Advanced Placement United States History (APUSH)
Summer Assignment: 2014
The upcoming school year brings new changes to APUSH as a result of the 2014/2015 course redesign. This
newly designed course of study focusses more on argumentation and effective essays and has less content
coverage.
This year's summer assignment has been created with this course change in mind. It consists of reading a
variety of primary documents and secondary articles to prepare you for a writing exam, which will be given the
first day of school. These readings are complex, and will require more than a cursory reading. You will find
specific instructions, a listing of the articles and documents, and guided reading questions on the following
pages.
As far as school supplies are concerned, I recommend the following:
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2 - 2 inch 3 ring binders (this should take care of both semesters)
Loose leaf note book paper or a spiral notebook (this is your choice)
Index cards
Highlighters
Colored Pencils
Set of dividers
If you find that you need my help as you work your way through this summer assignment, please don't hesitate
to contact me. I will be available for most of the summer with the exception of the week before we come back
to school (July 28-August 5,2014)
There are a number of ways that I will communicate with you throughout the year and ways in which you will be
able to reach me: email, texting, website and telephone. During the summer the best way to reach me is by
email. If I need to reach you as an entire group I will use Remind1 01. For those of you who are not familiar with
this form of communication, it is a text messaging service that allows me to send you reminders via text with a
third party number. That means I don't have your actual cell number and you don't have mine. The most
commonly used means of communication to gather information is my website. On this site you will find
extensive resources including guided reading and test schedules for each quarter. Finally, you can usually
reach me before or directly after school by telephone. Below you will find the contact info necessary for each of
the communication options.
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Email: terri brown@avusd.org
Remind101.com instructions
Website: brownieshistory.com
School Telephone: 760-961-2290 xtn. 2503
You can sign up for remind101 by follOWing the instructions below:
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Send a text message to (417) 200-0883 with the message @apush2015
You will receive a message back asking for your name. Please send your first and last
name.
I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you,
Mrs. B
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Reading and Writing Assignment:
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Doc.
In order to complete this assignment you will need to take time to check out two books from the library:
The American Pageant and The American Spirit: Volume I: To 1877 as well as the Summer Reading
Packet.
Read the following texts listed in the table below. All of the readings can be found in The American
Spirit: Volume I: To 1877 as well as the Summer Reading Packet. Remember, you need to read for
understanding, not simply as a task to be checked off.
Take extensive reading notes (source of the document, main idea(s), historic names, events, dates,
etc.).
Incorporate your answers to the guided reading questions within your notes.
Documents 1-6 can be found in the Summer Reading Packet. Documents 7-19 can be found in The
American Spirit: Volume I To 1877.
Texts
Guided Reading Questions:
1.
Imperial Rivalries
What were the catalysts for 15th and 16th century
European exploration? What were the costs and
benefits?
2.
The Columbian Exchange
How did the Columbian Exchange impact the Old and
New Worlds? To what extent were these changes
positive or negative?
3.
The Discovery of the Americas and the
Transatlantic Slave Trade
What factors led to the eventual enslavement of
Africans? Can responsibility for the expansion for
slavery be assigned to an individual country? Why or
why not? What was life like for those Africans who were
taken into slavery?
4.
Jamestown and the Founding of English
America
What were the original goals of the English when they
began settling North America? To what extent did thos
goals change? Why? How did the unique conditions of
Jamestown lay a foundation for two opposing ideas,
self-government and slavery?
5.
Journal of the First Voyage of .
Christopher Columbus. 1492-1493
According to Columbus, how could the natives serve
Spain?
6.
Christopher Columbus, Letter to the
sovereigns on his first voyage, February
15-March 4. 1493
According to this letter, how does Columbus view the
native people on this island? What cultural differences
explain his Viewpoint?
7.
Juan Gines de Sepulveda Belittles the
Indians"(1547)
What differences does Sepulveda emphasize between
Europeans (especially Spaniards) and the Indians, and
on what grounds does he assert the superiority of
European culture?
8.
Bartolome de Las Casas Defends the
Indians (1552)
How are his views of of the Indians different from those
of Sepulveda? What ideas did the two debaters share?
2
9.
Hernan Cortes Conqueres Mexico
(1519-1526)
What advantages did Cortes possess in his
confrontation with the Aztecs? How did his own cultura
background influence his treatment of the native
people?
10.
Aztec Chroniclers Describe the Spanish
Conquest" (1519)
How does this account differ, either factually or
interpretively, from Cortes's description?
11.
Mungo Park Describe Slavers in the
African Interior (1790)
Does Park's account suggest any differences between
the African and European slavers? What inferences
might be drawn from Park's narrative about the
influence of the Europeans on those interior tribes, far
from the coast. that never came into direct contact with
the whites?
12.
A Slave is Taken to Barbados (1750)
What differences does Equiano see between slavery as
practiced in Africa and as practiced in Barbados? Wha
is the most difficult part of his experience as a slave?
13.
Richard Hakluyt Calls for Empire (1582)
What were Hakhluyt's various arguments for settling the
Atlantic Coast north of Florida? Which ones probably
appealed most strongly to Sidney's patriotism and
religious faith?
