Envious of Spain richest and hegemony power in Europe as well as in Americas, England in the mid-sixteenth century, with its “sea dogs” like John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake, they raided Spanish treasure fleets sailing home from the Caribbean to build their finance and prepare their war against Spain. In fact, their raid against the Spanish fleets helped to raise a war in 1588 which end up with the victory of England defeating a huge Spanish invasion force the Armada off the English coast. This battle marked the beginning of the end of Spain's domination of Europe and the Western Hemisphere. More importantly for England, it marked the dawn of the era of permanent English settlement of the New World.
Investors and companies such as the Muscovy Company and the East India Company tapped into the new world, where networks were established between private investor the crown; the English built ties to local merchants and set up new trade routes and port facilities with the goal of building wealth for England. For instance, Sir Walter Raleigh promoted a scheme to establish outposts that could trade with the Indians and serve as bases for attacks on Spain’s possessions; Queen Elizabeth authorized Raleigh to colonize North America.
England’s population was growing at a rapid rate. Economic recession left many without work, even skilled artisans could earn little more than enough to live. Poor crop yields added to the distress. In addition, the Industrial Revolution had created a growing textile industry, which demanded an ever-increasing supply of wool. Landlords enclosed farmlands for sheep grazing, which left the farmers without anywhere to live. The law of primogeniture: first born stated that only the eldest son inherited an estate, which left many entrepreneurial younger sons to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Colonial expansion became an outlet for these displaced populations. After two preliminary expeditions, in 1587 Raleigh sent colonists to the territory that tens of thousands of native peoples called Ossomocomuck. Raleigh renamed it Virginia, after Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen.”
In 1606, King James I granted a charter to colonize Virginia, the whole area claimed by England in the New World, to a joint-stock company called the Virginia Company of London. The charter revealed the primary motivation for colonization of both King James and the company: the promise of gold. Secondary motivations included finding a sea passage through the New World to Asia and the Indies, establishing colonies and outposts to demonstrate English power and influence, and spreading Christianity and a European definition of civilization to the native people. The landless and homeless crowded the streets, officials came to believe that colonies in North America could siphon off what they viewed as England’s “surplus population.” Similarly, many ordinary people decided they could improve their circumstances by migrating to the new world.
• Massachusetts Bay
Economic systems: Isolated agricultural settlements in the interior tried to sustain Winthrop’s vision of community life based on diversified family farms. Coastal towns, like Boston and Salem, became bustling seaports. And commercialized agricultural towns grew up in the Connecticut River valley, where easy water transportation enabled farmers to sell surplus goods.
Social characteristics: the Plymouth colonists held a traditional English feast to celebrate the harvest. Famously, they invited Massasoit’s Pokanokets, and they probably consumed turkey. The native peoples of the Americas had named the fowl in their own languages; Aztecs, for example, called a male bird huexoloti and a female totolin. In Massachusetts groups of men often from the same English village applied for grants of land on which to establish towns (novel governance units that did not exist in England). The grantees copied the villages from whence they had come. First, they laid out lots for houses and a church. Then they gave each family parcels of land around the town center, reserving the best and largest plots for the most distinguished residents, including the minister. The “lower sort” received smaller and less desirable allotments. Still, every man and even a few single women obtained land. Only a few Massachusetts clerics, most notably John Eliot and Thomas Mayhew, seriously undertook missionary work among the Algonquin. He met with little success. Only eleven hundred Indians (out of many thousands) lived in the fourteen “Praying Towns” he established, and just percent of the town residents had been baptized.
Political systems: The leaders of Massachusetts Bay likewise transformed their joint-stock company charter into the basis for a covenanted community based on mutual consent. They gradually changed the General Court—the company’s small governing body—into a colonial legislature. They also granted the status of freeman, or voting member, to property-owning adult male church members. Less than two decades after its founding, the colony had a functioning system of self-government composed of a governor and a two-house legislature.
• Virginia
Economic systems: Most Algonquian villages held their land communally. Land could not be bought or sold outright, although certain rights to use it (for example, for hunting or fishing) could be transferred. The English also refused to accept Indians’ claims to traditional hunting territories, insisting that only cultivated land could be owned or occupied. Ownership of such “unclaimed” property, the English believed, lay with the English monarchy.
