US: A Narrative
History Volume 1
Chapter 3 - Colonization and Conflict in the South (1600-1750)
Chapter Overview
Just as the
English established a set of goals and strategies for their first outpost on
Chesapeake Bay, so too did the native Indians of that region pursue their own
aims and interests. The werowance (or chief) Powhatan had recently consolidated
the region's Indians into a powerful confederacy. Powhatan used the new English
newcomers to advance his own longstanding objectives. Although he considered
the new colonists a nuisance, Powhatan welcomed trade goods and English weapons
as a means to consolidate his political authority and to fend off challenges
from the Piedmont tribes.
English Society on the Chesapeake
After
Powhatan's death, the English presence proved more threatening to than
supportive of his confederacy's control over the Chesapeake. As the tobacco
crop began to boom, the Virginia Company transported an increasing number of
white settlers into Virginia; some were free men and women, but the vast
majority were indentured servants, who signed labor contracts that committed
their work and its products to a master for a certain number of years. The
spread of English plantations built by this growing population encroached on
tribal lands. Mounting tensions finally exploded in 1622 into full-scale armed
conflicts between whites and Indians, resulting in appalling casualties on both
sides, as well as a determination, on the part of the English, to destroy the
"savage" Indians.
Another casualty
of these hostilities was the Virginia Company itself, the joint-stock company
that had overseen the early settlement of the colony. The King dissolved the
company after an investigation revealed that mortality rates from disease and
the abuse of servants far exceeded the casualties of the Indian war. Virginia
then became a royal colony.
As the price
of tobacco leveled off, a more coherent social and political order took shape
in Virginia. Even so, tensions remained high, fueled by resentment at the settlement
of Maryland, a proprietary colony ruled by the Calvert family. Maryland's
tobacco economy competed with Virginia's, and led to the outbreak of another
Indian war in 1644. Meanwhile, England did little to ease friction or direct
development in the region because it became distracted by domestic political
upheavals that culminated in its Civil War.
With the
restoration of the monarchy in 1660, however, Charles II launched a more
consistent and watchful colonial policy. That year Parliament passed the first
in a series of Navigation Acts designed to regulate colonial trade in ways that
benefited England.
Chesapeake Society in Crisis
The
Navigation Acts only made worse the forces that were already propelling
Chesapeake society toward a crisis. Local elites were divided and jealous,
while freed servants and small planters found diminishing opportunities for
themselves. Religious hatred and a renewal of hostilities with the Indians
raised tensions further. Two civil wars resulted—Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia
and Coode's Rebellion in Maryland.
What finally
eased the divisions within white society in the Chesapeake was the conversion
from servitude to slavery as the region's dominant labor system. As the
Atlantic slave trade grew and helped to make slavery more cost effective, the
growing presence (and implicit threat) of African Americans drove together
whites of all classes and religions, and a racist consensus emerged. Their
profits now secured by the exploitation of black rather than white labor, a new
Chesapeake "gentry" encouraged the development of a prosperous and
deferential small planter class.
From the Caribbean to the Carolinas
As the
tobacco economy evolved in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake, a booming sugar
economy also transformed the Caribbean into a slave-based plantation society.
Land scarcity on the English island of Barbados fostered the settlement of
South Carolina, another proprietary colony.
More
prosperous than either North Carolina (its poor neighbor) or Virginia, South
Carolina still remained vulnerable to attack from the neighboring French and
Spanish. As with other proprietary colonies, South Carolina became divided by
chronic political factions. The colony's social instability, which resulted
from ethnic and religious diversity, high mortality rates, and strained
relations with local Indian tribes, compounded these political squabbles.
Worsening Indian relations resulted in the devastating Yamasee War in 1715,
which brought the colony to the brink of dissolution and ended proprietary
rule.
Reconstituted
as a royal colony after 1729, South Carolina recovered its former prosperity by
exporting rice and later indigo. Greater social and political harmony ensued
mainly because whites recognized the need to unify against the threat posed by
the slaves who supplied the skilled labor on plantations and who by this time
constituted a majority of the inhabitants within the colony. At the same time,
the founding of Georgia, a colony that developed a comparable economy and
social structure, provided a buffer between South Carolinians and Spanish
Florida.
The Spanish Borderlands
As the
English colonies in southern North America took shape, the Spanish extended
their empire into the American Southwest, scattering military garrisons and
cattle ranches throughout the region. To incorporate the Indians into colonial
society as docile servants and pious farmers and artisans, the Spanish relied
on missions staffed by Dominican and Franciscan priests.
Despite the
weakening of their populations by European diseases, the Indians still managed
to defy Spanish cultural imperialism through a series of uprisings, the most
successful of which was the Great Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in New Mexico. Like the
English in the Chesapeake and the Carolinas, the Spanish in the Southwest
encountered sustained resistance to their expansionism from Indian cultures. As
a result, the hopes of empire or independence held by red, white, and black
inhabitants suffered continual cruel defeats during the seventeenth century.
Chapter Summary
·
During
the seventeenth century, Spain and England moved to colonize critical regions
of southern North America.
·
Native
peoples everywhere in the American South resisted colonization, despite losses
from warfare, disease, and enslavement.
·
Spanish
colonies in New Mexico and Florida grew slowly and faced a variety of threats.
By the late seventeenth century Spanish New Mexico had been lost to the Pueblo
Revolt, and Florida’s delicate mission system was under siege from English
Carolina and its Indian allies.
·
Thriving
monocultures were established in all of England’s southern colonies—tobacco in
the Chesapeake, rice in the Carolinas, and sugar in the Caribbean.
·
Despite
a period of intense enslavement of native peoples, African slavery emerged as
the dominant labor system throughout these regions.
·
Instability
and conflict characterized both Spanish and English colonies in the South for
most of the first century of their existence.
Counterpoint:
Beyond the Black Legend
For many
centuries, the Black Legend shaped the accounts of Spanish colonization written
by most English and American chroniclers. This conviction was that Spaniards
were uniquely deplorable colonizers—greedy and corrupt, cruel and treacherous,
fanatical and tyrannical—an opinion that had first taken hold during the
sixteenth century in an England envious of imperial Spain's new power and
wealth. But late in the nineteenth century, American historians rejected this
interpretation—indeed, they embraced its opposite—a strongly pro-Spanish view
of the New World's Hispanic past that celebrated the valor of explorers, the
dedication of missionaries, the achievements of government officials. That
challenge to the Black Legend performed the invaluable service of reminding
people in the United States that besides the familiar cast of colonizers among
the English, French, and Dutch, the Spanish had also made crucial contributions
to their heritage. But it was also a perspective that romanticized Spanish
colonialism, all to readily overlooking the toll taken on Native Americans by
colonization.
This emphasis
on Spain's "frontiering genius" dominated histories of the American
Southwest until the 1960s. But thereafter, a new generation of scholars, many
of them Chicanos, pointed out that most inhabitants of the Spanish Southwest
were "mestizos" or Mexicans of mixed Indian and Spanish ancestry.
These
historians sought to recover the story of colonization as it was experienced by
native peoples as well as Spaniards and to recognize that whatever
"triumphs" Spain achieved often came at a terrible cost to the
Indians. Telling that more complicated story of how cultures cooperated and
contended with one another on the borderlands of Spain's empire does not mean
reviving the Black Legend. But it is a call for recounting the history of the
early Southwest fully, from both sides, an effort that will yield a richer
understanding of what was gained and what was lost on this historic American
frontier.
