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HIST 101 Lecture Guide Part I
“The European Origins of the New World’s Settlement”
The roots of America are in Europe. The 1400s (1492-Columbus) were the dawn of
a new age in Europe. There had been little change for almost 1,000 years after the
fall of the Roman Empire (roughly 476 A.D.), but values were changing from
medieval to modern by the 1300s and 1400s. Europeans could not have discovered
America in the Middle Ages, because they were peasants (serfs) tied to small farms
on manors.
Feudalism ordered the lives of the upper classes (the vassals and soldiers
who protected the manor and its lord). Manorialism ordered the lives of the lower
classes (serfs) bound by a contract to a sharecropping arrangement with the lord of
the manor. Towns arose when lords created a few blocks by the waterfront on the
manor. Towns ordered the lives of middle class artisans. Townsmen (bourgeoisie,
burgers) traded manor goods and crops with merchants on other manors connected
by local rivers. To encourage towns and trade, the lord of the manor freed people
from their 99-year contract if they lived in a town for a year and a day, but they
owed the lord revenue from the court fees and tariffs they levied on traders. The
Catholic Church was the fourth institution that ordered life in medieval Europe.
Bishops owned many manors, and priests taught the laity (serfs) that poverty was a
virtue and thus discouraged any peasantrevolts against the system. The Church also
taught that loaning money out at interest (capitalism) was a sin (usury). So, the
individual free to believe or do as he or she pleased generally did not exist in
medieval Europe.
Why did the Medieval World Decline? There are various reasons. One
involves technology. Technology (inventions) spurred change and widened human
horizons—horseshoes, the printing press, the compass for navigation on the ocean
at night, etc. The wheeled plow and the 3-field system increased crop production
and created a food surplus that could be sold, and this and other commerce
encouraged exploration beyond Europe’s borders. By 1400, there was also great
curiosity about the geography of Africa and India—Prince Henry the Navigator,
Vasco de Gama, Columbus, etc.
The rise of the secular state by the 1400s (having Kings and a central royal
treasury in England, France, and Spain) also encouraged exploration. These royal
treasuries helped finance the expeditions of Sir Walter Raleigh, Jacques Cartier,
Magellan and Balboa. The development of capitalism also encouraged growth
outward, as bankers in Venice and elsewhere defied the Pope and charged interest,
sought gold and silver, financed expeditions and royal navies to get these goods and
loaned money to the king to promote their empires.
The Renaissance (1300-1500) questioned the authority of the church and
pushes the secular nation state. Niccolo Machiavelli’s book, The Prince, was a
manual on how a secular ruler would take power from local bishops and make state
(royal) law superior to canon law. The Renaissance questioned Christian values in
every way. Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci painted nudes and the former even
dissected dead bodies to study muscles and tendons, etc. in direct violation of
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church law. The Renaissance celebrated human beauty and knowledge. Galileo and
Copernicus used scientific human research to question the Bible’s view about
planetary motion and whether the Sun or Earth (as the Bible indicated)was the
center of the universe. In the Renaissance, human research superseded Revelation.
Finally, the Reformation liberated many Christians from papal restraints. In 1517,
Martin Luther, a Catholic priest, broke with the Pope and created the first
“Protestant” denomination, Lutheranism. He taught that salvation was by faith
alone. There was no need for the mass or most (except baptism and communion)
sacraments. Works were not vital to salvation.
“The Founding of Jamestown, Plymouth and Boston, 1607-1630”
In 1606, King James I (who authorized the King James version of the Bible)
chartered the London Company (which could settle land south of a line in today’s
New Jersey) and the Plymouth Company (which could settle land north of the line).
London Company employee settlers established the first permanent colony in what
later became the U.S. In 1620, the Pilgrims (Separating Puritans) and some others
[called by the Puritans “Strangers”] who preferred to leave England for religious
freedom in America) on the Mayflower settled the land near Plymouth Rock in
Massachusetts several miles down the coast from today’s Boston. William Bradford
was elected governor and the colonists cleared land together, and for a short while,
owned the land communally before dividing up into parcels for each settler or
family household. So, democracy and capitalism began almost immediately in
British North America.