14.
An English Landlord Describes a
Troubled England (1623)
What did he find most alarming?
15.
Hakluyt Sees England's Salvation in
America (1584)
What did he identify as the most pressing problems to
be solved? In what ways did he see America providing
solutions to those problems? How prophetic was he
about the role the American colonies were to play in
England's commerce?
16.
The Starving Time (1609)
What indications of modesty or lack of it are present?
What pulled the settlers through?
17.
Governor Berkeley Reports (1671)
From what economic and social handicaps did Virginia
suffer? Which one was the most burdensome? What
is significantly revealed of Berkeley's character and
outlook?
18.
The Great Indian Uprising (1622)
What does it reveal about how the colony subsisted,
how earnest the Christianizing efforts of the colonists
were, and how the disaster could be used to the
advantage of the Virginians?
19.
A Missionary Denounces the Treatment
of the Indians in South Carolina (1708)
What did he see as the principal harm inflicted on the
Indians by whites? In what ways did the whites'
treatment of the native peoples complicate his efforts to
spread Christianity among them?
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The Significance of 1492
The four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of the New World was commemorated
with a massive "Columbian Exhibition" in Chicago in 1893. The exhibition celebrated Columbus as a man of
mythic stature, an explorer and discoverer who carried Christian civilization across the Atlantic Ocean and
initiated the modern age.
The five hundredth anniversary of Columbus's first voyage of discovery was treated quite differently. Many
peoples of indigenous and African descent identified Columbus with imperialism, colonialism, and conquest.
The National Council of Churches adopted a resolution calling October 12th a day of mourning for millions of
indigenous people who died as a result of European colonization.
More than five hundred years after the first Spaniards arrived in the Caribbean, historians and the general
public still debate Columbus's legacy. Should he be remembered as a great discoverer who brought
European culture to a previously unknown World ( or snou.o ne De conaemned as a man responsible for an
"American Holocaust," a man who brought devastating European and Asian diseases to unprotected native
peoples, who disrupted the American ecosystem, and who initiated the Atlantic slave trade? What is
Columbus's legacy--discovery and progress or slavery, disease, and racial antagonism?
To confront such questions, one must first recognize that the encounter that began in 1492 among the
peoples of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres was one of the truly epochal events in world history. This
cultural collision not only produced an extraordinary transformation of the natural environment and human
cultures in the New World, it also initiated far-reaching changes in the Old World as well.
New foods reshaped the diets of people in both hemispheres. Tomatoes, chocolate, potatoes, corn, green
beans, peanuts, vanilla, pineapple, and turkey transformed the European diet, while Europeans introduced
sugar, cattle, pigs, cloves, ginger, cardamon, and almonds to the Americas. Global patterns of trade were
overturned, as crops grown in the New World--including tobacco, rice, and vastly expanded production of
sugar--fed growing consumer markets in Europe.
Even the natural environment was transformed. Europeans cleared vast tracks of forested land and
inadvertently introduced Old World weeds. The introduction of cattle, goats, horses, sheep, and swine also
transformed the ecology as grazing animals ate up many native plants and disrupted indigenous systems of
agriculture. The horse, extinct in the New World for 10,000 years, transformed the daily existence of many
indigenous peoples. The introduction of the horse encouraged many farming peoples to become hunters and
herders. Hunters mounted on horses were also much more adept at killing game.
Death and disease - these too were consequences of contact. Diseases against which Indian peoples had
no natural immunities caused the greatest mass deaths in human history. Within a century of contact,
smallpox, measles, mumps, and whooping cough had reduced indigenous populations by 50 to 90 percent.
From Peru to Canada, disease reduced the resistance that Native Americans were able to offer to European
intruders.
With the Indian population decimated by disease, Europeans gradually introduced a new labor force into the
New World: enslaved Africans. Between 1502 and 1870, when the Atlantic slave trade was finally
suppressed, ten to fifteen million Africans were shipped to the Americas.
Columbus's voyage of discovery also had another important result; it contributed to the development of the
modern concept of progress. To many Europeans, the New World seemed to be a place of innocence,
freedom, and eternal youth. Columbus himself believed that he had landed near the Biblical Garden of Eden.
The perception of the New World as an environment free from the corruptions and injustices of European
life would provide a vantage point for criticizing all social evils. So while the collision of three worlds
resulted in death and enslavement in unprecedented numbers, it also encouraged visions of a more perfect
future.
4
The European voyages of discovery of the late fifteenth century played a critical role in the development of
modern conceptions of progress. From the ancient Greeks onward, western culture tended to emphasize
certain unchanging and universal ideas about human society. But the discovery of the New World threw
many supposedly universal ideals into doubt. The Indians, who seemingly lived free from all the traditional
constraints of civilized life--such as private property or family bonds--offered a vehicle for criticizing the
corruptions, abuses, and restrictions of European society.