KEY
TERMS, PEOPLE, PLACES, CONCEPTS
Powhatan:
The Powhatan (also spelled Powatan and Powhaten) is a Native American
confederation of tribes in Virginia. It may also refer to the leader of those
tribes, commonly referred to as Chief Powhatan. It is estimated that there were
about 14,000–21,000 Powhatan people in eastern Virginia when the English
settled Jamestown in 1607. They were also known as Virginia Algonquians, as
they spoke an eastern-Algonquian language known as Powhatan or Virginia
Algonquian. In the late 16th and early
17th centuries, a paramount chief (mamanatowick)
named Chief Powhatan (Wahunsunacawh ), created a powerful organization by
affiliating 30 tributary peoples, whose territory was much of eastern Virginia,
called Tsenacommacah ("densely inhabited Land"), Wahunsunacawh came
to be known by the English as "Chief Powhatan". Each of the tribes
within this organization had its own weroance (chief), but all paid tribute to
Chief Powhatan. Pages
39-41
Monoculture:
Monoculture refers to growth of a single crop to the virtual exclusion
of all others, either on a farm or more generally within a region. Page 41
Pocahontas:
Pocahontas (c. 1595 – March 1617) was a Virginia Indian notable for her
association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. Pocahontas was
the daughter of Powhatan, the paramount chief of a network of tributary tribal
nations in the Tsenacommacah, encompassing the Tidewater region of Virginia. In
a well-known historical anecdote, she is said to have saved the life of an
Indian captive, Englishman John Smith, in 1607 by placing her head upon his own
when her father raised his war club to execute him. Pocahontas was captured by
the English during Anglo-Indian hostilities in 1613, and held for ransom.
During her captivity, she converted to Christianity and took the name Rebecca.
When the opportunity arose for her to return to her people, she chose to remain
with the English. In April 1614, she married tobacco planter John Rolfe, and in
January 1615, bore him a son, Thomas Rolfe. Pocahontas's marriage to Rolfe was
the first recorded interracial marriage in North American history.
In 1616, the Rolfe’s traveled to London. Pocahontas was presented to
English society as an example of the civilized "savage" in hopes of
stimulating investment in the Jamestown settlement. She became something of a celebrity,
was elegantly fêted, and attended a masque at Whitehall Palace. In 1617, the
Rolfe’s set sail for Virginia, but Pocahontas died at Gravesend of unknown
causes. She was buried in a church in Gravesend, but the exact location of her
grave is unknown.
John Rolfe:
John Rolfe (1585–1622) was one of the early English settlers of North
America. He is credited with the first successful cultivation of tobacco as an
export crop in the Colony of Virginia and is known as the husband of
Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Confederacy. Page 41
Juan de Oñate:
Don Juan de Oñate y Salazar (1550–1626) was a Spanish Conquistador,
explorer, and colonial governor of the Santa Fe de Nuevo México province in the
Viceroyalty of New Spain. He led early Spanish expeditions to the Great Plains
and Lower Colorado River Valley, encountering numerous indigenous tribes in
their homelands there. Oñate founded settlements within the province and in the
present day American Southwest. By the 1590s Coronado’s dismal expedition a
half-century earlier had been all but forgotten. Again, rumors spread in Mexico
about great riches in the North. New Spain’s viceroy began casting about for a
leader to establish a “new” Mexico as magnificent and profitable as its namesake.
He chose Juan de Oñate, son of one of New Spain’s richest miners and husband to
Isabel de Tolosa Cortés Moctezuma, granddaughter of Hernán Cortés and
great-granddaughter of Moctezuma.
Ignorant of northern geography and overestimating New Mexico’s riches,
Oñate proposed to sail ships up the Pacific to Pueblo country, so that twice a
year he could resupply his would-be colony and export its expected treasures.
The magnitude of his misconceptions came into focus in 1598, when he led 500
colonists, soldiers, and slaves to the Upper Rio Grande. Oñate found modest
villages, no ocean, and no significant mineral wealth. Even so, he had come with
women and children, with livestock and tools, with artisans and tradesmen, with
seeds and books and bibles. He had come to stay. Eager to avoid the violence of
earlier encounters, Tewa-speaking Pueblos evacuated a village for the newcomers
to use. Many native leaders pledged Oñate their allegiance, Pueblo artisans labored
on irrigation systems and other public works for the Spaniards, and Indian
women (traditionally the builders in Pueblo society) constructed the region’s first
Catholic Church. Pages 41-42
Juan de Zaldívar:
Oñate’s oldest nephew, Juan de
Zaldívar, was bolder and cruder than most. At Acoma Pueblo, known
Today as “Sky City” because
of its position high atop a majestic mesa, he brazenly seized several sacred
turkeys to kill and eat, answering Indian protests with insults. Outraged, Acoma’s
men fell upon Zaldívar, killing him and several companions. Fueled by grief and
rage, Zaldivar’s younger brother Vicente laid siege to Acoma Pueblo, killed
perhaps 800 of its residents, and made slaves of several hundred more. The savagery
of the Acoma siege and similar repressive measures educated all of the region’s
native communities about the risks of resistance. Page
42
Acoma Pueblo:
Acoma Pueblo, is a
Native American pueblo built on
top of a
367-foot (112 m)
sandstone mesa in the
U.S. State of New Mexico. Settled around
1100, it is
one of the
oldest continuously
inhabited communities in the
United States. Page 42
Celibate:
Celibate means abstaining from sexual intercourse; also unmarried. Page 42
Jacques le Moyne de Morgues:
Jacques le Moyne de Morgues (c. 1533-1588) was a
French artist and
member of Jean Ribault's expedition
to the New
World. His depictions of
Native American, colonial
life and plants are of extraordinary
historical importance. Until well into the 20th century, knowledge of
Jacques Le Moyne
de Morgues was extremely
limited, and largely
confined to the footnotes
of inaccessible ethnographic bibliographies, where
he figures as the writer and
illustrator of a
short history of Laudonniere's attempt in 1564-5 to
establish a Huguenot settlement in Florida. Page 42
Mestizos:
Mestizos were persons of mixed Spanish-Indian heritage. Page 43
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés:
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (15 February 1519–17 September 1574) was a
Spanish admiral and explorer from the region of Asturias, Spain, remembered for
planning the first regular trans-oceanic convoys and for founding St. Augustine,
Florida in 1565. This was the first successful Spanish settlement in La Florida
and the most significant city in the region for nearly three hundred years. St.
Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement
in the continental United States. Menéndez subsequently became the first
governor of Florida. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés did much to secure the peninsula
in the 1560s when he destroyed France’s Fort Caroline and established several
posts on the coast. By 1600, however, Menéndez was dead and only St. Augustine
endured, with a population of perhaps 500. Spanish Florida needed something
more to survive. Page 43
Great Pueblo Revolt:
The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 — also known as Pope's Rebellion — was an
uprising of most of the Pueblo Indians against the Spanish colonizers in the
province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, present day New Mexico. The Pueblo killed
400 Spanish and drove the remaining 2,000 settlers out of the province. Twelve
years later the Spanish returned and were able to reoccupy New Mexico with
little opposition.
Pages
43-44
Mercantilism:
Mercantilism is the
economic doctrine that government control
of foreign trade
is of paramount importance for ensuring the prosperity and military security
of the state. In particular, it demands a positive balance of trade. Mercantilism dominated Western European
economic policy and discourse from the 16th to late-18th centuries. Page 44
Jamestown:
Jamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia, the first permanent
English settlement in the Americas.
Established by the Virginia
Company of London
as 'James Fort' on May 14,
1607 (O.S., May
24, 1607 N.S)., it
followed several earlier
failed attempts, including the
Lost Colony of Roanoke. Jamestown served as the capital of the colony
for 83 years (from 1616 until 1699).
Pages
40, 44-45, 48
Joint Stock Company
Joint Stock Company is a business in which capital is held in
transferable shares of stock by joint owners. The joint stock company was an
innovation that allowed investors to share and spread the risks of overseas
investment. Page
44
Virginia Company:
The Virginia Company refers collectively to a pair of
English joint stock
companies chartered by James
I on 10
April 1606 with the
purposes of establishing
settlements on the coast
of North America.