In 1630, John Winthrop and the Non-Separating Puritans (who preferred to
stay in Anglican England, but unlike Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan followers, were
afraid to stay and fight a civil war against King Charles I) arrived at Plymouth Rock
with a flotilla of ships carrying 1,500 people (not all of whom were Puritans).
William Bradford told them that there was not enough room for them at Plymouth.
But, Bradford advised the leader, John Winthrop, that there was plenty of room at a
bay several miles up the coast at what became Boston. Winthrop’s group settled
Boston in 1630. This was a corporate colony owned by the Massachusetts Bay
Company (owned by Winthrop and seven other stockholders). These eight men
called themselves the Board of Directors, and the eight elected Winthrop as
governor of Massachusetts Bay. But a year later, there was a near revolt as 100
other settlers (all born-again Puritan “Saints”) demanded the right to vote and hold
office. So, by 1631, there was a measure of democracy in Boston as 102 saints ruled
1500 “others” or “Strangers” (e.g. Anglicans, Catholics, Lutherans, and even some
Jews). So, democracy was limited. Also, there was an “established church” (no
separation of church and state). The Puritan church (today called the
Congregational Church) was the state church in New England, and everyone had to
pay their part of a tax to support that church. In Virginia, the state church was (as it
was in England) the Anglican (today’s Episcopal) Church. Over time, Boston became
a major port, thanks to various triangle trades with Europe, the Caribbean, and
Africa. Towns also developed west of Boston in the interior. Winthrop and the
General Court created all new townships (with the town in the middle and farms
fanning outward) with a size of five miles by five miles. As whole congregations of
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Puritans landed from England to escape the growing tensions between Cromwell’s
army and the King’s, the General Court gave these congregations 25 square-mile
townships to settle upon. In general, new immigrants brought manufactured goods
(jewelry, tools, etc.) from England and sold them to Boston merchants in exchange
for food and other provisions to begin building their house and planting their fields.
In the 1600s and early 1700s, farmers came to Boston from interior towns and sold
their harvest to merchants (or face-to-face to townsmen in a public market), and
with those profits they bought manufactured goods from the merchants who had
purchased them from the immigrants.
The Puritans were Calvinists who followed John Calvin’s teachings about
Predestination. In Massachusetts Bay, politics and religion merged. Only the Puritan
“Saints” could vote and hold office, and so as Winthrop’s generation began to die off,
there was anxiety about why their children were not having the born-again
conversion experience from the Holy Ghost. Ultimately, the General Court approved
the Half Way Covenant, which allowed the children of “Saints” to be baptized, but
could not take communion or vote until they had the conversion experience. It was
an effort to maintain Puritan control of Massachusetts Bay, but by the 1670s their
grip was loosening.
Their grip was loosening because Anglican and other merchants were
making fortunes in the prosperous trade with Europe, Africa and the Caribbean.
New England farmers sold corn, wheat, and meat to Boston merchants who sold it to
slave colonies in the Caribbean to feed their slaves. Boston merchants traded this
food for molasses, which could be refined into rum. The merchants then traded the
rum to African tribes who paid with slaves taken forcibly from interior tribes. The
Boston merchants then sold the slaves to their planter customers in the Caribbean.
Prosperous business ultimately threatened Puritan control.
Secularization and materialism thus threatened the conservative religious
rule of the Puritans who also frowned (like the Pope) on usury, the practice of
loaning money at interest to others. But this was necessary for banks to flourish and
assist merchants with loans to build more ships and hire more crews.
Threats to Puritan control also came from within. Connecticut-The Reverend
Thomas Hooker and more liberal Puritans (and others) got permission from
Winthrop to settle south of Boston in the Connecticut River Valley near today’s
Hartford. Connecticut became a royal colony in 1662. In 1638, they drew up the
Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which made Connecticut more liberal than
Massachusetts Bay in that all (not just Puritan) male landowners over 21 years of
age could vote and hold office. Puritans even stricter than those in Boston also got
permission to head south, and they founded in New Haven.