In 1516 the English humanist Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) published Utopia, his description of an ideal
society where crime, injustice, and poverty did not exist. Writing just twenty-four years after Columbus's
first voyage to the Caribbean, More located his perfect society in the Western Hemisphere. More's book,
which is written in the form of a dialogue, pointedly contrasts the simplicity of life in Utopia with
contemporary Europe's class divisions. In Utopia, property is held in common, gold is scorned, and all
inhabitants eat the same food and wear the same clothes. Ana yet several features of More's Utopia strike
a jarring note, For one thing, his book justifies taking land from the indigenous people because, in European
eyes, they did not cultivate it. And secondly, the prosperity and well-being of fV1ore's ideal society
ultimately rests on slave labor.
Christopher Columbus believed that Indians would serve as a slave labor force for Europeans, especially on
the sugar cane plantations off the western coast of north Africa. Convinced that the Taino Indians of the
Caribbean would make ideal slaves, he transported 500 to Spain in 1495. Some 200 died during the
overseas voyage. Thus Columbus initiated the African slave trade, which originally moved from the New
World to the Old, rather than the reverse.
Document 5:
Sunday, 14th of October
... these people are very simple as regards the use of arms, as your Highnesses will see from the seven
that I caused to be taken, to bring home and learn our language and return; unless your Highnesses
should order them all to be brought to Castile, or to be kept as captives on the same island; for with fifty
men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them ....
Sunday, 16th of December
... your Highnesses may believe that this island (Hispaniola), and all the others, are as much yours as
Castile. Here there is only wanting a settlement and the order to the people to do what is required. For I,
with the force I have under me, which is not large, could march over all these islands without opposition, I
have seen only three sailors land, without wishing to do harm, and a multitude of Indians fled before them.
They have no arms, and are without warlike instincts; they all go naked, and are so timid that a thousand
would not stand before three of our men. So that they are good to be ordered about, to work and sow,
and do all that may be necessary, and to build towns, and they should be taught to go about clothed and
to adopt our customs.
Source: "Journal of the First Voyage
Cabot, 985-1503 (New York, 1906),
Source: "Journal of the First Voyage
Cabot, 985-1503. Edited by Edward
of Christopher Columbus, 1492-1493," in E. G. Bourne, The Norihmen, Columbus and
114, 145-146, 182
of Christopher Columbus, 1492-93" in E, G. Bourne, The Northmen, Columbus, and
Gaylord Bourne. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1906, pp. 114, 145-146, 182.
Document 6:
.... The people of this island [Hispaniola] end of all the other islands which I have found and seen, or have
not seen, all go naked, men and women, as their mothers bore them, except that some women cover one
place with the leaf of a plant or with a net of cotton which they make for that purpose. They have no iron
or steel or weapons, nor are they capable of using them, although they are well-built people of handsome
stature, because they are wondrous timid. They have no other arms than the arms of canes, [cut] when
5
they are in seed time, to the end of which they fix a sharp little stick; and they dare not make use of
these, for oftentimes it has happened that I have sent ashore two or three men to some town to have
speech, and people without number have come out to them, as soon as they saw them coming, they fled;
even a father would not stay for his son; and this was not because wrong had been done to anyone; on
the contrary, at every point where 1 have been and have been able to have speech, 1 have given them of
all that 1 had, such as cloth and many other things, without receiving anything for it; but they are like
that, timid beyond cure. It is true that after they have been reassured and have lost this fear, they are
so artless and so free with all they possess, that no one would believe it without having seen it. Of
anything they have, if you ask them for it, they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it,
and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts; and whether the thing be of value or of small
price, at once they are content with whatever little thing of whatever kind may be given to them. 1
forbade that they should be given things so worthless as pieces of broken crockery and broken glass, and
lace points, although when they were able to get them, they thought they had the best jewel in the
world.... And they know neither sect nor idolatry, with the exception that all believe that the source of all
power and goodness is in the sky, and in this belief they everywhere received me, after they had
overcome their fear. And this does not result from their being ignorant (for they are of a very keen
intelligence and men who navigate all those seas, so that it is wondrous the good account they give of
everything), but because they have never seen people clothed or ships like ours.
Source: Gilder Lehrman Institute
Additional information: Christopher Columbus, Letter to the sovereigns on his first voyage, February is-March 4, 1493
By the beginning of the sixteenth century, Spain's experiments in enslaving Indians were failing. To meet
the mounting demand for labor in mining and agriculture, the Spanish began to exploit a new labor force:
slaves from western Africa.
Slavery was a familiar institution to many sixteenth-century Europeans. Although slavery had gradually died
out in northwestern Europe, it continued to flourish around the Mediterranean Sea. Ongoing warfare
between Christianity and Islam produced thousands of slave laborers, who were put to work in heavy
agriculture in Italy, southern France, eastern Spain, Sicily, and eastern Europe near the Black Sea. Most
slaves in this area were "white"--either Arabs or natives of Russia and eastern Europe. But by the
mid-fifteenth century, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire cut off the supply of white slaves. It was
during the mid-fifteenth century that Portugal established trading relations along the West African coast,
and discovered that it was able to purchase huge numbers of black slaves at a low cost.
Several factors made African slaves the cheapest and most expedient labor source. The prevailing ocean
currents made it relatively easy to transport Africans to the Caribbean. Further, because Africans came
from developed agricultural societies, they were already familiar with highly organized tropical agriculture.