The two companies, called
the 'Virginia Company
of London' and the
'Virginia Company of Plymouth' operated with identical charters
but with differing territories.
An area of overlapping territory was created within which the two
companies were not permitted to establish colonies within one hundred miles of
each other. The Plymouth Company never
fulfilled its charter,
and its territory
that later became New
England was at
that time also claimed by England. Page 44
Indentures:
Indentures are a contract signed between two parties, binding one to
serve the other for a specified period of time. Page 45
Indentured servants:
Indentured servants accounted for three-quarters of all immigrants to
Virginia. For most, the crossing was simply the last of many moves made in the
hope of finding work. Although England’s population had been rising since the
middle of the fifteenth century, the demand for farm laborers was falling
because many landowners were converting croplands into pastures for sheep. The
search for work pushed young men and women out of their villages, sending them
through the countryside and then into the cities. Down and out in London,
Bristol, or Liverpool, some decided to make their next move across the Atlantic
and signed indentures. Pamphlets promoting immigration promised land and quick
riches once servants had finished their terms of four to seven years. Page 45
Starving Time:
Many of Jamestown’s colonists had little taste for labor. The gentlemen
of the expedition expected to lead rather than to work, while most of the other
early settlers were gentlemen’s servants and craftworkers who knew nothing
about growing crops. Many colonists suffered from malnutrition, which heightened
their susceptibility to disease. Only 60 of Jamestown’s 500 inhabitants lived through
the winter of 1609–1610, known as the “starving time.” Desperate colonists
unearthed and ate corpses; one settler even butchered his wife. Others imitated
their predecessors on Roanoke, bullying Indians for food. Martial law failed to
turn the situation around, and skirmishes with native peoples became more
brutal and frequent as rows of tobacco plants steadily invaded tribal lands. Page 45
Opechancanough:
Opechancanough or Opchanacanough (1554-1646) was a tribal chief of the
Powhatan Confederacy of what is now Virginia in the United States, and its
leader from sometime after 1618 until his death in 1646. His name meant
"He whose Soul is White" in the Algonquian Powhatan language. He was
the famous Chief Powhatan's younger brother (or possibly half-brother). After
Powhatan’s death in 1617, leadership of the confederacy passed to
Opechancanough, who watched, year after year, as the tobacco mania grew. In
March 1622 he coordinated a sweeping attack on white settlements that killed
about a quarter of Virginia’s colonial population. English retaliation over the
next decade cut down an entire generation of young Indian men, drove the
remaining Powhatans to the west, and won the colonists hundreds of thousands
more acres for tobacco. Page 46
English Navigation Acts:
The English Navigation Acts were a series of laws that restricted the
use of foreign shipping for trade between England (after 1707 Great Britain)
and its colonies, a process which had started in 1651. Their
goal was to
force colonial development into
lines favorable to England,
and stop direct
colonial trade with the
Netherlands, France and
other European countries. The
original ordinance of 1651 was renewed
at the Restoration
by Acts of
1660 and 1663, and
subsequently subject to
minor amendment. These Acts also
formed the basis for British overseas trade for nearly 200 years. Page 47
Republic:
A republic is
a form of
government in which the country is considered a 'public
matter', not the private concern
or property of
the rulers, and where
offices of states
are subsequently directly or
indirectly elected or
appointed rather than inherited.
In modern times,
a common simplified definition of a republic is a government where
the head of
state is not a
monarch. Both modern and ancient republics vary widely in their ideology and
composition. Page 47
Oliver Cromwell:
Oliver Cromwell was
an English military
and political leader who
overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned
England into a republican Commonwealth,
and ruled as Lord
Protector of England,
Scotland and Ireland. Cromwell
was one of the
commanders of the New Model Army which defeated the
royalists in the
English Civil War. After the
execution of King Charles I in 1649,
Cromwell dominated the
short-lived Commonwealth of England,
conquered Ireland and Scotland,
and ruled as
Lord Protector from 1653 until his death in 1658. Page 47
Lord Baltimore\Calvert Family:
George Calvert, First Baron Baltimore, Eighth Proprietary Governor of
Newfoundland (1579 – 15 April 1632) was an English politician and colonizer. He
achieved domestic political success as a Member of Parliament and later
Secretary of State under King James I. He lost much of his political power
after his support for a failed marriage alliance between Prince Charles and the
Spanish House of Habsburg royal family. Rather than continue in politics, he
resigned all of his political offices in 1625 except for his position on the
Privy Council and declared his Catholicism publicly. He was granted the title
of First Baron Baltimore in the Irish peerage upon his resignation. Baltimore
Manor was located in County Longford, Ireland.
Calvert took an interest in the colonization of the New World, at first
for commercial reasons and later to create a refuge for English Catholics. He
became the proprietor of Avalon, the first sustained English settlement on the
southeastern peninsula on the island of Newfoundland (off the eastern coast of
modern Canada). Discouraged by its cold and sometimes inhospitable climate and
the sufferings of the settlers, Sir George looked for a more suitable spot
further south and sought a new royal charter to settle the region, which would
become the state of Maryland. Calvert died five weeks before the new Charter
was sealed, leaving the settlement of the Maryland colony to his son Cecilius,
(1605-1675). His second son Leonard Calvert, (1606-1647), was the first
colonial governor of the Province of Maryland. Historians have long recognized
George Calvert as the founder of Maryland, in spirit if not in fact, along with
the role of Leonard with his intimate relationship with his older brother back
in England, plus being on the site as the Colony was first settled as extremely
advantageous.
Maryland was founded in 1632 by a single aristocratic family, the
Calvert’s. They held absolute authority to dispose of 10 million acres of land,
administer justice, and establish a civil government. All these powers they
exercised, granting estates, or “manors,” to their friends and dividing other
holdings into smaller farms for ordinary immigrants. From all these
“tenants”—that is, every settler in the colony—the family collected “quitrents”
every year, fees for use of the land. The Calvert’s appointed a governor and a
council to oversee their own interests while allowing the largest landowners to dispense local justice in manorial
courts and make laws for the entire colony in a representative assembly. Page 47
Bacon's Rebellion:
Bacon's Rebellion was an
uprising in 1676
in the Virginia Colony
in North America, led by
29-year-old planter Nathaniel Bacon. About
a thousand Virginians
rose because they resented
Virginia Governor William Berkeley's friendly
policies towards the Native Americans. When Berkeley refused
to retaliate for a
series of Indian
attacks on frontier settlements,
others took matters
into their own hands,
attacking Indians, chasing Berkeley from
Jamestown, Virginia, and torching the capitol. Page 48
Nathaniel Bacon:
Nathaniel Bacon was a wealthy colonist of the Virginia Colony, famous
as the instigator of Bacon's Rebellion of 1676, which collapsed when Bacon
himself died from dysentery. When he arrived in Virginia, Bacon settled on
the frontier near
Jamestown, Virginia, and was
appointed to the
council of Governor William Berkeley. Some sources have
claimed that Berkeley's wife, Francis Culpeper was a cousin of Nathaniel Bacon.
Before the 'Virginia Rebellion,' as it was then called, began
in earnest, in
1674, a group
of so-called 'freeholders' on the
Virginia frontier demanded
that Native Americans
living on treaty-protected lands
be driven out or killed. Page 48
Sir William Berkeley:
Sir William Berkeley was a colonial governor of Virginia,
and one of
the Lords Proprietors of the
Colony of Carolina;
he was appointed to
these posts by King
Charles I of England, of whom he was a favorite. The
Berkeley lineage was thought to descend from Norse corsairs that scourged the
British Isles during the Viking Age. Berkeley was born in 1605 to Sir Maurice
and Elizabeth Killigrew Berkeley,
both of whom held
stock in the
Virginia Company of London.