But two rebel Puritans, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, at first refused
to leave Boston, although Winthrop eventually forced them out—and they settled
what later became (in 1663) Rhode Island. Roger Williams believed that all land
belonged to the Indians, not the King, and that the Puritans should buy all their land
from the tribes. He also thought that all Christians should be allowed to attend their
own churches, that non-Saints should be allowed to vote and hold office, and that
there should be no state church. Anne Hutchinson believed in the Inner Light—that
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if the Holy Spirit directed everyone’s conscience, then who needed Winthrop and
the General Court.
The Puritans engaged in race war with (and even scalped) the Pequod (or
Pequot) Indians. In 1643, the Connecticut and Massachusetts colonies formed a
defense alliance—the Confederation of New England-which was the first instance of
inter-colonial cooperation in American history. In the 1675-78 King Philip’s War (in
which 20 white towns were destroyed), this inter-colonial alliance (with the help of
friendly Indians) defeated Philip’s forces.
New England town voters annually elected a board of selectmen to run the
town’s government. The General Court gave towns great autonomy, but required all
towns with 50 householders to hire a teacher and all towns with 100 householders
to build a Latin grammar school or else pay a fine. The Puritans stressed education
and especially the ability to read the Bible. Nevertheless, there was much flaunting
of the rules after 1675, as the Winthrop generation began to die off and the Anglican
and Presbyterian merchants took control of the government. The Puritans’ last
hurrah occurred during the Salem witchcraft trials in 1690-91 when 19 “witches”
were hanged, an event that soon discredited the Puritans permanently.
Note: The lecture outline for “The Reformation: Puritanism in Massachusetts
Bay” lecture is embedded above in the discussion of New England.
“Chesapeake and the South: Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas”
Massachusetts Bay was a planned society guided by a collective interest to
worship God, but the Chesapeake colonies were established more for profit and
individual self interest. Virginia has already been covered. But, in the lands north of
Virginia, George Calvert (Lord Baltimore in the House of Lords) was a Catholic
convert who wanted to establish a haven for British Catholics. The king owed
Calvert money, so he paid him off in land in 1632. Calvert called the colony
Maryland and took a very medieval approach to governing it. Calvert considered
himself to be lord of the manor and gave out 50-acre headrights of land to his
“vassals” for each settler they brought and collected quitrents. He made all the laws;
there was no immediate representative assembly and the Catholic Church was the
colony’s established church. Unfortunately for Calvert, mostly Protestant came to
Maryland, and they wanted more freedom and a representative assembly. In 1635,
they forced Calvert to create a representative assembly, and in 1648 he appointed a
Protestant governor and allowed religious toleration. By the 1670s, he lost control.
But, even today, a lot of the hops etc. for Calvert-brand whiskey are still grown in
Maryland.
To be sure, there were other tensions in the Chesapeake colonies, especially
between the older settlements in the east and newer ones in the west. Take the case
of Virginia. Bacon’s Rebellion occurred in 1676 when Nathaniel Bacon led a small
army of western farmers against the House of Burgesses and briefly took over.
Farmers in the western counties were angry at the East for taxing them heavily and
giving them no services, roads, or help against the Indians.
Carolina chartered in 1663 by eight proprietors from the king as repayment
for a loan they had made to the crown. All eight owned big estates. They sold the
rest of Carolina to farmers and rich capitalists and collected quitrents. 40 square
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miles equaled one county There was no established church! Also, the proprietors
gave out noble titles and created a Parliament. Nobles got 2-5 votes depending on
how much land they owned. Carolina of the North was swampy and the inhabitants
got the name “tarheels.” The colonists there were poor and often did not pay their
quitrents. In contrast, Carolina of the South was fertile and grew cotton, rice, and
tobacco; it also contained the prosperous port city of Charleston. Carolina of the
North and Carolina of the South became separate colonies in 1729.