The first African slaves were brought to the New World as early as 1502, where they would mine precious
metals and raise sugar, coffee, and tobacco--the first goods sold to a mass consumer market.
The African slave trade would be an indispensable part of European settlement and development of the New
World. By the mid-eighteenth century, slaves could be found everywhere in the Americas from French
Canada to Chile. Indeed, the number of Africans forcibly imported into the New World actually exceeded the
number of whites who would come to the Americas before the 1830s. Between 1492 and 1820,
approximately ten to fifteen million Africans were forcibly brought to the New World, while only about two
million Europeans had migrated.
In a letter reporting his discoveries to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, Christopher Columbus
(1451-1506) paints a portrait of the indigenous Taino Indians as living lives of freedom and innocence near
the biblical Garden of Eden.
6
The Black Legend
Late in the eighteenth century, around the time of the three hundredth anniversary of Columbus's voyage
of discovery, the Abbe Raynal (1713-1796), a French philosopher, offered a prize for the best answer to
the question: "Has the discovery of America been beneficial or harmful to the human race?"
Eight responses to the question survive. Of these, four argued that Columbus's voyage had harmed human
happiness. The European discovery of the New World had a devastating impact on the Indian peoples of
the Americas. Oppressive labor, disruption of the Indian food supply, deliberate campaigns of extermination,
and especially disease decimated the Indian population. Isolated from such diseases as smallpox, influenza,
and measles, the indigenous population proved to be extraordinarily susceptible. Within a century of
contact, the Indian population in the Caribbean and Mexico had shrunk by over 90 percent.
During the sixteenth century, wnen the House 01 rrabsburo {.Heslcieu over an empire that included Spain,
Austria, Italy, Holland, and much of the I\lew World, Spain's enemies created an enduring set of ideas known
as the "Black Legend." Propagandists from England, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands vilified the
Spanish as a corrupt and cruel people who subjugated and exploited the New World Indians, stole their gold
and silver, infected them with disease, and killed them in numbers without precedent. In 1580, William I,
Prince of Orange (1533-1584), who led Dutch Protestants in rebellion against Spanish rule, declared that
Spain "committed such horrible excesses that all the barbarities, cruelties and tyrannies ever perpetrated
before are only games in comparison to what happened to the poor Indians."
Ironically, the Black Legend drew upon criticisms first voiced by the Spanish themselves. During the
sixteenth century, observers like Bartolome de las Casas (1474-1566), the bishop of Chiapas, condemned
maltreatment of the Indians. As a way to protect Indians from utter destruction, las Casas proposed an
alternative labor force: slaves from Africa. Given the drastic decline of the Indian population and the
reluctance of Europeans to perform heavy agricultural labor, African slaves would raise the staple crops
that provided the basis for New World prosperity: sugar, coffee, rice, and indigo.
Las Casas would come to regret his role in encouraging the slave trade. Although he rejected the idea that
slavery itself was a crime or sin, he did begin to see African slavery as a source of evil. Unfortunately, las
Casas's apology was not published for more than 300 years.
The Black Legend provided powerful ideological sanction for English involvement in the New World. By
seizing treasure from Spanish ships, staging raids on Spanish ports and cities in the Americas, and enlisting
runaway slaves known as Cimarons to prey on the Spanish, Protestant England would strike a blow against
Spain's aggressive Catholicism and rescue the Indians from Spanish slavery. But it is a pointed historical
irony that the very English seamen, like Drake and Hawkins, who promised to rescue the Indians from
Spanish bondage, also bought and enslaved Africans along the West African coast and transported them to
Spanish America, where they sold them to Spanish colonists.
Primary Source Documents:
The American
Document 7
Document 8
Document 9
Document 10
Document 11
Document 12
Spirit: Volume 1 (pgs. 3-6,9-15, 20-25)
"Juan Gines de Sepulveda Belittles the Indians" (1547)
"Bartolome de Las Casas Defends the Indians" (1552)
"Hernan Cortes Conquers Mexico" (1519-1526)
"Aztec Chroniclers Describe the Spanish Conquest" (1519)
"Mungo Park Describe Slavers in the African Interior" (1790)
"A Slave is Taken to Barbados" (1750)
7
English Colonization Begins
During the early and mid-sixteenth century, the English tended to conceive of North America as a base for
piracy and harassment of the Spanish. But by the end of the century, the English began to think more
seriously about North America as a place to colonize: as a market for English goods and a source of raw
materials and commodities such as furs. English promoters claimed that New World colonization offered
England many advantages. Not only would it serve as a bulwark against Catholic Spain, it would supply
England with raw materials and provide a market for finished products. America would also provide a place
to send the English poor and ensure that they would contribute to the nation's wealth.
During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the English poor increased rapidly in number. As
a result of the enclosure of traditional common lands (which were increasingly used to raise sheep), many
common people were forced to become wage laborers or else to support themselves hand-to-mouth or
simply as beggars.
After unsuccessful attempts to establish settlements in Newfoundland and at Roanoke, the famous "Lost
Colony," off the coast of present-day North Carolina, England established its first permanent North
American settlement, Jamestown, in 1607. Located in swampy marshlands along Virginia's James River,
Jamestown's residents suffered horrendous mortality rates during its first years. Immigrants had just a
fifty-fifty chance of surviving five years.