Referred to as
'Will' by his
family and friends, was
born in the
winter of 1605 into
landed gentry. His father died when he was twelve and, though
indebted, left Berkeley land in Somerset.
Young Berkeley showed signs of a quick wit and broad learning. His
informal education consisted of
observing his elders;
from them he learned
'the moves that
governed the larger English
society and his privileged place in
it.' Also, as
part of the
English country gentry, he
was aware of
agricultural practices, knowledge which
would influence his actions as
governor of Virginia. Pages 48, 54
John Coode:
John Coode (c. 1648, Cornwall – February or March 1709) is best known
for leading a rebellion that overthrew Maryland's colonial government in 1689.
He participated in four separate uprisings and briefly served as Maryland's
governor (1689–1691) as the 1st Leader of the Protestant Associators.
Compounding the tensions were religious differences: the Calvert’s and their
friends were Catholic, but other colonists, including Maryland’s most
successful planters, were Protestant. The unrest peaked in July 1689. A former
member of the assembly, John Coode, gathered an army, captured the proprietary
governor, and then took grievances to authorities in England. There Coode received
a sympathetic hearing. The Calvert’s charter was revoked and not restored until
1715, by which time the family had become Protestant.
Page 49
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African
Slavery:
Like the tobacco plants that spread
across Powhatan’s land, a labor system based on African slavery was an on-the-ground innovation. Both early
promoters and planters preferred paying for English servants to importing
alien African slaves. Black slaves, because they served for life, were more
expensive than white workers, who served only for several years. Because
neither white nor black immigrants lived long, cheaper servant labor was the
logical choice. The black population of the Chesapeake remained small for
most of the seventeenth century, constituting just 5 percent of all
inhabitants in 1675. Africans had arrived in Virginia by 1619, most likely via
the Dutch, who dominated the slave trade until the middle of the eighteenth
century. The lives of those newcomers resembled the lot of white servants, with
whom they shared harsh work routines and living conditions. White and black bound
laborers socialized with one another and formed sexual liaisons. They conspired
to steal from their masters and ran away together; if caught, they endured
similar punishments. There was more common ground: many of the first black
settlers did not arrive directly from Africa but came from the Caribbean,
where some had learned English and had adopted Christian beliefs. And not all
were slaves: some were indentured servants. A handful were free. Page 49
Sir
George Carteret:
Vice Admiral Sir George Carteret, 1st
Baronet (c. 1610 – 18 January 1680 N.S.), son of Elias de Carteret, was a
royalist statesman in Jersey and England, who served in the Clarendon
Ministry as Treasurer of the Navy. He was also one of the original Lords
Proprietor of the former British colony of Carolina and New Jersey. Carteret,
a town in New Jersey as well as Carteret County in North Carolina, both in
the USA, are named after him.
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Unseasoned slaves:
Historians estimate
that for every 85 enslaved Africans that set foot in the Americas, 15 died
during the middle passage. After the numb, exhausted survivors reached American
ports, they faced more challenges to staying alive. The first year in the
colonies was the most deadly for new, “unseasoned”
slaves. The sickle cell genetic trait gave them a greater immunity to
malaria than Europeans, but slaves were highly susceptible to respiratory infections.
One-quarter of all Africans died during their first year in the Chesapeake, and
among Carolina and Caribbean slaves, mortality rates were far higher. In addition
to the new disease environment, Africans had to adapt to lives without freedom
in a wholly unfamiliar country and culture. Page 52
Racism:
Racism is
discrimination based on inherited physical differences, which according to
racist thought separated humans into a few distinct and unequal groups or
“races.” Page
53
Ottobah Cugoano:
Ottobah Cugoano, also known as John Stuart (c. 1757 - after 1791), was
an African abolitionist who was active in England in the latter half of the
eighteenth century. Captured and sold into slavery at the age of 13 in
present-day Ghana, he was shipped to Grenada in the Lesser Antilles. In 1772 he
was purchased by an English merchant who took him to England, where he was
taught to read and write, and was freed following the ruling in the Somersett
Case (1772). Later working for the Cosways, he became acquainted with British
political and cultural figures, and joined the Sons of Africa, abolitionists
who were Africans.
Seized by other
Africans, captives were yoked together at the neck and marched hundreds of
miles through the interior to coastal forts or other outposts along the
Atlantic. There, they were penned in hundreds of prisons, in lots of anywhere from
20 or 30 to more than 1,000. They might be forced to wait for slaving vessels
in French captiveries below the fine houses of traders on the island of Goree, or
herded into “outfactories” on the Banana Islands upstream on the Sierra Leone
River, or perhaps marched into the dank underground slaveholds at the English fort
at Cape Coast. Farther south, captives were held in marshy, fever-ridden
lowlands along the Bight of Benin waiting for a slaver to drop anchor.
One African, Ottobah Cugoano, recalled finally being
taken aboard ship:
“There was nothing to
be heard but the rattling of chains, smacking of whips, and the groans and
cries of our fellow-men. Some would not stir from the ground, when they were
lashed and beat in the most horrible manner. . . . And when we found ourselves
at last taken away, death was more preferable than life, and a plan was
concerted amongst us that we might burn and blow up the ship and to perish
altogether in the flames.” Page 52
Sir Anthony Ashley
Cooper:
Anthony Ashley Cooper,
1st Earl of Shaftesbury PC (22 July 1621 – 21 January 1683), known as Anthony
Ashley Cooper from 1621 to 1631, as Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, 2nd Baronet from
1631 to 1661, and as The Lord Ashley from 1661 to 1672, was a prominent English
politician during the Interregnum and during the reign of King Charles II. A
founder of the Whig party, he is also remembered as the patron of John Locke. The
southern portion of the Carolina grant held far more promise, especially in the
eyes of one of its proprietors, Sir
Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury. In 1669 Cooper sponsored an
expedition of a few hundred English and Barbadian immigrants, who planted the
first permanent settlement in South Carolina. By 1680 the colonists had
established the center of economic, social, and political life at the confluence
of the Ashley and the Cooper rivers, naming the site Charles Town (later
Charleston) after the king. Like others before him, Cooper hoped to create an
ideal society in America. His utopia was a place where a few landed aristocrats
and gentlemen would rule with the consent of many smaller property holders.
With his personal secretary, the renowned philosopher John Locke, Cooper drew up an intricate scheme of government, the Fundamental
Constitutions. The design provided Carolina with a proprietary governor and a
hereditary nobility who, as a Council of Lords, would recommend all laws to a
Parliament elected by lesser landowners. Page 54
John Locke:
John Locke (29 August
1632 – 28 October 1704), was an English philosopher and physician regarded as
one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and known as the
"Father of Classical Liberalism". Considered one of the first of the
British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory. His
work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy.