The southern colonies in British North America had slaves and some
indentured servants, and the Chesapeake and northern colonies had indentured
servants who worked 4-5 years in return for their food, shelter and Atlantic passage.
However, some ran away to the western interior. Until 1660, most slaves were
treated like indentured servants and freed after 5-7 years.
“New York and the Quaker Colonies: Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania”
New York- In 1609, Henry Hudson claimed New Netherland (comprising
much of today’s New York State) for the Dutch. The Dutch conducted much trade
and shipbuilding at New Amsterdam (today the lower part of Manhattan). Fur came
down the Hudson River to New Amsterdam for shipment elsewhere. Peter Minuit
bought Manhattan Island from the Indians in 1625. The British took the city during
the Second Anglo Dutch War in 1664. King Charles II then gave it to his brother
James, the Duke of York and the future King James II (1685-88). James never came
to America to see his colony. While there were no town meetings (as in New
England), James did create a representative assembly. There was no established
church either; each town supported every church within its borders with tax
revenues. James also confirmed the Dutch patroonships, and gave others out to his
friends. So, most of New York was composed of big estates with little land given to
small farmers. As a result, the lower class farmers were mostly tenants on the land.
Manhattan was very commercial. The merchant Knickerbockers and the De Lancey
Family controlled the assembly for James and the royal governor until Jacob
Leisler’s Rebellion in 1688 ousted them. When William and Mary took over England
after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, they ousted Leisler.
The Quaker Colonies of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware were
developed by William Penn. Quakerism emerged in Europe during the 1640s. Penn’s
father had loaned money to the crown and was repaid in Pennsylvania land. His son
William, who had converted earlier to Quakerism, received the land as an
inheritance. He laid out Philadelphia as a planned city in 1681 before anyone
arrived. Penn hoped to sell land and collect quitrents. He advertised for settlers in
Europe, and many Germans came. He had no established religion and extended
religious toleration to everyone. He even bought the land from the Indian after his
father got it from the crown. As a result, there were no Indian wars in Pennsylvania
during his lifetime. The Quakers ruled Pennsylvania until the Delaware Indian Wars
of the 1740s when, as pacifists, they refused to fund the warfare and resigned en
masse from the colonial assembly. The Quakers used the monthly meeting (no
churches) to maintain business standards, pay taxes, investigate bankruptcies and
apprentice orphans, etc. They believed in equality and, unlike the Puritans, did not
engage in the slave trade. Pennsylvania shipped lumber, pork, corn, and iron to
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Europe and had a more profitable trade than Boston. New Jersey and Delaware were
also colonies owned by Penn, although he gave both freedom relatively early in their
history.
Georgia was the last of the thirteen colonies to be established. James
Oglethorpe and a group of reformers convinced the King to create a penal colony in
1732 for debtors to act as a buffer zone between South Carolina and Spanish
Florida. Few debtors came; mostly artisans and farmers arrived. A board of trustees
ran Georgia for 21 years before it became a royal colony in 1753. All thirteen
colonies became royal colonies before the American Revolution. Just to review the
founding dates from the lecture (Note: you don’t have to remember all of the dates):
New Hampshire (1679), Massachusetts Bay (1620 and 1630), Connecticut (1662),
Rhode Island (1663), New York (1664); West Jersey (1674) and East Jersey (1680)
became New Jersey in 1702, Pennsylvania (1681), Delaware (1682), Maryland
(1632), Virginia (1607), Carolina (1663) NC and SC separated in 1729, and Georgia
(1732).
“The Emergence of America’s First Cities”-The five major colonial cities were
New York (1625), Boston (1630), Newport, R.I. (1634), Charleston (1672), and
Philadelphia (1681). All five cities had mixed land use and eventually a grid system
of blocks and lots to easily compute from and square footage to promote the quick
resale of land. These early cities lacked home rule, charged tolls to pay for roads and
bridges, assessed fines, and filled building lots with garbage. They also had to
provide police, fire, education, medical care and other services. See the lecture for
details.