The Jamestown expedition was financed by the Virginia Company of London, which believed that precious
metals were to be found in the area. From the outset, however, Jamestown suffered from disease and
conflict with Indians. Approximately 30,000 Algonquian Indians lived in the region, divided into about 40
tribes. About 30 tribes belonged to a confederacy led by Powhatan.
Food was an initial source of conflict. l"1ore interested in finding gold and silver than in farming, Jamestown's
residents (many of whom were either aristocrats or their servants) were unable or unwilling to work. When
the English began to seize Indian food stocks, Powhatan cut off supplies, forcing the colonists to subsist on
frogs, snakes, and even decaying corpses.
Captain John Smith (1580?-1631) was twenty-six years old when the first expedition landed. A farmer's
son, Smith had already led an adventurous life before arriving in Virginia. He had fought with the Dutch
army against the Spanish and in eastern Europe against the Ottoman Turks, when he was taken captive
and enslaved. He later escaped to Russia before returning to England.
Smith, serving as president of the Jamestown colony from 1608 to 1609, required the colonists to work and
traded with the Indians for food. In 1609, after being wounded in a gunpowder accident, Smith returned to
England. After his departure, conflict between the English and the Powhatan confederacy intensified,
especially after the colonists began to clear land in order to plant tobacco.
In a volume recounting the history of the English colony in Virginia, Smith describes a famous incident in
which Powhatan's 12-year-old daughter, Pocahontas (1595?-1617), saved him from execution. Although
some have questioned whether this incident took place (since Smith failed to mention it in his Historie's first
edition), it may well have been a "staged event," an elaborate adoption ceremony by which Powhatan
symbolically made Smith his vassal or servant. Through similar ceremonies, the Powhatan people
incorporated outsiders into their society. Pocahontas reappears in the colonial records in 1613, when she
was lured aboard an English ship and held captive. Negotiations for her release failed, and in 1614, she
married John Rolfe, the colonist who introduced tobacco to Virginia. Whether this marriage represented an
attempt to forge an alliance between the English and the Powhatan remains uncertain.
8
Primary Source Documents:
The American
Document 13
Document 14
Document 15
Spirit Volume 1 (pgs. 28-31)
"Richard Hakluyt Calls for Empire" (1582)
"An English Landlord Describes a Troubled England" (1623)
"Hakluyt Sees England's Salvation in America" (1584)
Life in Early Virginia
Early Virginia was a death trap. Of the first 3,000 immigrants, all but 600 were dead within a few years of
arrival. Virginia was a society in which life was short, diseases ran rampant, and parentless children and
multiple marriages were the norm.
In sharp contrast to New England, which was settled mainly oy rarnures. most of the settlers of Virginia and
neighboring Maryland were single men bound in servitude. Before the colonies turned decisively to slavery in
the late seventeenth century, planters relied on white indentured servants from England, Ireland, and
Scotland. They wanted men, not women. During the early and mid-seventeenth century, as many as four
men arrived for every woman.
Why did large numbers of people come to such an unhealthful region? To raise tobacco, which had been
introduced into England in the late sixteenth century. Like a number of other consumer products introduced
during the early modern era--like tea, coffee, and chocolate--tobacco was related to the development of
new work patterns and new forms of sociability. Tobacco appeared to relieve boredom and stress and to
enhance peoples' ability to concentrate over prolonged periods of time. Tobacco production required a large
labor force, which initially consisted primarily of white indentured servants, who received transportation to
Virginia in exchange for a four to seven-year term of service.
Lacking valuable minerals or other products in high demand, it appeared that Jamestown was an economic
failure. After ten years, however, the colonists discovered that Virginia was an ideal place to cultivate
tobacco, which had been recently introduced into Europe. Since tobacco production rapidly exhausted the
soil of nutrients, the English began to acquire new lands along the James River, encroaching on Indian
hunting grounds.
In 1622, Powhatan's successor, Opechcanough, tried to wipe out the English in a surprise attack. Two
Indian converts to Christianity warned the English; still, 347 settlers, or about a third of the English
colonists, died in the attack. Warfare persisted for ten years, followed by an uneasy peace. In 1644,
Opechcanough launched a last, desperate attack. After about two years of warfare, in which some 500
colonists were killed, Opechcanough was captured and shot and the survivors of Powhatan's confederacy,
now reduced to just 2,000, agreed to submit to English rule.
Raising tobacco required a large labor force. At first, it was not clear that this labor force would consist of
enslaved Africans. Virginians experimented with a variety of labor sources, including Indian slaves, penal
slaves, and white indentured servants. Convinced that England was overpopulated with vagabonds and
paupers, the colonists imported surplus Englishmen to raise tobacco and to produce dyestuffs, potash, furs,
and other goods that England had imported from other countries. Typically, young men or women in their
late teens or twenties would sign a contract of indenture. In exchange for transportation to the New World,
a servant would work for several years (usually four to seven) without wages.
The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was not wholly dissimilar from slavery.
