Creating Anglo-America
1660-1750
Historia- An ancient Greek word meaning “inquiry”
• In the LHS curriculum the main essential question for this period is “To
what degree did colonial settlement impact the lives of Europeans, Indians
and Africans?”
• In this chapter we can put a sharper focus on that question and ask, “To
what degree did the process of transforming eastern North America into
an English territory succeed and how did it change the lives of not only
non-English Europeans, Indians and Africans, but the English
“themselves?”
The
Atlantic world
English Mercantilism, the Netherlands and the Navigation Acts
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Mercantilist
theory
Favorable
balance of
trade
Commerce not
plunder
Anglo-Dutch
Wars
Cromwell and
Charles II
The
Navigation
Acts, 16511696
Triangular
Trade
What did this
mean for the
colonies?
As we saw in Chapter 1, the Dutch dominated overseas trade by the early 17th century.
The Dutch trading empire included ports in East Asia, South America, South Africa and
the Caribbean as well as a small fur trading port on the North American coast called
New Amsterdam. The Dutch took advantage of the chaos in England during the Civil
War (1642-1649)and extended their influence even further.
Between 1652 and 1674, the English and the Dutch fought three naval wars. Oliver Cromwell
oversaw the passage of the first Navigation Act and English privateers took this to mean that they
could openly attack Dutch ships. The Dutch fought back. The latter two wars were waged by King
Charles II during the Restoration. With regard to U.S. History, the most important result was
that…
Nieuw Nederland becomes New York
1664
• Free African-American males lost the Dutch status of “freemen of the
town” and were barred from working in many skilled trades.
Generally, the Dutch treated African slaves more humanely than the
English.
• Slavery became more entrenched in both New York and New Jersey.
• Under English rule, a new landed and mercantile aristocracy came
into power. The Philipse, Livingston, Morris and De Lancey families
would now dominate the politics of New York and New Jersey.
• Prominent Dutch families remained wealthy but less powerful
politically. By the early nineteenth century, the old New Amsterdam
Dutch aristocracy was seen as quaint and its members known
comically as “Knickerbockers,” but it produced three U.S. presidents:
Martin Van Buren, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
As of 2015, Livingston’s representative in the U.S. House is Rodney
Frelinghuysen.
• New York’s transition from Dutch to English colony was a tense and at times
difficult one that would shape local politics for decades.
• The Dutch presence would be long lasting. Even though the Dutch lost
control of the region in 1664, their language would be commonly spoken in
the Hudson Valley and in northeastern New Jersey until the nineteenth
century.
• The New York Charter of Liberties of 1683 imposed an English stamp on
the meanings of citizenship and political participation. The Charter created
an elected Assembly that would be one of the most “factious” in colonial
America.
• Both African-Americans and women experienced a loss of both civil liberty
and economic status under English rule.
• English law prohibited most widows from inheriting their husband’s property
and English custom barred women from acting as independent agents in
commerce.
The Dutch colony of New Netherland, at least according to the Dutch, extended from the
Connecticut River in the east to the Delaware River in the west. This area included parts of modern
day CT, NY and NJ. In 1666, a group of Puritan settlers drew up the plan below for a small trading
port on the Passaic River in the newly created colony of New Jersey. They eventually called the new
settlement “Newark.”
The colony of New Jersey was soon partitioned into an eastern and western half that were controlled
by different groups of proprietors. For most of the colonial era, the colony was referred to as “The
Jerseys.” From 1702 until 1734, NJ and NY shared the same governor, Lewis Morris.