“Origins of the American Revolution”—Mercantilism was the prevailing economic
philosophy of the 16th-18th Centuries. It argued that colonies existed for the benefit
of the mother country; colonies were a source of cheap labor, and raw materials and
served as a captive market for surplus goods. Oliver Cromwell signed the first
navigation act in the 1650s, but the big ones were:
1660-Only ships built in Britain or the colonies could enter colonial ports. 3/4ths of
the crew must be born in the British Empire. Enumerated goods (like the southern
colonies staple crops)-think of CHRIST----Cotton, Hemp, Rice, Indigo, Sugar and
Tobacco could only be exported from the colonies to another port within the
Empire. For other items like French wine, the captain would have to stop in London
and pay a tax to the king before proceeding on to an American port. Colonial
merchants selling products to France or Spain would pay the navigation tax to a
British customs agent on the dock before the ship departed for France or Spain. The
tax raised the price of all American imports and exports and cut profit margins.
1673- A new law increased the number of customs agents, especially in American
ports.
1696- The last navigation act transferred all smuggling cases to British Vice
Admiralty courts rather than colonial courts where a sympathetic jury of peers
might find the smuggling merchant not guilty.
King James II established the Dominion of New England in 1685 when he
combined New York and all of the New England colonies into one colony with royal
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Governor Edmund Andros. Andros angered colonists by levying new taxes not
passed by colonial assemblies, enforcing the Navigation Acts, and challenging town
land grants. Colonists ousted him in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when in
England Anglicans and Puritans deposed King James and their counterparts in
America deposed Andros. Coode’s Rebellion (1689) in Maryland also ended Lord
Baltimore’s rule.
Labor-Factory work began in the early 1700s with the putting-out system in
which, for example, merchants would give fabric to 10 or so housewives who would
knit 1-15 sweaters. The merchant paid them (the wives worked at home not yet in a
factory) when they came by to collect the sweaters. But once James Watt perfected
the steam engine by the early 1770s, factory buildings were erected where all stages
of the production process (with salaried workers and farmers’ unmarried daughters
[the so-called Lowell girls] and later immigrants) were conducted. There were royal
efforts to restrict inter-colonial trade, especially after it greatly expanded in the
1690s. The Woolens Act (1699) provided that wool goods made in one colony could
not be sold in another. The Hat Act of 1732 authorized the same restriction for hats
and the Iron Act (1750) did it for iron goods like tools. These acts, like the
Navigation Acts and the Proclamation of 1763, helped to smother American
expansion and were thus resented by the colonists.
“Origins of the American Revolution”--The First Great Awakening occurred in the
1730s and 1740s and coincided with the rise of a new Protestant denomination,
Methodism. John and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards
preached emotional (rather than the more traditional intellectual sermons).
Residents in western frontier areas (where literacy rates were low) tended to like
these sermons. These Christians who enjoyed the fire and brimstone sermons were
known as the New Lights. Those who preferred the traditional intellectual sermons
were called the Old Lights. The point is that religious groups became divided in the
1750s, and were thus less influential and less able to discourage the American
Revolution by 1776.
People read more after 1700, thanks to newspapers, almanacs, universities,
and better postal service. These factors teamed with the decline of established
religion, abuses and corruption by customs agents, and enforcement of the
Navigation Acts to help spawn the American Revolution. The defeat of New France
was also a factor promoting the American Revolution. The Catholic and Indian
threat to the west had made it impossible for the Americans to attack the Redcoats.
But in 1763 Britain won the so-called French and Indian War. Canada (including
Quebec) now became part of the British Empire. With the French military threat
now gone, the Americans had a free hand to fight the Redcoats.
Immediate Causes of the Revolution-To pay for the French and Indian War,
George III began enforcing the Navigation Acts in 1763. The Proclamation of 1763
ended the threat of war with the Iroquois and other tribes by prohibiting the
Americans from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. The Sugar Act, Stamp
Act and other events leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence
are all covered in the lecture notes.
Break for 1st exam
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