Social characteristics: English men regarded Indian men as lazy because they did not cultivate crops and spent their time hunting (a sport, not work, in English eyes), while Indian men thought English men effeminate because they did the “woman’s work” of cultivation. The English believed in the superiority of their civilization, and they expected native peoples to adopt English customs and to convert to Christianity. They showed little respect for the Indians when they believed English interests were at stake, as was demonstrated once the settlers found a salable commodity.
Political systems: English political and military leaders tended to rule autocratically, whereas Algonquian leaders (even Powhatan) had more limited authority. Most members of Virginia’s House of Burgesses and Maryland’s House of Delegates (established in 1635) were immigrants; they also dominated the governor’s council, which simultaneously served as the highest court, part of the legislature, and executive adviser to the governor. A native-born ruling elite emerged only in the early eighteenth century. In the seventeenth-century Chesapeake, most property-owning white males could vote, and they chose as their legislators (burgesses) the local elites who seemed to be their natural leaders. But because most such men were immigrants lacking strong ties to one another or to the region, the assemblies remained unstable and contentious.
• The Carolinas
Economic systems: The trade in Indian slaves began when the Westos (originally known as the Eries), migrated south from the Great Lakes region in the mid-1650s, after the Beaver Wars. The Carolina proprietors monopolized trade with the Westos, which infuriated settlers shut out of the commerce in slaves and deerskins. Carolina planters secretly financed attacks on the Westos, wiping them out by 1682. Slavery made its most dramatic contribution to the northern economy at one remove, through the West Indies provision trade.
Social characteristics: Indian bonds people accounted for as much as percent of the South Carolina population. Southeastern Indians reacted to slave raids by other native peoples after the defeat of the Westos and by trying to protect themselves through subordination to the English or Spanish, or by coalescing into new, larger political units, such as those known later as Creeks, Chickasaws, or Cherokees.
Political systems: Slave Resistance, usually resistance took the form of work slowdown or escape, but occasionally bonds people planned rebellions.
It is April 19, 1775 and standing across the village common from each other in Lexington Massachusetts British soldiers and American colonist have their rifles pointed at each other; they are about to fire the first shots of the American Revolution. How did the tensions between Great Britain and its once loyal American colonies get to this point? In fact, a cultural movement took place in Europe in the late 1600s and 1700s called the Enlightenment. Writers involved in this movement such as John Locke wrote about such issues as limited government and consent of the governed. This movement influenced the thinking of many of the founding fathers as they began to seek liberty and freedom from the control of the British. But before that, the Sugar Act (1764), a British law charged duties on sugar imported by the colonies, alongside with other products were also taxed contributed the unhappiness of population and merchants and led to Colonies protest and resist paying taxes . Moreover, the Boston Massacre (1770) when an angry mob of colonist confronts British soldiers in Boston with Five colonists was killed. We also have, French and Indian War which ended with British victory. In fact, it follows the thread of increasingly unpopular British policies against the American colonies until the colonists' objections and actions led to open hostility. The war itself would last from 1775 with the Battles of Lexington and Concord until the official end of hostilities in February 1783. The Treaty of Paris was later signed in September of the same year.
Early on Sunday, September 9, 1739, about twenty enslaved men, most likely Catholics from Kongo, gathered near the Stono River south of Charles Town. September fell in the midst of South Carolina’s rice harvest (and thus at a time of great pressure for male Africans), and September 8 was, to Catholics, the birthday of the Virgin Mary. Seizing guns and ammunition, the rebels killed storekeepers and nearby planter families. Joined by other local bondsmen, they then headed toward Florida in hopes of finding refuge. That afternoon, however, a troop of militia attacked the fugitives, who numbered about a hundred, killing some and dispersing the rest. The colony quickly captured and executed the survivors, but rumors about escaped renegades haunted the colony for years. The Stono Rebellion and the New York “conspiracy” confirmed Anglo-Americans’ deepest fears about the dangers of slaveholding and revealed the assemblies’ inability to prevent internal disorder.
To pay of war debt, Parliament passes the Sugar Act, imposing duties on imported sugars and other goods that the colonists import from England. To emphasize, Grenville Acts pass parliament: these include a number of acts aimed at raising revenue to pay for the French and Indian War debts along with the cost of administering the new territories granted at the end of the war. They also include measures to increase the efficiency of the American custom system. The most objectionable part was the Sugar Act, known in England as the American Revenue Act. It increased duties on items ranging from sugar to coffee to textiles.
Stamp Act is passed by the Parliament, directly taxing all illegal documents, almanacs, and other items in the colonies. Colonists form the Sons of Liberty and the Daughters of Liberty to organize protests. One year later the Stamp Act is repealed. February 13, 1766 – Benjamin Franklin testifies before Parliament about the Stamp Act and warns that if the military is used to enforce it, this could lead to open rebellion.