Servants could be bought, sold, or leased. They could also be physically beaten for disobedience or running
away. Unlike slaves, however, they were freed after their term of service expired, their children did not
inherit their status, and they received a small cash payment of "freedom dues."
9
The English writer Daniel Defoe (1661?-1731) set part of his novel Moll Flanders (1683) in early Virginia.
Defoe described the people who settled in Virginia in distinctly unflattering terms: There were convicts, who
had been found guilty of felonies punishable by death, and there were those "brought over by masters of
ships to be sold as servants. Such as we call them, my dear, but they are more properly called slaves."
George Alsop, an indentured servant in Maryland, echoed these sentiments in 1666. Servants "by hundreds
of thousands" spent their lives "here and in Virginia, and elsewhere in planting that vile tobacco, which all
vanishes into smoke, and is for the most part miserably abused." And, he went on, this "insatiable avarice
must be fed and sustained by the bloody sweat of these poor slaves."
Primary Source Documents:
The American Spirit Volume 1 (pgs.32-36, 38-39)
Document 16 "The Starving Time" (1609)
Document 17 "Governor Berkeley Reports (1671)
Document 18 "The Great Indian Uprising" (1622)
Document 19 "A Missionary Denounces the Treatment of the Indians in South Carolina" (1708)
10
Imperial Rivalries I The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
5/13/147:35 PM
Imperial Rivalries
by Peter C. Mancall
The Spanish Armada faces the English fleet, 1588. Detail from Expeditionis Hispanorum,
1588. (Library of Congress Geography and Map Division)
When Christopher Columbus made his plans to sail westward across the Atlantic, he first set off across
Europe to find sponsors. His brother Bartholomew went to the court of the English King Henry VII (who
turned him down, much to the regret of later Britons who realized the opportunity they had missed).
Eventually Columbus received support from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. He sailed
westward in search of a new route to the riches of East Asia and the Southwest Pacific, but he also
ventured forth as an agent of a particular European state. Columbus therefore claimed (and renamed)
new lands for Spain and planted the Spanish flag to mark its expanded territory.
Columbus's activities before and during his historic journey reflected his understanding of European
politics in the late fifteenth century. Venturing westward was too expensive for an individual to fund
independently, hence governments sponsored such voyages. European policy makers knew that they
were always competing with each other. They also understood that their rivalries must not offend the
church; until the Protestant Reformation, religious authority belonged to the pope and his court in Rome,
along with his representatives across Europe.
Unlike modern nations, European states in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were not
especially well organized or efficient. Any accurate map of Europe revealed that principalities, not
modern nation-states, dominated the continent. There was no such entity as "Ireland," for example. The
island instead was the home of four provinces-Leinster, Munster, Connacht, and Ulster-ruled by
chieftains, each of whom controlled a large territory where inhabitants paid taxes in exchange for
protection. The leaders of such petty fiefdoms and rulers of larger kingdoms tended to see their
neighbors as rivals; just as Leinster feuded with Munster, England remained at odds with France, and
France competed with the Spanish kingdoms. Long-distance military expeditions against more distant
foreign powers were relatively rare because they were so expensive. European crusaders ventured out
to retake the Holy Land from the late eleventh to the late thirteenth centuries, hoping to lay claim to
Jerusalem and protect it from the growing power of Muslim states, but also to make a tidy profit in trade
with Middle Eastern merchants. Along the way, these Christian warriors often raided the territories they
passed through, engendering animosities that lasted for generations.
HIDE FULL ESSAY.
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The most important national rivalries for the Western Hemisphere took shape after 1492. The same
year that Columbus sailed westward, the combined forces of the Spanish kingdoms under the Castilian
Queen Isabella and the Aragonese King Ferdinand reclaimed Iberia from the Islamic Moors; they also
expelled Jews who lived there, or forced those who remained to convert to Christianity (at which point
they became known as Marranos or conversos). Both actions endeared the monarchs to Christian
leaders. On May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI (a Spaniard), after hearing about Columbus's discovery of
a "new world," rewarded Ferdinand and Isabella with the Bull of Donation, also known as the Inter
caetera, which authorized Spain to colonize and exploit American lands despite earlier papal
documents that had granted Portugal control of newly discovered regions. The following year the
Spanish and Portuguese rulers, whose ships were then engaged in the most far-reaching European
exploratory ventures, agreed to the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas, which established a geographical
line approximately 1,200 nautical miles west of the Cape Verde islands. This boundary entitled the
Portuguese to lay claim to Brazil, which they colonized in the sixteenth century, in addition to lands
newly seen by Europeans in the Old World. Spain, meanwhile, could claim everything that lay to the
west of the line.
