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Hist. 146 American Civilization

Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, PhD Week 1

America before “Discovery”

•  Indigenous population in the millions •  Large cities, roads, irrigation systems,

trade networks, architectural achievements

•  NO: written language, metal tools or machines, gunpowder, or scientific knowledge—all of which Europeans did have

“Mound Builders”

Hopi & Zuni

Pacific (CA) Diversity

The First Americans

(POINTS OF CONFLICT)

Native Americans and Europeans à different views on: 1.  Religion 2.  Land/Property, Wealth 3.  Gender Relations

Indian Freedom, European Freedom

•  How Europeans saw the Indians •  Religious/Moral Liberty

–  Subordinate yourself to God’s will •  Secular Freedom

–  Freedom within your social status/rank •  Limits of Freedom

–  Landownership central

Table 1.1 Estimated Regional Populations: The Americas, ca.1500

The Expansion of Europe

•  Chinese and Portuguese Navigation •  Portugal and West Africa •  Freedom and Slavery in Africa

Map 1.3 The old world on the eve of American colonization, ca.1500

Timeline •  1427: Portuguese “discover” the Azores

•  1488: Bartolomeu Dias first to sail around southern tip of

Africa

•  1492: Columbus sails West instead of following the Coast of Africa; says, “I should not proceed by land to the East, as is customary, but by a Westerly route, in which direction we have hitherto no certain evidence that any one has gone.”

•  1498: Vasco de Gama continues along the coast of Africa and reaches India; Portuguese have trading posts throughout Africa, and soon create them in India, southern China, Indonesia

Contact •  Columbus in the New

World •  Exploration and

Conquest •  The Demographic

Disaster •  Columbian

Exchange

Columbus’ Landfall

Columbian Exchange, cont.

“Conquest of Tenochtitlan” Unknown artist, c. 17th century

Map 1.5 A Spanish Conquests and Explorations in The New World, 1500–1600

Spanish Casta Paintings

The Black Legend (of Spanish Conquest)

Bartolemé de Las Casas

“The common ways mainly employed by the Spaniards who call themselves Christian and who have gone there to extirpate those pitiful nations and wipe them off the earth is by unjustly waging cruel and bloody wars… When they have slain all the native rulers and young men… they enslave any survivors. With these infernal methods of tyranny they debase and weaken countless numbers of those pitiful Indian nations. Their reason for killing and destroying such a infinite number of souls…is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches…” From Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies, 1542.

Bartolemé de Las Casas

•  Spreads “Black Legend” of Spanish cruelty to the rest of Europe

•  1542: New Laws – outlaw Indian slavery

•  1550: Encomienda system abolished – Repartimiento system established

•  Does not immediately translate into better treatment for Indians

French Migration/Explorers

•  1603: Samuel de Champlain maps St. Lawrence River and Northern Atlantic coast

•  1615: Champlain becomes first European to see Great Lakes

•  Mostly trading posts—few efforts to establish colonies initially

•  1663-1673: filles du roi—program sponsored by Louis XIV

Fille du roi, or fille de joie?

French Fur Trading = Beaver

Dutch Colonies: New York Harbor

English America

Sir Francis Drake

Ordered by Queen Elizabeth to pirate Spanish

Cacafuego, 1578 Circumnavigated the globe, 1577-80

English Colonization

•  Pull factors: – National greatness, wealth, power – Raw material

•  Push factors: – Population “surplus”

•  Economic crisis coupled with population growth •  Enclosure, inheritance customs, privatization of

church land

The Coming of the English

•  English Emigrants – Enclosure/Surplus

•  Indentured Servants/Indentured Servitude

•  Land and Liberty

Contract for Indentured Servitude

English Settlement

•  Roanoke –  Walter Raleigh, 1584 –  1587, returns, finds

no one

•  Jamestown –  1607 –  First successful

English colony

Tobacco

Tobacco Exports Explode! 1617: Approx 20,000 lbs 1638: Approx. 3,000,000 lbs Tobacco crop = VA staple crop Transforms VA society WITHOUT TOBACCO, VA WOULD NOT HAVE SURVIVED

Colonies/Regions

The New England Way

•  Religion – Maryland, 1632 – The Rise of Puritanism

•  Moral liberty

•  1620—First Puritans head to America – Mayflower Compact

New England Settlers

•  The Puritan Family –  Balanced gender ratio –  Patriarchal

•  Religion •  Dissenters:

–  Roger Williams (banished: 1636), Anne Hutchinson (trial: 1636-1638) , Mary Dyer (executed: 1660)

“He [Thomas Granger] was this year detected of buggery, and indicted for the same, with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey… He was first discovered by one that accidentally saw his lewd practice towards the mare (I forbear particulars)… He not only confessed the fact with that beast at the time, but sundry times before and at several times with all the rest of the forenamed in his indictment… Some of the sheep could not so well be known by his description of them, others with them were brought before him and he declared which were they and which were not…He was cast by the jury and condemned, and after executed about the 8th of September, 1642. A very sad spectacle it was. For first the mare and then the cow and the rest of the lesser cattle were killed before his face, according to the law, Leviticus 20:15; and then he himself was executed. The cattle were all cast into a great and large pit that was digged of purpose for them, and no use made of any part of them.” —William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation

