trade.
The New World's slaves came from many cultures and languages.
Tobacco, Indigo, Rice, Sugar, and Slavery in the South and the West Indies
In the eighteenth century, most North American colonies focused on crops and commercial activities that fit the local climate and topography and could be sold to European nations, improving their economic status.
Virginians specialized in tobacco, while the lower South indigo and rice.
British North America's southern possessions generated 90% of exports, but the West Indies' sugar-growing islands were most profitable.
Slaves mostly farmed.
The Fur Trade in the North American Interior
In the eighteenth century, most North American colonies focused on crops and commercial activities that fit the local climate and topography and could be sold to European nations, improving their economic status.
Virginians grew tobacco, and by 1750, the lower South exported two-thirds of its indigo and rice.
Slaves farmed the West Indies' sugar-growing islands, which were the most profitable British New World territories.
The fur trade drove French, Dutch, and English traders and colonists to the interior of the continent, intensifying fighting between Native groups and competing European powers.
Wheat, Indentured Servants, and Redemptioners in the Middle Colonies
German and Scots-Irish immigrants in Pennsylvania and New York grew wheat and other cereals for shipment to Europe.
Middle colonies used indentured servants and "redemptioners" for labor.
Sea captains took redemptioners to the New World and promised to pay.
Redemptioners may bargain and reject unfair offers, unlike indentured laborers.
Redemptioners prospered in Pennsylvania, where their level of life was higher than in any other agricultural region in the eighteenth century, despite initial obstacles.
Fish and Lumber in New England
Farmers in New England grew a variety of crops for local use because the area was unsuitable for export products.
Livestock, lumber, and salted fish comprised a third of European exports.
New Englanders distilled sugar-growing British West Indies molasses into rum, violating mercantilist trade rules.
Britain replied by establishing the Molasses Act of 1733, which heavily taxed foreign molasses.
New England towns traded with Europe, the West Indies, and Africa.
This was Great Britain's most English colony, although few immigrants settled there.
Throughout the eighteenth century, natural reproduction increased the region slower than the middle colonies and South.
Trade, Disease, and Demographic Changes for American Indians
Contact, Disease, Warfare, and the Collapse of the Huron
In 1609, Samuel de Champlain met Ontario's Huron people.
By the 1630s, the Huron, who numbered between 20,000 and 40,000 at European contact, were decimated by French settlers, notably Jesuit priests.
In 1634, a measles and smallpox pandemic killed half to two-thirds of the Huron tribe.
The Huron fled from the Iroquois to an island in Georgian Bay, Ontario, where many died from starvation and terrible conditions.
Quebec and upper Lake Michigan were home to many Huron.
The severity of European contact's new style of warfare destroyed or moved entire tribes.
The Catawba—Contact, Trade, and Cultural Adaptation
By helping the settlers, the Catawba people of the Southeast tried to survive.
As wandering peddlers, they sold ceramics, baskets, and moccasins in colonial South Carolina villages.
The introduction of alcohol as a means of payment for products by settlers led to drunkenness, brawls, and instability in Catawba culture.
The Catawba and colonists got along, but extended interaction damaged their culture.
British Imperial Policies
Mercantilism
Mercantilism molded early modern colonial policy for the great powers.
It believed that governments should acquire precious metals to maximize their influence due to the world's limited wealth.
To do this, nations should keep colonies for cheap and reliable raw supplies.
For the American colonies to fulfill their mission, the British crown established navigation restrictions.
Navigation Acts and Mercantilism
From the 1650s to the American Revolution, Britain used Navigation Acts to establish the colonies as raw material suppliers and marketplaces for British goods.
Tar, pitch, and mast trees were among the "enumerated goods" from the colonies that could only be exported to Britain.
They were sold in England and abroad for a profit.
British industrialists were protected from colonial competition and guaranteed a stable supply of cheap raw materials by many Navigation Acts.
Greater Imperial Control
Due of brutality against American Indians, high death rates, and mismanagement, King James I canceled the Virginia Company's charter in 1624 and proclaimed Virginia a royal colony under the jurisdiction of a king-appointed governor.
This was part of the Crown's attempt to integrate the colonies into the imperial system.
The Dominion of New England
In the late seventeenth century, after King Philip's War, New England became more imperial.