Appraisals of Locke have often been tied to appraisals of liberalism in
general, and also to appraisals of the United States. Detractors note that (in
1671) he was a major investor in the English slave-trade through the Royal
African Company. In addition, he participated in drafting the Fundamental
Constitutions of Carolina while Shaftesbury's secretary, which established a
feudal aristocracy and gave a master absolute power over his slaves. For
example, Martin Cohen notes that Locke, as a secretary to the Council of Trade
and Plantations (1673–4) and a member of the Board of Trade (1696–1700), was in
fact, "one of just half a dozen men who created and supervised both the
colonies and their iniquitous systems of servitude". Some see his
statements on unenclosed property as having been intended to justify the
displacement of the Native Americans. Because of his opposition to aristocracy
and slavery in his major writings, he is accused of hypocrisy and racism, or of
caring only for the liberty of English capitalists. Page 54
James Moore:
James
Moore was the British governor of colonial Carolina between 1700 and 1703. He
is remembered for leading several invasions of Spanish Florida during Queen
Anne's War, including attacks in 1704 and 1706 which wiped out most of the
Spanish missions in Florida. Page 56
Yamasee:
The Yamasee were a multiethnic confederation of
Native Americans who lived in the coastal region of present-day northern
coastal Georgia near the Savannah River and later in northeastern Florida. The
Hernando De Soto expedition of 1540 traveled into Yamasee territory, including
the village of Altamaha. In 1570,
Spanish explorers established missions in Yamasee territory. Page 56
Yamasee
War:
With Florida virtually exhausted of slaves, the
Yamasee grew nervous. Convinced that Carolina would
Soon turn on them as it had on other one-time
allies, the Yamasee struck first. They attacked traders, posts, and plantations on
the outskirts of Charles Town, killing hundreds of colonists and dragging
scores more to Florida to sell as slaves in St. Augustine. Panicked authorities
turned to other Indian peoples in the region but found most had either joined
the Yamasee or were too hostile and suspicious to help. Though it lasted only a
few months, the Yamasee War finally
put an end to the destructive regional slave trade. Animal skins again
dominated regional commerce. The powerful southern confederacies grew wary of aligning
too closely with any single European power and henceforth sought to play colonies
and empires off each other. It was a strategy that would bring them relative peace
and prosperity for generations. Page 56
James
Oglethorpe:
James Edward Oglethorpe (22 December 1696 – 30
June 1785) was a British general, Member of Parliament, philanthropist, and
founder of the colony of Georgia. As a social reformer, he hoped to resettle
Britain's poor, especially those in debtors' prisons, in the New World. Enhancing
the military security of South Carolina was only one reason for the founding of
Georgia. More important to General
James Oglethorpe and other idealistic English gentlemen
was the aim of aiding the “worthy poor” by providing them with
land, employment, and a new start. They envisioned a colony of hardworking
small farmers who would produce silk and wine, sparing England the need to
import those commodities. That dream seemed within reach when George II made
Oglethorpe and his friends the trustees of the new colony in 1732, granting them
a charter for 21 years. At the end of that time Georgia would revert to royal control.
Page 57
Westo:
The Westo were a Native American tribe
encountered in the Southeast by Europeans in the 17th century. They probably
spoke an Iroquoian language. The Spanish called these people Chichimeco (not to
be confused with Chichimeca in Mexico), and, Virginia colonists may have called
the same people Richahecrian. Page 58
Captain
John Smith:
Captain John Smith (c. January 1580 – 21 June
1631) Admiral of New England was an English soldier, explorer, and author. He was
knighted for his services to Sigismund Bathory, Prince of Transylvania and his
friend Mózes Székely. He was considered to have played an important part in the
establishment of the first permanent English settlement in North America. He
was a leader of the Virginia Colony (based at Jamestown) between September 1608
and August 1609, and led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the
Chesapeake Bay. He was the first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay
area and New England.
Chapter Review Questions
1. Where and why did Spain establish colonies in North
America, and how did native peoples resist colonization? Spain established colonies in Central
America, the Caribbean islands, and Mexico to increase their wealth and power.
The native people resisted colonization by trying to fight back.
2. How did the Chesapeake colonies support the aims of
British mercantilism? The
Chesapeake colonies supported British mercantilism with their tobacco crops and
the Bay’s rich fisheries. These served as highly valuable to Britain.
3. Why did slavery replace servitude as the dominant
labor system in Virginia and Maryland? Through most of the 17th century, the Black population
was small. Sometime after 1680, buying a slave for their lifetime was a greater
investment than paying for an indentured servant. Lastly, the number of
Africans bought by British dealers was up to 20,000 per year. Thus, this
transition led slavery to replace servitude.
4. How was the colonization of Carolina both distinct
from and parallel to that of the Chesapeake?
5. Explain the relationship between the Spanish and the
Pueblo Indians. How did this relationship shape the development of New Mexico?
Don Juan de Onate first
treated the Pueblos harshly, but since that threatened stability of the colony,
he was removed. Over time, relations improved, but the Pueblo Revolt still
occurred due to priest trying to suppress the tribal rituals as well as a
drought and multiple raids. Pueblos still outnumbered the Spanish so they knew
they couldn't prosper with constant conflict. So they forced Catholic rituals,
but tolerated their own, and they also promoted landowning replacing
encomienda’s. Pueblos and Spanish began intermarrying and became allies against
Apache and Navajo.
6. What was mercantilism? Why did the logic of mercantilist ideas
encourage King James I to grant a charter to the Virginia Company?
7. Explain the importance of tobacco in the development
of the Virginia colony.
Tobacco cultivation
created territorial expansion. Tobacco growers needed large areas of farmland
to grow crops and tobacco exhausted the soil after only a few years. English
farmers began establishing plantations deeper into the interior, which isolated
them from Jamestown and encroached them on Indian land. Tobacco also led to the
headright system to attract settlers. Planters used indentured servants, but
they became expensive and scarce so they began to use Africans.
8. How was Bacon's Rebellion related to the political
unrest in Virginia, and what effect did the rebellion have on the development
of that colony?
Bacon had purchased a
substantial farm and won a seat on the governor's council. He became a
"backcountry gentry." Backcountry settlements were always being
threatened by attacks from Indians, since the settlements were being
established on their reservation. Bacon was unhappy with governor Berkley
because he was excluded from the "inner circle" and not granted part
of the fur trade. The rebellion unleashed the potential for instability in the
colony's large population of free, landless men. The people of VA realize
importance of preventing social unrest from below, so they turned to African
slave trade to fulfill the need for labor.
9. What is the link between the Caribbean colonies and
the Carolinas?
10. Explain the system of indentured servitude that
developed in the American colonies.
Men/Women sign a
contract saying they will serve their master for an exchange of passage to
America, food, & shelter. It was appealing because it was to escape England
troubles, establish themselves on land, etc.
11. Describe the steps that led to the establishment of
black slavery in the English American colonies.
Most Africans were
initially sent to the Caribbean wince labor intensive crops (sugar) created a
large demand for slaves. Portuguese slavers sent captives to South American and
the Caribbean. Tobacco cultivation increased demand for slaves.
12. Explain how sugar and tobacco played similar roles in
Virginia and in the Caribbean colonies.
Each became the money
producers and saving crops that helped stabilize and ensure the success of
those colonies. It was also the labor intensive crops that would bring the
harshness and inequality of slavery to Colonies of North America that would
last into the 19th century. The success and prosperity of plantation owners,
transformed into hardship and misery for those enslaved to perform the labor.
Review
Multiple Choice Questions
1. The chapter introduction tells the story of the
Powhatan confederacy to make the point that:
A)
Indians initially tolerated the first English settlers as allies against rival
tribes, but the cultivation of tobacco led to destruction of Indian power.
B) the initial English settlements at
Virginia survived only because of the generous assistance provided by local
Indian tribes.
C) Powhatan had no strategy to deal
with the white "tribes" who invaded his domain, so he tried in vain
to organize an alliance to resist the English.
D) since the English colony was so
self-sufficient, they felt no need to cultivate friendly relations with the few
scattered, unorganized tribal bands in the Chesapeake region.
2. What accounts for the survival of the Virginia colony?
A) Its early settlers willingly worked hard to
establish a viable settlement.
B) Initially incentives brought
immigrants; later the political power of planters created stability while
conditions improved for small planters and farmers.
C)
The local confederacy of Indian tribes allied itself with the English in order
to take advantage of trade; in return, they taught the first settlers how to
cultivate corn.
D) The healthy natural and human
environments insured a high birth rate and low death rate among colonists in
the early years.