Parliament passes the Townshend Acts, taxing a number of items the colonies import. Colonists boycott British goods. December 15, 1766 – The New York Assembly continues to fight against the Quartering Act, refusing to allocate any funds for housing the soldiers. The crown suspends the legislature on December 19th.
April 14, 1775 General, now Governor, Gage in Massachusetts is ordered to use any force necessary to apply all British acts and to stop any buildup of a colonial militia. April 18-19, 1775 is considered by many to be the beginning of the actual American Revolution, the Battles of Lexington and Concord begin with the British heading to destroy a colonial arms depot in Concord Massachusetts.
¥ Native Americans: the nation’s stated goal was to “civilize” them. To promote “a love for exclusive property” among Indian peoples, Henry Knox proposed that the government give livestock and agricultural training to individual natives. Four years later, the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1793 codified the secretary of war’s proposals. Policymakers focused on Indian men: because they hunted, male Indians were “savages” who should be “civilized” by learning to farm. That women traditionally farmed was irrelevant because, to officials, Indian women like those of European descent should confine themselves to child rearing, household chores, and home manufacturing. Many Indian nations responded cautiously to the “civilizing” plan. The Iroquois Confederacy had been devastated by the war. Restricted to small reservations increasingly surrounded by Anglo-American farmlands, men could no longer hunt and often spent their days idle. Quaker missionaries started a demonstration farm among the Senecas to teach men to plow, but women showed greater interest. Iroquois men became more receptive to the reformers after the spring of 1799, when a Seneca named Handsome Lake experienced remarkable visions. He directed followers to reorient men’s and women’s work assignments as Quakers advocated, as he recognized that only by adopting the European sexual division of labor could the Iroquois retain their autonomy.
¥ African Americans: In the late 1770s and early 1780s, enslaved men and women in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Massachusetts petitioned their courts and legislatures for freedom. Such agitation catalyzed the gradual abolition of slavery in the North, a process now known as “the first emancipation.” Vermont banned slavery in its 1777 constitution. Responding to lawsuits filed by enslaved men and women, Massachusetts courts ruled in 1783 that the state constitution prohibited slavery. Other states adopted gradual emancipation laws between 1780 (Pennsylvania) and 1804 (New Jersey). No southern state passed a general emancipation law, but the legislatures of Virginia (1782), Delaware (1787), and Maryland (1790 and 1796) altered statutes that restricted slave owners’ ability to free their bonds people. New York’s law freed children born into slavery after July 4, 1799, but only after they reached their mid-twenties. And not until the late 1840s did Rhode Island and Connecticut abolish all vestiges of slavery. The number of free people of African descent grew dramatically after the Revolution. By 1790, nearly 60000 free people of color lived in the United States; ten years later, they numbered more than 108000, more than 10 percent of the African American population. The enslaved also negotiated agreements allowing them to live and work independently until they could save enough to purchase themselves. Virginia’s free black population more than doubled in the two decades after 1790. By 1810, nearly one-quarter of Maryland’s African American population lived outside of legal bondage.
However, even whites who recognized African Americans’ right to freedom were unwilling to accept them as equals. Several states including Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina adopted laws denying property-owning black men the vote. South Carolina forbade free blacks from testifying against whites in court. New Englanders used indenture contracts to control freed youths, who were often barred from public schools. Freedmen found it difficult to purchase property and find good jobs. To survive and prosper, freed people came to rely on collective effort. In Charleston, mulattos formed the Brown Fellowship Society, which provided them insurance, financed a school, and helped to support orphans.
• Women: Abigail Adams did not ask for woman suffrage, but others did, and some authors began to discuss and define the “rights of women” in general terms. Judith Sargent Murray, Thomas Paine, and James Otis all published essays on the topic, as did many transatlantic radicals. In 1792, Britain’s Mary Wollstonecraft inflamed readers throughout the English-speaking world with her tract entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The New Jersey state constitution in 1776 defined voters as “all free inhabitants”; subsequent state laws explicitly enfranchised female voters. For several decades, women who met the state’s property qualifications as well as free black landowners voted in New Jersey’s elections. That women chose to vote was evidence of their altered perception of their place in the country’s political life. As political contests grew more openly combative, women’s role in the public sphere came to seem more threatening both to the republic and to womanhood itself.