The American Pageant: Chapter 2: The Planting of English America

1500-1733
I. Introduction
A. From Tierra del Fuego-Hudson Bay, south-north, disease and armed conquest
disrupted natives. Enslaved Africans on Caribbean and Brazilian sugar plantations.
Florida & New Mexico southward, under imperial Spanish rule. North of Mexico, 1600,
unexplored. Spanish: Santa Fe 1610, French: Quebec 1608, English: Jamestown, Virginia
1607.
II. Englands Imperial Stirrings
A. England had religious conflict mid-century, King Henry VIII broke with the Roman
Catholic Church in 1530s.
B. Protestant Reformation - Movement to reform the Catholic Church
C. Protestant Elizabeth ascended to English throne in 1558, protestantism was dominant
and rivalry with Catholic Spain increased.
D. Catholic Irish wanted to throw of the new English queen but didnt work in 1570-80s,
and Catholic Irish lands were confiscated.
III. Elizabeth Energizes England
A. English buccaneers wanted to encourage Protestantism and get wealthy by seizing and
raiding Spanish ships and settlements. Sir Francis Drake was a famous one of them.
B. First English attempt at colonization Sir Humphrey Gilbert, death 1583, but failed. His
brother Sir Walter Raleigh landed in 1585 on North Carolinas
Roanoke Island
named in honor of Elizabeth. Mysteriously vanished.
C. Phillip II of Spain wanted to invade England with the Spanish Armada, lost and it
ended Spanish imperial goals. Awakened English national spirit, and gave them naval
dominance in North Atlantic. Signed peace treaty in 1604.
IV. England on the Eve of Empire
A. Social & economic change to Englands scepterd isle, 3 mil people in 1550 to 4 mil in
1600. Puritanism took strong root, and when economic depression hit woolen trade in late
1500s, farmers took to the road.
B. Primogeniture - Law that oldest son inherits all family property or land. Caused
Gilbert, Raleigh, and Drake to find wealth elsewhere.
C. Joint-stock company, early 1600s, short term partnership between multiple investors to
fund a commercial enterprise.
D. Population growth = workers, unemployment/adventure = motives, joint-stock
companies = financial means to establish English beachhead in N.A.
V. England Plants the Jamestown Seedling
A. In 1606, Virginia Company of London, joint-stock company, received charter from
King James I of England for settlement in New World. New investors were pressured to
find riches.

B. Charter of Virginia Company, guaranteed the overseas settlers the same rights of
Englishmen if they had stayed at home.
C. Set sail in late 1606, 3 ships landed near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, indians
attached, moved up on the bay, small band of colonists chose a location by the James
River (named in honor of King James I). Named place Jamestown, on May 24, 1607.
D. Lost leaders and supplies in shipwreck; many settlers died from disease, malnutrition,
starvation. Wasted time looking for gold instead of saving themselves.
E. New leader: Captain John Smith, captured in December 1607 by Powhatan, saved by
Pocahontas who preserved the shaky peace.
F. Colonists still died, 60/400 settlers survived the starving time winter of 1609-1610.
Remaining colonists were going to leave but relief party led by Lord De La Warr sent
them back. 1,200/8,000 survivors in Virginia 1625.
VI. Cultural Clashes in the Chesapeake
A. Before English landed, Powhatan had dominated native people in James River area, he
tried to be kind but the English kept raiding the Indians food supplies.
B. De La Warr, 1610, declared war against Indians in Jamestown region. First AngloPowhatan War, troops raided Indian villages, burned houses, confiscated provisions,
torched cornfields. Ended in 1614 through interracial union in Virginia, Pocahontas and
colonist John Rolfe.
C.Respite followed lasting 8 years, Indians struck back in 1622, killed 347 settlers.
Reduced native population and drove survivors westward.
D. Second Anglo-Powhatan War - 1644, Indians tried again and were defeated. Peace
treaty of 1646 banished Chesapeake Indians from their ancestral lands, separated Indian
from white areas of settlement. 1669, 2,000 Indians remained in Virginia, Powhatan
people considered extinct by 1865. Powhatans fell victim to disease, disorganization, and
disposability.
VII. The Indians New World
A. Disease transformed Indian life, extinguishing entire cultures but sometimes formed
new ones. Some had to reinvent their clans without accumulated wisdom or kin networks.
Sometimes forced migration and decimation made them come together in a whole new
group.
B. Trade transformed Indian life because if they could purchase firearms it was
beneficial, and it
intensified competition which led to Indian on Indian violence.
C. Indians along Atlantic seaboard experienced: Algonquins in Great Lakes area became
substantial regional power. Here, British or French traders conformed to Indian ways, and
there was a middle ground where both tolerated each other.
VIII. Virginia: Child of Tobacco
A. John Rolfe (Pocahontas husband) became father of tobacco industry, and economic
savior of the Virginia colony. 1612, he perfected methods of raising and curing the
tobacco, crops planted in Jamestown. Ruined soil when planted in successive years, and
also promoted plantation system and with it a demand for fresh labor.