3. Mortality rates in Virginia in the 1620s were:
A) the same as in England.
B) lower than in England.
C) higher than England's normal death rate.
D)
higher than England's death rate during times of epidemic disease.
4. What is significant about the Indian-white war in the
early 1620s?
A) It proved the exception to the regular pattern
of Indian-white cooperation in the southern colonies.
B)
It demonstrated how resistance to the expansion of tobacco cultivation would be
met with swift and brutal retaliation.
C) It wiped out local Indian resistance, thus
insuring the company's survival.
D) It destroyed many of the tobacco fields, thus
ending the tobacco boom.
5. British authorities based their colonial trade
policies, as embodied in the Navigation Acts, on the theory of:
A)
mercantilism: insuring self-sufficiency by controlling trade.
B) industrialism: promoting English industrial
development.
C) imperialism: keeping the American colonies weak
and dependent.
D) developmentalism: stimulating colonial economic
diversification.
6. Because Maryland was granted as a "proprietary
colony" to the Calvert family, they could:
A) give land to their friends.
B) collect fees annually from every settler in the
colony for the use of the land.
C) extend complete religious freedom to all
Christians, including Catholics.
D)
all of the above.
7. The slaves imported into the Chesapeake after 1680:
A) were mostly born in the Caribbean.
B) had much in common with white indentured servants.
C)
were locked into their slave status by new laws that increasingly distinguished
between the rights of white and black servants.
D) could marry white people.
8. By the end of the 1600s, the leaders of Chesapeake
society were able to foster greater unity and stability due to all of the
following EXCEPT:
A) relying more on slavery than servitude.
B) improving economic opportunities for freed
servants and small landowners.
C)
accepting responsibility for the welfare of their social and economic
inferiors.
D) encouraging a greater role in government for the
middle and lower classes.
9. Spanish and
English colonization of the Caribbean resulted in the "loss of
paradise," but also:
A) resurgent
growth in population among Indians who acquired immunity to European diseases.
B) the introduction of political
stability among English colonists who replaced frontier outposts with massive
military fortifications.
C)
the beginnings of West Indian influence in North America as planters began to
settle the Carolinas.
D) the discovery of a new paradise for
Dutch colonists who introduced and monopolized plantation production of sugar.
10. One of the differences between South Carolina and the
Chesapeake was that:
A) the Chesapeake had a black majority.
B) Virginia and Maryland were Catholic; South
Carolina was Protestant.
C)
wealthy South Carolina planters grew rice; the Chesapeake gentry were primarily
tobacco growers and brokers.
D) South Carolinians enjoyed peaceful relations with
Indians.
11. South Carolina's population by 1730 was:
A) primarily English.
B) politically unified.
C)
ethnically and religiously diverse.
D) naturally increasing.
12. South Carolinians did NOT feel threatened by which of
the following?
A) the Spanish settlements in Florida
B) their black slaves
C) the French in Louisiana and their Indian allies
D)
the economic competition of Georgia
13. George Oglethorpe promoted:
A) the colony of Maryland.
B)
the colony of Georgia.
C) the plantation system in Barbados.
D) the plantation system in South Carolina.
14. Georgia was created:
A) in order to provide a place where
England could send people who were languishing in debtors' prisons.
B) as a haven for the religiously oppressed of Europe
and other colonies.
C)
as a utopia for small farmers.
D) with a strict slave code borrowed from South
Carolina.
15. The principal institution used by the Spanish to
incorporate natives into colonial society was:
A) the presidio.
B) the hacienda.
C) the vaquero.
D)
the mission.
16. Powhatan reacted to the English settlement of
Jamestown by:
A) defeating the settlers and removing nearly every
trace of them.
B) moving his tribe further west toward the
Appalachians.
C) establishing a joint tobacco-raising cooperative
with the English.
D)
trading food to the English in exchange for guns and other supplies that would
help the Pamunkeys subdue rival tribes.
17. Mercantilism is best understood as the:
A) rise of the merchant class and their demand for a
less powerful monarchy.
B)
state regulation and protection of commerce to enrich the nation by exporting
more than importing
C) movement away from state regulation
of commerce to allow the free market to determine trade.
D) practice of using indentured servants to provide
relatively cheap labor in colonial enterprises.
18. The Jamestown settlement was established as a:
A)
joint stock company seeking to make money.
B) religious experiment led by Puritans.
C) humanitarian effort to relieve London's
overcrowding.
D) trading post to sell food to the Indians.
19. Which of the following is NOT true about the
settlement of Jamestown and the entire Chesapeake region in the 17th century?
A) Men outnumbered women by roughly six to one.
B)
Most of those who came were from England's wealthiest families, as they were
the only ones who could afford passage.
C) Most who came were relatively
young, with a high percentage from the 15 to 24-year-old age group.
D) Life expectancy was poor at first but improved
over time as food supplies increased.
20. Which of the following is NOT true about the founding
of Maryland?
A) It began as a proprietary colony, founded by
Catholic aristocrats.
B) Virginians resented the economic competition.
C) The colony quickly established religious freedom
for all.
D)
Land was provided rent-free
21. The
Navigation Acts were examples of:
A) early self-rule by the colonial assemblies.
B) the growing disinterest by the English government
about affairs in the American colonies.
C)
mercantilism.
D) the decline of mercantilism.
22. Bacon's Rebellion:
A) was a successful effort by wealthy
Protestant planters to remove the Catholic proprietary government from power.
B) so angered royal authorities that they dispatched
troops to burn down the city of Jamestown.
C) led to the formation of the
Virginia House of Burgesses, the first colonial attempt at self-government.
D)
reflected the deep resentment by those who did not have political and economic
power of those who did.
23. African slaves became a more popular source of labor
in the Chesapeake after 1680 because of all of the following EXCEPT:
A)
the initial investment for slaves was cheaper than for indentured servants.
B) masters would have title to any children of slaves
as well.
C) the growth of African slavery helped to unite
poorer and wealthier whites in racial solidarity.
D) the growth of the slave trade.
24. The "middle passage" referred to:
A)
the 5,000-mile journey across the Atlantic endured by enslaved Africans aboard
tightly-packed ships.
B) the transformation of African labor
in the English colonies from temporary servitude to lifelong slavery.
C) laws enacted to place severe limits on the rights
of Africans.
D) the payment of trans-Atlantic ship fare in
exchange for an "indenture" of several years labor.
25. The number of settlers and slaves grew dramatically
in Barbados and other Caribbean islands after 1640, when the cash crop became:
A) tobacco.
B)
sugar.
C) bananas.
D) cotton.
26. In 1680, the Spanish were driven out of New Mexico
for more than a decade due to:
A) the outbreak of the plague.
B) defeat in the Yamasee War.
C)
the Great Pueblo Revolt.
D) Coode's Rebellion.
27. The primary objective of mercantilism was:
A) to promote free trade policies.
B) to develop industries in the
Americas.
C)
to build national self-sufficiency through a favorable balance of trade.
D) to encourage development of a
textile industry in Europe.
28. Which of the following most characterized the
Virginia colony in its first two decades?
A) the profitability of the Virginia
company due to the tobacco boom
B) political stability due to the
representative assembly
C) Indian wars
D)
immigrant deaths
29. Which of the following is the best description of a
“headright”?
A)
the right of a free settler or sponsor of an immigrant to receive 50 acres per
person or head
B) the recognized right of the gentry
class to rule
C) the right, according to European
diplomacy, of the first nation to colonize a river valley to claim all adjacent
lands up to its headwaters
D) the absolute property right,
according to English law, of a head of household over his wife, children,
servants and slaves
30. Which of the following is not an accurate description
of immigrants to Virginia during the tobacco boom of the 1620s?
A) They were mostly young single
males.
B) Most came as indentured servants.
