Review

• The major themes of this unit have to do with comparing the different motives and methods that Europeans used to colonize the Americas
• Spanish colonial policies

  Established colonies in the Americas to extract wealth in the form of valuable cash crops and gold/silver, subjected native population, tried to convert them to Christianity, introduced a caste system based on racial ancestry
• French colonial policies


  More interested in trade, especially the fish and fur trade, relatively few French people settled, some French traders married American Indian wives to firm up trading relationships, fostered alliances with tribes like the Ojibwe
• Dutch colonial goals


  Mainly economic, established fur trading center on the Hudson River, showed little interest in converting natives to Christianity, established New Amsterdam as a hub of trade
• British colonial motivations


  Seeking new economic opportunities and lands, some sought religious freedom and improved living conditions
• Financing British colonization


  Through joint stock companies, private business entities where investors pooled money and collected profits
• Jamestown colony


  • Purely a profit-seeking venture, colonists divided time between searching for gold/silver and building military force, high mortality rates initially, saved by discovery of tobacco cultivation
• Increasing demand for tobacco land


  Led to encroachment on native lands and increased tensions/violence
• Indentured servitude


  Major labor system in the colonies, people who couldn't afford passage to the New World signed contracts to work for 7 years and then go free
• Disgruntled indentured servants


  Led to Bacon's Rebellion, which made planter elites fear them and shift to African slavery
• New England colonies


  Established by Pilgrims to create a religious society, not a profit-seeking enterprise, faced similar challenges as Jamestown but eventually thrived
• British West Indies and Southern Atlantic Coast colonies

  Grew cash crops like tobacco and sugarcane, increasing demand for African slave labor
• Middle colonies


  Diverse population, thrived on export economy of cereal crops, growing inequality between emerging elite class and lower working class, significant enslaved African population
• Pennsylvania


  Founded by Quaker William Penn, recognized religious freedom, obtained land from Indians through negotiation rather than force
• Colonial governance


  • Self-governing structures like the Mayflower Compact and House of Burgesses, dominated by elite classes
• In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, trade became truly global with the uptick of colonization in the Americas, leading to the development of a new Atlantic economic system
• Mayflower Compact


  • Pilgrims signed this before they disembarked from their ship the Mayflower, which organized their government on the model of a self-governing church congregation
• House of Burgesses in Virginia


  • A representative assembly which could levy taxes and pass laws
• Representative assemblies throughout the colonies were dominated by the elite classes
• Triangular trade


  A three-part journey of merchant ships: from New England carrying rum to West Africa to trade for enslaved people, then the Middle Passage to the West Indies to trade the slaves for sugar cane, then back to New England to sell the sugar cane
• Mercantilism


  An economic system where the goal was to gain as much wealth (measured by gold and silver) as possible, through maintaining a favorable balance of trade (more exports than imports)
• Navigation Acts


  • Set of laws requiring merchants to engage in trade with English colonies and English-owned ships, and certain valuable trade items to pass exclusively through British ports where they could be taxed
• The newly established Atlantic trade system generated massive wealth for the elites like merchants, investors, and plantation owners, and turned America's seaports into thriving urban centers
• Between 1700 and 1808, about 3 million enslaved Africans were carried on British ships across the Middle Passage, the majority sold into the hands of planters in the British West Indies
• Every British colony participated in the slave trade mainly because of the extraordinary wealth they gained by coerced labor in the export economies dedicated to tobacco, sugar cane, and indigo
• Slavery was turned into a perpetual institution that was handed down from one generation to the next in order to keep a controlled and growing labor force
• Strategies of covert resistance by enslaved blacks

  • Secretly maintaining cultural customs and belief systems from their homeland, breaking tools, ruining stored seeds, faking illness
• Strategies of overt resistance by enslaved blacks

  • The Stono Rebellion in South Carolina in 1739, where a small group of slaves stole weapons, killed owners, and marched along the Stono River burning plantations and killing white people
• Relations between the British colonists and American Indians were not good, as seen in events like Metacom's War (King Philip's War) in 1675
• Enlightenment


  A movement in Europe that emphasized rational thinking over tradition and religious revelation, introducing ideas like natural rights and the social contract
• Great Awakening


  A massive religious revival that swept through the colonies, generating intense Christian enthusiasm and laying the groundwork for a growing American identity and rejection of British rule
• The practice of impressment, where the British seized colonial men and forced them to serve in the Royal Navy, led to growing mistrust and resistance from the colonies