Drunk History, Mary Dyer

New Englanders Divided

•  Puritan health boom, increased life expectancy forces them to move onto Indian lands. – Causes Conflict

•  Puritans and Indians – The Pequot War, 1636-1637

•  Pequot people basically cease to exist after this war

Religion, Politics, & Freedom

•  By 1600: English liberties à Rights of Englishmen – The Rights of Englishmen

•  Magna Carta •  “English Liberty”

Henry Care, “English Liberties,” 1721

“The Constitution of our English Government is no Arbitrary Tyranny … but a most excellently mixt or qualified Monarchy, where the King is vested with large prerogatives sufficient to support Majesty; and restrained only from power of doing himself and his people harm.... The Commonality too, so Guarded in their Persons and Properties by the fence of Law, and renders them Freemen, not Slaves. In … other Nations the mere Will of the Prince is Law, his Word takes off any…head, imposes taxes, or seizes any man's estate, when, how, and as often as he wishes, and if one is accused or … suspected of any Crime, he may either presently Execute him, or Banish or Imprison him at pleasure.... But in England, the Law is both the Measure and the Bond of every Subject's Duty and Allegiance, each man having a fixed Fundamental Right born with him as to the Freedom of his Person and Property in his Estate, which he cannot be deprived of…”

Global Competition and the Expansion of England's Empire

•  The Mercantilist System – Mercantilism: all economic activity should

promote national power – Navigation Acts, 1651 – Royal African Company

•  Followed Portuguese model of slave trade •  English gov’t monopoly on slave trade

Map 3.1 Eastern North America in The Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries

The Carolinas

•  “Colony of a colony” •  1663: establish

“buffer” colony •  Rice: 1694

Pennsylvania: The “Holy Experiment”, 1681

Outline: Origins of American Slavery

•  Slavery in the West Indies •  Slavery and the Law •  The Rise of Chesapeake Slavery •  Bacon’s Rebellion: Land and Labor in

Virginia •  The End of the Rebellion, and Its

Consequences

Slavery vs. Indentured Servitude

Slaves

•  Not protected by English common law

•  No term expiration •  Skin color •  Accustomed to

agricultural work

Indentured Servants

•  English indentured servants could claim rights as Englishmen

•  Could eventually become discontented & landless

•  Skin color is not an indicator/marker

•  Required payout at the end of their term

Origins of American Slavery

From slavevoyages.org

Virginia Slave Code

“December 1662 Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a Negro woman should be slave or free, be it therefore enacted and declared by this present Grand Assembly, that all children born in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother; and that if any Christian shall commit fornication with a Negro man or woman, he or she so offending shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act.”

Timeline of Slave Codes

•  1619: First African slaves arrive in VA •  1641: Massachusetts legalizes slavery (first

colony to do so) •  1662: VA law makes slavery hereditary

(based on condition of mother, previous slide) •  1705: VA expands slave codes; slaves =

property/real estate; masters have a right to destroy (i.e. kill) their own property without fear of punishment

Bacon’s Rebellion, 1676

Bacon’s Rebellion •  Governor William

Berkeley –  Limited land; corrupt

regime •  1676: Nathaniel Bacon &

others demand land à burned Jamestown to the ground à riot put down by militia

•  Opens up land for settlement, violate Indian treaties, and shift towards African slavery to prevent future rebellions

Colonies in Crisis

•  The Glorious Revolution – Attempts to end salutary neglect

•  Riots

Salem Witch Trials

•  The Prosecution of Witches –  Common (1542: England made witchcraft a

capital crime) –  Gendered: Most “witches” were women

•  The Salem Witch Trials –  February 1692-April 1693 –  185 accused –  Approx. 25 people died

•  19 executed, 1 tortured to death, 5 died awaiting execution

An illustration from Cotton Mather’s

The Growth of Colonial America

•  An Atlantic World – Linking empires, not dividing them – Colonists benefit from inclusion in British

empire

•  Immigration – Religious and ethnic diversity

The Growth of Colonial America

•  Colonial Cities, Artisans, and Merchants

•  Colonial Elite •  Anglicization

–  In trying to be more English, the colonists become more similar to each other

Map 3.2 European settlement and ethnic diversity on the Atlantic coast of North America, 1760

Table 3.1 Origins and Status of Migrants to British North American colonies, 1700–1775

For Next Week •  Chapters 4-5

–  Expansion of Slavery –  Secularization of the colonies –  Seven Years War –  American Revolution

Questions to think about:

•  Why do you think a nation that was so invested in liberty was also so invested in slavery?

•  How do slavery and freedom become increasingly defined conditions?

•  What was the turning point on the road to Revolution? At what point do you think the Revolution became inevitable?