King Charles II's emissary found New Englanders violating mercantilist rules.
Sir Edmund Andros controlled the Dominion of New England when royal officials annulled the charters of all colonies north of the Delaware River in 1686.
Andros' backing for the Anglican Church and failure to enforce Sabbath rules outraged New England Puritans.
Colonists said he revoked their English rights.
The Glorious Revolution and the Restoration of Colonial Charters
In 1685, King Charles II's brother James II succeeded him.
Protestants were comforted by James's Protestant daughter, Mary.
In 1688, James's wife had a son, and if his son became king, England would have a Catholic king and possibly more Catholic monarchs.
Protestant parliamentarians deposed King James in the "Glorious Revolution."
The Glorious Revolution ended absolute monarchy in England and established the English Bill of Rights.
This prompted New Englanders to arrest Sir Edmund Andros and abolish the Dominion of New England.
Lax Enforcement of Mercantilist Policies
After the Glorious Revolution (1688) and Dominion of New England (1686–1689), Great Britain tried to integrate the thirteen colonies into the empire.
Mercantilist laws were laxly enforced due to the difficulties and costs of enforcing imperial laws in a vast empire thousands of kilometers from the mother country.
The Crown's slack enforcement was attributed to Prime Minister Robert Walpole, who advised the Crown not to interfere with North American colonies' prosperous trade.
The Molasses Act of 1733 prohibited the import of sugar and molasses from non-British colonies into North America, yet Boston merchants routinely imported illegal sugar to feed Massachusetts rum distilleries.
Interactions Between American Indians and Europeans
Imperial Conflicts and North American Political Instability
The Beaver Wars (1640–1701)
This war show how trade and European armament destabilized American Native relations.
The Dutch and French traded firearms and furs with aboriginal communities at trading posts.
In 1614, the Dutch established a trading base in Albany and formed a prosperous alliance with the Iroquois Confederacy. They fought the Algonquian-speaking Huron.
In 1664, the Brits took over New Netherland.
The Huron suffered when the Iroquois expanded.
War, the fur trade, and European weaponry reorganized American Native alliances and societies.
The French and Indian Wars and Control of North America (1688–1763)
The four French and Indian Wars (1688-1763) fought for North American dominance.
King William's War, Queen Anne's War, and King George's War were European battles between Great Britain and France.
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) ended French rule in North America. Some tribes allied with the British, while others allied with the French.
As long as opponents threatened colonial interests along contested and ambiguous boundaries, battles strengthened ties between British colonies and Great Britain.
With the French defeat in 1763, colonists reassessed their status in the British Empire.
King Williamʼs War (1688–1697)
This war was the New World version of France's Nine Years' War with an alliance.
It was caused by British colonists encroaching on Acadia and American Native factions aligned with the British and French.
The Iroquois Confederacy signed the Great Settlement of 1701 with France and other Indian countries after the war, making them neutral in the North American power struggle.
Queen Anneʼs War (1702–1713)
This war involved European powers and North and South American Indigenous groups.
The Wabanaki Confederacy raided Deerfield, Massachusetts, as French and British soldiers struggled for territory.
British colonists used the Chickasaw tribe to buy enslaved Choctaws from their traditional opponent, despite tensions between Great Britain and Spain over the line between Spanish Florida and British Carolina.
The French, Spanish, and Apalachee allied to fight the British in the South.
The battle did not resolve boundary concerns, but it crippled Spanish Florida and impoverished American Indians.
In 1763, France lost the French and Indian War.
King Georgeʼs War (1744–1748)
This war was fought in New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Nova Scotia.
It included a successful siege of the newly completed French Castle of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, as well as the destruction of Saratoga, New York, by French and Indian forces.
The British agreed to surrender the fort at Louisbourg to the French in the peace deal, which infuriated the northern colonies.
British Colonial Expansion and Conflicts with American Indians
The Pequot War (1634–1638)
A violent war between American Indians and British colonists in New England, changed the region's demographics.
The Puritans tried to construct an ideal community, but they forced American Indians off the area they wanted to occupy.
The Pequots were defeated by Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth's alliance with the Narragansett and Mohegan people, and future battle would wipe off New England's natives.
King Philipʼs War (1675–1678)
After the 1630s Pequot War, New England colonists and Indians lived peacefully, until violence returned in the 1670s.
