COLONIZATION
V.
COLONIAL ECONOMY
A. Geography shaped the economic foundation of colonies (refer to chart)
B. Labor
 Failure to enslave Native Americans (who had “home court” advantage and could either
easily escape or be rescued by tribe members) led to demand for outside labor
 Indentured Servants
o Usually given free passage to New World in exchange for 7 years of unpaid labor
o Usually allowed to earn some money during “free time” as was the case later for
some slaves
o Usually given tools of the trade-farming implements if you had worked with a farmer,
tools if you had worked in a trade, etc to set up new life after indenture was over
o Retained their civil rights as English citizens, so treatment was protected under the
law
 Slaves
o First African slaves brought by British to the West Indies to work in the sugar cane
fields
 Triangle of trade between colonies, West Indies, and England,
 Trade goods like beads, cloth, etc from England to Africa to trade for slaves,
slaves taken to North America, and ships filled with molasses, sugar,
tobacco, etc back to England (not all ships made all 3 stops, this is just the
general pattern) From 1776: molasses to rum to slaves….
o 1st slaves in Virginia probably arrived before 1620 and brought by Dutch traders
o until the 1660s, there were more indentured servants than slaves
o after that date labor was harder to come by, so more slaves were imported
and most colonies passed laws restricting the lives of slaves
o indentured servant numbers dropped off for a lot of reasons including the
opportunities to settle freely in colonies like PA & MD
o slavery existed in all colonies
o Carolinas, Georgia-rice and tobacco plantations, kept African social patterns
and Gullah dialect
o Chesapeake (MD, VA)-farming and also worked in shipbuilding and iron
works
o New England, PA, NJ, NY-farming, and house servants
C. Navigation Act of the 1600s (prelude to the Revolution)
o 1651: goods from Asia, Africa, America transported to England had to be in English
vessels/goods made in European countries sent to England in English vessels or in
vessels from where goods were made (a stab at the mighty trading of the Dutch)
o 1660o all goods imported to or exported from England shipped in English vessels
o many enumerated items like tobacco, sugar, cotton and wool could only be
shipped from the colonies to England or an English plantation
o heavy duties on those items and well as those shipped from one colony to
another
o If these laws had been enforced, it would have devastated colonial economies, and
when they were strictly enforced, and added to, in the 1700s, it is a main cause of the
Revolution