These papally sanctioned agreements propelled the Spanish and Portuguese to establish colonies in
the Western Hemisphere as well as (for the Portuguese) areas in and near the Indian Ocean and the
southwestern Pacific. In addition to the voyages of Columbus, the Spanish sent other would-be
conquerors to lay claim to new territories, including Hernan Cortes, who led Spanish forces to victory
over the Aztecs in Mexico in the late 151Os, and Francisco Pizarro, whose army emerged victorious
over the Incas in Peru in the 1530s. In the years that followed, Spanish conquerors raised their standard
across much of southwest North America as well as Florida. Spanish and Portuguese colonizers
eagerly extracted wealth from these new territories, especially in the form of hordes of gold, silver, and
precious jewels. They made sure to send gifts of thanks to their religious patrons. The pope purportedly
used some of the gold sent by the Spanish to cover the ceiling of Rome's ancient basilica and one of its
greatest churches, Santa Maria Maggiore. The extraction of this wealth came at a high cost not only to
America's indigenous peoples, who witnessed the desecration of temples to satisfy the lust of the
conquistadores, but also to humanity's history and art, since the newcomers typically melted Native
icons and thereby erased ancient cultures.
The agreements of the early 1490s made sense in a Europe where the Spanish and the Portuguese
were the dominant maritime players. But over the course of the sixteenth century other Europeans also
recognized the benefits of long-distance commerce and conquest. The French had been interested in
possibilities of Atlantic enterprise since the early decades of the sixteenth century. The Breton explorer
Jacques Cartier made three voyages-in 1534,1535-1536, and 1541-1542-as part of an effort to
expand knowledge of North America and identify a possible route through the continent to the South
Sea. He never found that passage, but he did explore the St. Lawrence Valley and laid an initial French
claim to Canada. By mid-century, a group of mapmakers clustered in Dieppe had produced a series of
new maps, based on Portuguese sea charts (called portolans), which hinted at what explorers would
find. In July 1608 Samuel Champlain, after exploring other territory farther south, etablished Quebec
City, which would become the central colonial outpost of New France. Such grand assertions-such as
claiming ownership of Canada based on establishing a relatively small community-were not unique. In
1609, the Dutch-employed English captain Henry Hudson, after failing to find the Northeast Passage
(which he hoped would take him through open water north of Russia to the Pacific), crossed the Atlantic
and eventually made his way up the river that now bears his name. In the years that followed the Dutch
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laid a formal claim to this region, calling it New Netherland and establishing their main outpost on the
island of Manhattan.
The English, for their part, schemed to gain control of much of North America, hoping-as did the
French and the Dutch-to find the Northwest Passage, a water route to Asia that European mapmakers
were convinced existed somewhere in North America. Whoever found that route would be able to
control passage from the Atlantic to the South Sea (now the Pacific Ocean) and from there to Japan,
China, and the Spice Islands. Since Europeans had fallen in love with East Asian silk as well as the
cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and peppers from places like Banda much earlier, these sixteenth-century
explorers knew there was enormous demand for whatever they could bring back. A northern route
would in theory drastically cut the length of the journey, thus ensuring that the spices sailors hauled
home would be fresher than those brought by other Europeans who took southern routes around Africa
or South America. A quick water route would also have enabled northern Europeans to cut off both the
Spanish, who got to the East efficiently only after they claimed Mexico and built a major port at
Acapulco (so they could send silver to the Philippines to purchase spices and silks), as well as the
Portuguese, who reached the Pacific by sailing around Africa and then across the Indian Ocean. Even
more important, the discovery of the northerly route would (at least in the opinion of the English) prove
that God favored the Reformation and hence reward those who broke away from Rome-a far greater
prize than the demarcation line with which the pope had rewarded Spain and Portugal.
It is impossible to overstate the significance of religious strife in post-Reformation Europe. After the
Reformation, northern European Protestants were eager to establish claims in new territories so that
they could prevent the spread of the faith now known as Roman Catholicism. Under Queen Elizabeth I,
a daughter of Henry VIII, the English renewed their longstanding effort to colonize Ireland, which had
begun in the twelfth century but had never fully succeeded. Elizabeth's commanders, fueled by the idea
that Irish Christianity was inferior to their own and thus needed to be eradicated, employed brutal tactics
on the battlefield. This experience shaped the mindset of some of the English who later joined missions
across the Atlantic. The English, who would eventually gain control of the Atlantic coast of North
America between Canada and Florida, made their contest with Rome a central part of their arguments
for conquest and colonization. They were aided, as it turned out, by a report written by a one-time
slaveholder turned Dominican missionary named Bartolome de Las Casas, who in 1552 published (in
Seville) a book called A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. The book contained lurid details
about torture and murder perpetrated by Spanish conquistadors in the Indies, which Las Casas urged
the Spanish court to recognize in order to halt such violent tactics. When the book appeared in an
English language translation in London in 1583, its purpose had less to do with changing Spanish
tactics. It became a testimony to the inherently barbarous nature of Iberian Catholics, a theme picked
up by other English authors in the 1580s and 1590s. These texts helped prompt reluctant Protestants to
commit precious resources to the creation of overseas colonies, thereby expanding the European
imperial contest for dominance in the Atlantic basin.
Although Europeans looking westward across the Atlantic were in constant competition for lands,
riches, and souls, they shared information about new discoveries with surprising frequency. When
Columbus returned from his first journey, his initial testimony quickly appeared in a book now known to
scholars as the Barcelona Letter of 1493, after the place where a publisher first printed it. Soon editions
in other languages appeared, including one published in Basel, Switzerland, also in 1493, which
included crude woodcuts created by an artist who had read the text and tried to create a visual
rendering of Columbus's initial encounter with the Arawaks or Tainos. By 1500, descriptions of
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Columbus's voyages had spread across Europe.