In 1675, three Wampanoags executed in Plymouth for killing a Christianized Wampanoag sparked fighting.
Metacomet, the grandson of Massasoit, attacked Massachusetts villages, destroying several and killing over 1,000 people.
Metacomet was murdered by the New Englanders' Mohawk counterattack.
The war killed the most European settlers in North America.
“Praying Indians” in Puritan New England
The Pequot War and King Philip's War ended unhappily for New England's native people, who tried to cohabit with Puritan settlers.
Puritan missionaries constructed "prayer cities" for "praying Indians" to convert them to Christianity, but they had to dress like Europeans and give up their spiritual practices.
This forced English customs on the Indians instead of letting them keep some of their own.
Racial Hierarchy and American Indians
Over the seventeenth century, English colonists' views of American Indians and enslaved Africans altered.
Early in the century, European settlers wanted to keep the natives at peace.
The colonists wanted Indigenous territory as the settlements grew.
This resulted in King Philip's War in 1675.
This racial hierarchy cemented and justified English colonists' continuing plunder of American Native territories.
Spain and American Indians in North America
Pueblo Revolt
In 1680, New Mexico rebelled against Spanish rule in the Pueblo Revolt, also known as Popé's Rebellion.
Santa Fe was the hub of attacks on Spanish Franciscan priests and civilians. Spanish residents fled but returned later in the decade.
Spanish authorities appointed a public defender to protect native rights and agreed to allow the Pueblo to continue their cultural practices.
This insurrection was different from English settlers' battles with native people, which usually ended in Indian deportation or elimination.
Slavery in the British Colonies
Baconʼs Rebellion and the Development of Slavery in Virginia
In the later half of the seventeenth century, Virginia planters began to have issues with the system of indentured servitude, resulting in Bacon's Rebellion, a full-fledged uprising.
A lower-level planter, Nathaniel Bacon, championed the cause of the frontier farmers and became their leader.
He led a group of them into Jamestown, where they burned down the residences of the rich planters as well as the capital building.
Bacon died of sickness, and the rebellion was quickly put down.
The rebellion was a watershed moment in colonial history, as aristocratic planters increasingly relied on enslaved Africans as their primary labor force.
Ideas about Race and the Development of Slavery in British North America
The Origins of Racial Hierarchies
The Spanish, French, and Dutch colonies were more receptive of interracial marriages with native people.
The British colonies drew both male and female colonists and did not tolerate interracial marriage.
This resulted in a tight racial hierarchy in the British colonies, which influenced English worldviews.
Historians argue whether racism toward Africans arose as a result of captivity, or whether racist ideas before and enabled enslavement.
The Nature of Slavery in British North America
Research implies that the few slaves existent in colonial Virginia in the early seventeenth century were treated similarly to other "unfree" persons.
In 1640, John Casor, an indentured servant of African heritage, was declared a slave for life.
In 1662, the Virginia government issued a statute saying that the child of a slave woman would inherit its mother's status, breaking with customary English common law.
This notion had a significant impact on the dynamics of slavery in the British colonial system, as it sanctioned the rape of slave women by their white masters.
By the end of the century, white Virginians had come to see "blacks" and "slaves" as nearly interchangeable terms.
Stono Rebellion
The most notable slave uprising of the colonial period was the Stono, South Carolina rebellion in 1739, which resulted in the murder of twenty slave owners and the plundering of half a dozen plantations.
Smaller kinds of resistance, such as working slowly and breaking tools, occurred on a daily basis.
Slaves kept cultural ties to Africa by using traditional names and traditions.
Colonial Society and Culture
Religious Pluralism in Colonial America
The “Great Awakening”
The Great Awakening was a religious revival in early-1700s colonial America led by charismatic ministers and their followers.
George Whitefield, the most famous preacher, visited the North American colonies seven times and delivered an emotive Christian message to thousands of people.
In contrast to conventional Puritan concepts of "original sin" and predestination, the central message was that anybody may be redeemed and that people could make decisions in their lives that would effect their afterlife.
Immigration and Dissenting Denominations
In the seventeenth century, the majority of churches in the British colonies were either Anglican or Congregational.
Quakers had a major presence in Pennsylvania, but by the mid-eighteenth century, recognition of dissenting Protestant faiths had grown.