C)
Nearly all were recruited from peasant villages where they had lived all their
lives.
D) They died relatively soon after
coming.
31. The king revoked the Company’s charter and made
Virginia a royal colony in 1624 for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
A)
He wanted to keep all the colonies’ profits for the royal treasury.
B) News of an Indian attack raised
questions in England about the state of the colony.
C) An investigation revealed the
horrible death rate for new arrivals.
D) An investigation revealed that
planters in Virginia were using tenants for private gain rather than for the
company’s enterprise.
32. In the 1630s and 1640s as the tobacco boom broke,
which of the following situations developed in Virginia?
A) Conditions improved somewhat for
less powerful Virginians. B) Planters raised more corn and cattle.
C) Single women stood a good chance of
improving their status through marriage.
D)
All of the above.
E) None of the above.
33. Maryland granted religious toleration because:
A)
Its Catholic founders wished to provide a haven for Catholics.
B) Its Puritan founders wished to
break the power of the Anglican state church.
C) Its merchant founders needed a
gimmick to lure settlers away from Virginia.
D) Its idealistic founders sought a
virtuous and egalitarian utopia for the worthy poor of all faiths.
34. What created conditions of unrest in the Chesapeake
that led to local rebellions?
A) Religious persecution
B) A sharp rise in the death rate
C) political oppression
D)
Diminishing economic opportunity
35. In an effort to ensure that his American colonies
contributed to England’s prosperity, King Charles II initiated a series of
regulations known as the:
A) Mercantile regulations
B)
Navigation acts
C) Tariff and tax laws
D) Neutrality acts
36. British authorities based their colonial trade
policies, as embodied in the Navigation Acts, on the theory of:
A)
Mercantilism: insuring self-sufficiency by monopolizing trade.
B) Industrialism: promoting English
industrial development.
C) Imperialism: keeping the American
colonies weak and dependent. D) Develop mentalism: stimulating colonial
economic diversification.
37. Women in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake:
A) Usually outnumbered men.
B) Usually outlived men.
C)
Had a good chance of improving their status by marriage.
D) Had a good chance of ending up as
unmarried landless vagabonds.
38. The Navigation Acts:
A) Were procedures instituted by the
King when he chartered the Virginia Company
B) Were reforms prescribed by the
Virginia Company to encourage diversification of the economy
C) Were regulations decreed by
Massachusetts to regulate shipping safety
D)
Were laws passed to give English merchants a monopoly on the colonial trade.
39. Among the consequences of the English Civil War of
the mid-1600s, all of the following are correctly stated EXCEPT:
A)The conflict distracted British
authorities from attention to America, though they soon sought to exercise
closer control over existing settlements.
B)England’s internal upheaval had
relatively little direct impact on the colonies until the monarchy was
restored.
C)Puritanism
was soundly defeated in Old England.
D)England, for a short period, was
ruled not by a king but by Parliamentary leader Oliver Cromwell.
40. All of the following triggered the revolt led by
Nathaniel Bacon EXCEPT:
A)clashes between Indians and whites.
B)diminishing economic opportunities
for freed servants and small planters.
C)popular
opposition to the restoration of the monarchy.
D)a contest for power between older
and newer elites.
41. While the rising demand for slaves in the Chesapeake
played some role in the large growth of the Atlantic slave trade between the
mid-1500s and the late 1800s, it was the spread of plantation economies in
other places that spurred and sustained the traffic in human beings. Which
places?
A)the
Caribbean and South America
B)South Africa and India
C)the Middle East and North Africa
D)British North America
42. The leaders of Chesapeake society by the end of the
1600s were able to foster greater unity and stability by all EXCEPT:
A)relying more on slavery than
servitude.
B)improving economic opportunities for
freed servants and small landowners.
C)accepting responsibility for the
welfare of their social and economic inferiors.
D)encouraging
a greater role in government for the middle and lower classes.
43. The English mainland colonies of North America
received most of their slaves directly from:
A)Africa.
B)Brazil.
C)the West Indies.
D)Portugal.
44. After 1680, Chesapeake planters began to rely more
heavily on black slave labor than on indentured white servants for all of the
following reasons EXCEPT:
A)declining death rates made slaves
more profitable than indentured servants. B)the flow of white servant
immigrants was falling off.
C)the pool of available black labor
was widening.
D)whites
were developing a more egalitarian society.
45. The Chesapeake gentry, above all, sought:
A)wealth in order to return to
England.
B)respect
and independence.
C)titles of nobility.
D)social relations rooted in morality
and equality.
46. as with the Chesapeake colonies, so too the Carolinas
followed a process from _____________to _________________.
A)violence
and high mortality; relative stability
B)diverse economic endeavors; a
single-crop economy
C)reliance on African slaves; reliance
on indentured servants
D)the West Indies; the mainland
47. English settlements in the West Indies had the
greatest influence upon the development of the mainland colonies of:
A)the Chesapeake.
B)the
Carolinas.
C)New England.
D)New York and New Jersey.
48. What was the most lucrative New World product by the
later 1600s?
Silver
B)sugar
C)tobacco
D)rice
49. Initially it was the __________________of sugar that
conferred status, but later it was the ______________ of sugar that conveyed power.
A)cultivation; marketing
B)sources; control
C)consumption;
production
D)abundance; monopoly
50. Europeans acquired their first knowledge of sugar
from:
A)Arab
countries—and it was scarce and exotic.
B)the inhabitants of Madeira and the
Canary Islands—and it was inferior in quality. C)the natives of the
Caribbean—and it was used at first in religious ceremonies.
D)the trade with West African
countries—and it was unappreciated.
51. Europe and America affected each other in many ways
as the result of colonization. Among the most fundamental conditions of life
altered by colonization was:
A)diet.
B)time.
C)sexual relations.
D)religion.
52. The early instability of South Carolina society was
due to all of the following EXCEPT:
A)ethnic and religious divisions among
the white settlers.
B)animosities between whites and
native tribes fostered by the traffic in Indian slaves.
C)the high death rate and resulting
disruption of families.
D)the
volatile rice boom.
53. founded both as a military buffer and a philanthropic
enterprise was:
A)the colony of Maryland.
B)the
colony of Georgia.
C)the plantation system in Barbados.
D)the plantation system in South
Carolina.
54. All of the following are accurate generalizations
about the southern English colonies by about 1700, EXCEPT:
A)each
had been founded as a private (i.e. proprietary) colony, but each would
eventually become royal.
B)The economy of each was based on
slave-grown plantation staple crops.
C)Each had matured into a hierarchical
society in which the leading planters controlled the government. D)to the south
of England’s mainland colonies were mainland colonies of Spain.
55. The principal institution used by the Spanish to
incorporate natives into colonial society was:
A)the presidio.
B)the hacienda
C)the vaquero.
D)the
mission.
Practice Quiz
1. African slaves in the colonial South:
A)
began to develop a society and culture of their own.
B) were rigidly separated from whites.
C) were widely scattered on small
farms, seldom in contact with one another.
D) often participated in various forms
of organized resistance.
E) were well educated.
2. To entice new laborers to their colony, the Virginia
Company established the "headright" system to:
A) pay the Indians for their services.
B) import African slaves.
C) establish tobacco plantations.
D) promise the colonists the full
rights of Englishmen.
E)
grant land to current and prospective settlers.
3. During the seventeenth century, at least three-fourths
of the immigrants who came to the Chesapeake colonies came as:
A) slaves.
B) artisans.
C)
indentured servants.
D) convicts.
E) religious refugees.
4. The English mainland colonies of North America
received most of their slaves directly from:
A) Brazil.
B)
Africa.
C) the West Indies.
D) Portugal.
5. The Navigation Acts were designed to:
A)
regulate commerce according to the theory of mercantilism.