B. Year before Plymouth Pilgrims landed in New England, 1619, Dutch warship appeared
in Jamestown and sold 20 Africans. Seed of the N.A. slave system; 1650 300 blacks but
14% of colonys population by end of century.
C. House of Burgesses - formed in 1619 by The Virginia Company who allowed the
settlers to create an assembly.
D. James I detested tobacco, distrusted the House of Burgesses, so he revoked the charter,
beleaguered Virginia Company, making Virginia a royal colony under his control.
IX. Maryland: Catholic Haven
A. Maryland - second plantation colony but 4th English colony to be founded, founded
by Lord Baltimore (for wealth and a refuge for fellow Catholics) of a prominent English
Catholic family in 1634. Colonists came if offered the opportunity to get land too, and
they were around the Chesapeake region on farms, while the land barons mostly Catholic
were surrounded by resentful back-country planters, mostly Protestant.
B. Tobacco grew in Maryland; Lord Baltimore permitted freedom of worship, but
Protestants threatened the Catholics & placed restrictions on them. Catholics of Maryland
put their support behind the Act of Toleration passed in 1649 by local representative
assembly. This guaranteed toleration to all Christians, but had death penalty for those
who denied Jesus. Maryland sheltered more Roman Catholics than any English-speaking
colony in the New World.
X. The West Indies: Way Station to Mainland America
A. English also colonized islands of West Indies; mid 17th century, England had claim to
many West Indian islands, including Jamaica in 1655.
B. Sugar (rich mans crop) : Caribbean = Tobacco (poor mans crop) : Chesapeake; Need
for land and labor to clear land and run the mills made sugar cultivation a capital
intensive business. Sugar lords imported more than a quarter of a million in the 5 decades
after 1640. 1700 - black slaves outnumbered white settles 4:1 in English West Indies.
Made codes to control the slave population.
C. Barbados slave code - 1661 denied even the most fundamental rights to slaves and
gave masters virtually complete control over their laborers.
D. West Indies depended on N. A. mainland for foodstuffs when sugar plantation system
crowded out other agriculture. Group of displaced English settlers from Barbados arrived
in Carolina in 1670 with slaves, adopted slave code in 1696.
XI. Colonizing the Carolinas
A. Civil War in England in 1640s; King Charles I dismissed Parliament in 1629, recalled
in 1640 but members were mutinous. They found champion in Puritan soldier Oliver
Cromwell, beheaded Charles in 1649, Charles II restored to throne in 1660.
B. Restoration period - empire building resumed. Carolina, formed in 1670, aristocratic
founders wanted to grow foodstuffs to provision the sugar plantations in Barbados and to
export non english products.
C. Carolina prospered through close economic ties with English West Indies. Established
slave trade in Carolina. Lord Proprietors in London protested against indian slave trading

in their colony, but 10,000 Indians were sent to lifelong labor in West Indies. In 1707,
Savannah Indians ended alliance with Carolinians so they killed many Indians in 1710.
Maryland and Pennsylvania - founded by Quakers under William Penn.
D. Rice - main export crop in Carolina. Rice was grown in Africa, so Carolinians bought
rice cultivation skilled slaves and put them to work in rice plantations.
E. Charles Town - village with colorfully diverse community, had religious tolerance for
French Protestant refugees, Jews, and others. In Florida, Catholic Spaniards did not allow
it. By 1700 Carolina was too strong to be wiped out.
XII. The Emergence of North Carolina
A. Squatters - newcomers who raised their tobacco & other crops on small farms w/out
slaves
B. North Carolinians drifted down from the older colony, they were people who were
poverty stricken outcasts and religious dissenters. North Carolina officially separated
from South Carolina in 1712;
C. Iroquois Confederacy - League of the Iroquois bound together 5 Indian nations, the
Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and the Senecas. Founded in late 1500s, they
vanquished their rivals together. During American Revolution, didnt know what side to
support, most sided with British who failed, so many Iroquois moved to new lands in
British Canada or western New York.
D. Tuscarora War - North Carolinians retaliated against Tuscarora Indians in 1711, and
won. Some sold into slavery others went to Iroquois Confederacy as the 6th nation.
Yamaesee Indians - 4 years later South Carolinians defeated these Indians. All coastal
tribes devastated by 1720 but strong ones still remained in the interior.
XIII. Late-Coming Georgia: The Buffer Colony
A. buffer - territory between two antagonistic powers intended to minimize the possibility
of conflict between them.
B. Georgia founded in 1733, intended to serve as a buffer by English crown. The exposed
colony received monetary subsidies from British government because of this. Wanted to
keep slavery out of Georgia (named after George II of England), one of the founders was
James Oglethorpe, was in prison reform, and repelled Spaniards.Was least populous of
the colonies.
XIV. The Plantation Colonies
A.Southern mainland colonies: Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and
Georgia: devoted to exporting commercial agriculture products + slavery in all colonies +
had scattered plantations and farms + made establishment of churches and schools
difficult + all plantation colonies permitted some religious toleration + expansionary +
confrontation with Native Americans;