Immigration from Europe brought new denominations, with the Germanic states accounting for the lion's share.
The theological diversity of colonial America was enriched by urban areas such as New York.
Deism and the Enlightenment
Deism was a form of worship adopted by educated colonists in the 1700s, where God was seen as a distant entity.
Deists believed that God had created the world and created a series of natural laws to govern it, aligned with the Enlightenment ethos.
They saw God as a great clockmaker, with the Earth being analogous to a clock.
It is the mechanisms of the clock, rather than God's interventions, that move the hour and minute hands forward.
The Anglicization of British North America
Emulating the British
Wealthy merchants and planters sent their sons to Britain for schooling to emulate British culture in the New World.
Throughout the eighteenth century, even poor colonists wanted British products, creating a consumerist culture.
British culture and goods elevated the wealthy from provincial bumpkins.
Trans-Atlantic Print Culture
The thirteen colonies had a high literacy rate, hence printed publications were in demand.
Newspapers existed in most colonial cities by the 1730s, including Charleston, South Carolina, and Williamsburg, Virginia.
In 1733, John Peter Zenger founded the New York Weekly Journal, and in 1729, Benjamin Franklin took over the Pennsylvania Gazette.
During the time of the American Revolution, colonial America had over forty weekly periodicals that covered European issues.
Anglicanism and Enlightenment Thinking—from Great Britain to North America
In the 1600s and 1700s, the Anglican Church in Great Britain and colonial America adopted Enlightenment concepts.
This led to Puritans leaving for the New World and opposing Puritanism.
The Low Church, a liberal spirituality influenced by Enlightenment thought, was adopted by certain Anglican theologians.
In England and the colonies, these reformers opposed extremism, superstition, and conservatism.
John Leverett, Jr., who became Harvard's president in 1708, led this liberal, independent shift.
Religious Toleration
The Edict of Nantes (1598) granted Calvinist Protestants in France religious freedom.
Baruch Spinoza, the Dutch philosopher from a Portuguese Jewish family, embraced the idea in the mid-1600s.
John Locke's "A Letter About Toleration" and Voltaire's "A Treatise on Toleration" advocated Christian tolerance.
The Statute of Religious Toleration (1649) and the Flushing Remonstrance (1657) in colonial America were precursors to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Diverging Interests—British Policies and Colonial Dissatisfaction
Throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Britain and its North American colonies clashed.
British authorities canceled the charters of colonies from New Jersey to Massachusetts and gained full authority in 1686, creating the Dominion of New England.
In 1688, colonists imprisoned royal administrators like Sir Edmund Andros during the Glorious Revolution.
In 1689, Jacob Leisler led rebels overthrew the royal authority in New York.
Protestants in Maryland overthrew absentee colony owner Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore (a Catholic).
These short-lived rebellions showed British policy displeasure.
The new royal charters strengthened royal rule and integrated the colonies into the imperial system once the Dominion ended.
Some citizens of the thirteen colonies rebelled against British rule, but most remained loyal and prospered.
The Background to Colonial Resistance to Imperial Control
Enlightenment Thinking and Resistance to British Rule
John Locke, a British political theorist, contended that government should safeguard "natural rights" in the colonies.
He disagreed with Thomas Hobbes, who believed people required tyrants.
Locke's optimism about humans' ability to reason and make good governance decisions encouraged colonial self-government.
Influence of the Country Party and “Catoʼs Letters”
British writers' criticism of the British government's corruption, wastefulness, and despotism inspired colonial rebellion.
North American colonists used these notions to frame their imperial system grievances.
John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon's pseudonym "Cato" was a prominent Country Party essayist in the American press.
"Cato's Letters," eventually published in Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, criticized British political corruption and warned against tyranny.
It was a colonial bestseller and often cited by Patriots during the American Revolution.
American Legal Procedures and Freedom of the Press
Because of a lack of British-trained lawyers and local circumstances, the British colonies established legal systems and procedures that differed from the British system.
This reduced the use of jail and flogging, branding, and public shame, and redefined offenses such as libel.
In 1735, John Peter Zenger was acquitted of seditious libel for publishing articles unflattering of the royal governor.
The judgement and its consequences demonstrated the importance of a free press in the colonies.
Period 3: 1754-1800 The Crisis of Empire, Revolution and Nation Building