B) destroy the power of rising
colonial merchants.
C) keep the price of tobacco low.
D) raise money to pay off England's
war debts.
E) open up trade routes between all
American colonies.
6. Slavery in Carolina was greatly influenced by slavery
in:
A) Virginia.
B)
Barbados.
C) St. Augustine.
D) England.
E) Cuba.
7. The Englishman who first cultivated tobacco in
Virginia was:
A) John Smith.
B) Lord De La Warr.
C)
John Rolfe.
D) Walter Raleigh.
E) Nathaniel Bacon.
8. British authorities based their colonial trade
policies, as embodied in the Navigation Acts, on the theory of:
A)
mercantilism: insuring self sufficiency by monopolizing trade.
B) industrialism: promoting English
industrial development.
C) imperialism: keeping the American
colonies weak and dependent.
D) developmentalism: stimulating
colonial economic diversification.
9. The one factor which determined whether a person was
subject to the slave codes in the British American colonies was:
A) the person's country of origin.
B) the ancestry of the person's
father.
C) the ancestry of the person's
mother.
D)
color.
E) None of these answers are correct.
10. Bacon's Rebellion was significant because:
A) it revealed the bitterness of
competition among rival elites in Virginia.
B) it was evidence of the continuing
struggle to define the Indian and white spheres of influence in Virginia.
C) it demonstrated the potential for
instability in the colony's large population of landless men.
D) it both revealed the bitterness of
competition among rival elites in Virginia, and demonstrated the potential for
instability in the colony's large population of landless men.
E)
All these answers are correct.
11. Bacon's Rebellion successfully overthrew the
government of Sir William Berkeley.
True
False
12. Virginia was a profitable colony from the start.
True
False
13. Tobacco was the major cash crop in Georgia and South
Carolina.
True
False
14. The "middle passage" was the route taken by
settlers trying to get to the Ohio Valley.
True
False
15. The majority of colonists who came to Georgia were
taken from debtor's prison:
True
False
Fill in the blanks.
16. The phase of the enslavement process after slaves had
been procured along the African coast and before they were sold in the Americas
involved a long sea voyage across the Atlantic known as the ________.
Answer: Middle Passage
17. To entice new workers to the colony, the Virginia
Company put in place what it called the ________ system.
Answer: Headright
18. The founder of Georgia was ________.
Answer: James Oglethorpe
19. The Spanish referred to peoples of mixed race as
________.
Answer: Mestizos
20. In Jamestown the winter of 1609-1610 was known as the
"________."
Answer: Starving time
21. ________ was the king of England who chartered the
company that founded the first permanent English colony in North America.
Answer: James I
22. The first truly marketable crop in Virginia was
________.
Answer: Tobacco
23. The last English colony to be established in what is
now the United States was ________.
Answer: Georgia
24. The ________, basically the leading plantation
owners, were the political and economic elite of the Chesapeake colonies by the
late 1600s.
Answer: gentry
25. The collective name for parliamentary legislation
designed according to mercantilist theory for the purpose of controlling
colonial trade was the ________.
Answer: Navigation
Acts
26. Members of the medieval religious order that would
become key to the settlement of Spanish North America were the ________.
Answer: Franciscans
27. The founding of Carolina was aided by the English
philosopher ________.
Answer: John
Locke
28. In 1617, John Rolfe established a pattern for
southern colonies when he introduced the cultivation of ________.
Answer: tobacco
29. Captain John Smith is associated primarily with the
colony of ________.
Answer: Virginia
30. The first permanent European settlement in what is
now the United States was ________.
Answer: St.
Augustine
31. The king who was restored to the throne after the
English Civil War was ________.
Answer: Charles II
32. The royal governor of Virginia who clashed with
Nathaniel Bacon was ________.
Answer: William Berkeley
33. Many of the original settlers of South Carolina came
from the West Indian island of ________.
Answer: Barbados
34. The conflict between tidewater Virginia and a rising
elite to its west was called ________.
Answer: Bacon's Rebellion
Quiz
1. After 1618, the Virginia Company's principal means of
attracting new settlers was ________.
a)
the
granting of religious freedom
b)
liberal
suffrage requirements
c)
a system of land grants called
headrights
d)
payment
of passage by the company
e)
impressment
2. The British Navigation Acts were designed to protect
England from foreign competition in the colonies.
True
False
3. The aspect of the Atlantic Slave trade named the
"middle passage" refers to:
a)
the
first year in American ports when "unseasoned slave" were trained to
become seasoned slaves
b)
transporting of black African captives
across the Atlantic aboard ships whose below decks where packed with several
hundred men, women, and children
c)
the
capturing and transporting of black Africans, who were marched from the
interior to slave ship on the Gold Coast
d)
transporting
of slaves from the Brazil and the Caribbean to the North American mainland
4. The "starving time" in Jamestown during the
winter of 1609-1610 was partly the result of:
a)
unwillingness, or ignorance of how, to
do any labor and grow crops
b)
the
extermination of the Indians who used to grow crops.
c)
an
influx of rats from settlers' ships that ate much of the stored grains.
d)
a
drought that led to crop failures.
e)
the
sinking of the colonists' supply ship in the Atlantic.
5. In 1622, the Native American tribes of Virginia
________.
a)
attacked the English settlements
b)
formed
an alliance with the Native American tribes of New England
c)
established
permanently good relations with the English settlers
d)
learned
from the English settlers how to grow tobacco
e)
migrated
westward to avoid future contact with settlers
6. Those who migrated to the Chesapeake Bay area as
indentured servants were ________.
a)
usually
from the dregs of English society
b)
English
farmers who saw a better future in the New World
c)
normally
single, lower-class males in their teens or early twenties
d)
married
individuals who came with their families
e)
generally
convicted criminals who traded jail time in England for indentures
7. Caribbean colonies built their economies on:
a)
the
slave trade.
b)
shipbuilding.
c)
cultivation of sugar
d)
fishing.
e)
rum
running and piracy.
8. In 1680, the Pueblo Indians rose in revolt against
Spanish settlers after the Spanish missionaries and civil officials:
a)
attempted
to convert the Pueblos to Catholicism.
b)
made efforts at suppressing Indian
religious rituals.
c)
demanded
tribute from the Indians.
d)
began
to export Pueblos out of the colony to be sold as slaves.
e)
banned
intermarriage between Spanish and Pueblo couples.
9. The first important economic boom in Jamestown
resulted from:
a)
the
discovery of gold and silver.
b)
fur
trade with the Indians.
c)
the production of tobacco.
d)
a
development of fisheries and lumber.
e)
the
cultivation of cotton.
10. Originally, the Georgia colony excluded:
a)
free
blacks.
b)
slaves.
c)
indentured
servants.
d)
hard
liquor.
e)
both slaves and hard liquor
11. Among the issues that sparked Bacon's Rebellion can
be found all of the following except:
political offices in the
colony were monopolized by a select few favorites
conflict between Protestants and Catholics
tension between Indians
and the expanding colonial population on the frontier
access to trade with the
Indians
12. The site chosen for the Jamestown settlement:
a)
it
was low and swampy and subject to outbreaks of malaria.
b)
was
located inland so as to prevent attacks.
c)
bordered
the territories of powerful Indian tribes.
d)
was
set on swampy land
e)
All of the above.
13. To resolve the problem of the vast expenses New World
settlement required, English merchant-capitalists introduced the concept of
________.
a)
proprietorship
b)
primogeniture
c)
the joint-stock company
d)
feudalism
e)
mercantilism
14. Initially, Lord Baltimore intended that Maryland be a
haven for ________.
a)
Quakers
b)
Puritans
c)
Catholics
d)
Baptists
e)
Separatists
15. After 1680, most blacks who came to the English
colonies in North America came directly from Africa.
True
False