The spread of works about Columbus was only the beginning. Over the course of the sixteenth century,
when printing presses proliferated across Europe, scores of new books testified to both the
opportunities and dangers of the Western Hemisphere. One of those books was written by a young
English mathematician named Thomas Harriot, who had traveled to the outer banks of modern North
Carolina, in 1585. In 1588 Harriot produced a small book rich with details about the region he had seen,
the peoples who lived there, and the natural resources that could be extracted from its landscape.
Harriot called his book A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. Two years later, an
avid promoter of English colonization named Richard Hakluyt the younger (to differentiate him from his
cousin) took the text from Harriot's book and worked with a Flemish engraver based in Frankfurt-am­
Main, Theodor de Bry, to produce the first fully illustrated published account of any Native American
population. In 1590 English, French, German, and Latin versions all rolled off de Bry's presses.
What could explain such a pUblishing strategy? After all, France was still a Catholic nation, as were
parts of German-speaking central Europe, so a book extolling the virtues of territory claimed by the
English might only feed the desire of English foes to seize the region. Yet Hakluyt and the others
embraced the multi-language edition because they recognized that the European scientific community
needed to know about new discoveries. The scholars among them could read Latin, but by the late
sixteenth century vernacular languages had also come to be important in the transmission of
knowledge, as people who were not scholars became interested in the world around them and the new
discoveries.
The four-language edition of Harriot's Brief and True Report serves as a cautionary tale for scholars
trying to understand European imperial rivalries during the initial colonization of the Americas.
Europeans competed fiercely for territories and souls that they believed they could and should conquer.
They also mounted legal arguments about which European nation could justly claim which parts of the
non-European world. These arguments included a tract written by a Dutch jurist named Hugo Grotius,
published in 1609 as Mare Liberum (the Free Sea), which aimed at undermining the Treaty of
Tordesillas. Grotius asserted that the Spanish and Portuguese could not lay permanent claim to
territories based on a geographical line drawn through the ocean, because no one could own the sea.
By the time the English founded Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, imperial rivals jostled for control of the
resources of the Atlantic basin. Eventually European contests would spawn American battles too, with
far-ranging consequences for the Native peoples who came into contact with newcomers eager to
establish a firm grip over the Western Hemisphere.
Peter C. Manca/l is the Andrew W Mellon Professor of the Humanities and Professor of history and
anthropology at the University of Southern California and the director of the USC-Huntington Early
Modern Studies Institute. His publications include Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson
-A Tale of Mutiny and Murder in the Arctic (2009), Hakluyt's Promise: An Elizabethan's Obsession for
an English America (2007), and Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery: An Anthology (2006). He
is currently working on American Origins, which will be volume one of the Oxford History of the United
States.
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The Age Of Exploration
The Columbian Exchange
by Alfred Crosby
Millions of years ago, continental drift carried the Old World and New Worlds
apart, splitting North and South America from Eurasia and Africa. That
separation lasted so long that it fostered divergent evolution; for instance, the
development of rattlesnakes on one side of the Atlantic and vipers on the other.
After 1492, human voyagers in part reversed this tendency. Their artificial re­
establishment of connections through the commingling of Old and New World
Detail from a 1682 map of
plants, animals, and bacteria, commonly known as the Columbian Exchange, is North America, Novi Belgi
one of the more spectacular and significant ecological events of the past
Novaeque Angliae, by
Nicholas Visscher. (Gilder
millennium.
Lehrman Collection)
When Europeans first touched the shores of the Americas, Old World crops such as wheat, barley, rice,
and turnips had not traveled west across the Atlantic, and New World crops such as maize, white
potatoes, sweet potatoes, and manioc had not traveled east to Europe. In the Americas, there were no
horses, cattle, sheep, or goats, all animals of Old World origin. Except for the llama, alpaca, dog, a few
fowl, and guinea pig, the New World had no equivalents to the domesticated animals associated with
the Old World, nor did it have the pathogens associated with the Old World's dense populations of
humans and such associated creatures as chickens, cattle, black rats, and Aedes egypti mosquitoes.
Among these germs were those that carried smallpox, measles, chickenpox, influenza, malaria, and
yellow fever.
The Columbian exchange of crops affected both the Old World and the New. Amerindian crops that
have crossed oceans-for example, maize to China and the white potato to Ireland-have been
stimulants to population growth in the Old World. The latter's crops and livestock have had much the
same effect in the Americas-for example, wheat in Kansas and the Pampa, and beef cattle in Texas
and Brazil. The full story of the exchange is many volumes long, so for the sake of brevity and clarity let
us focus on a specific region, the eastern third of the United States of America.
HIDE FULL ESSAY
.i.
As might be expected, the Europeans who settled on the east coast of the United States cultivated
crops like wheat and apples, which they had brought with them. European weeds, which the colonists
did not cultivate and, in fact, preferred to uproot, also fared well in the New World. John Josselyn, an
Englishman and amateur naturalist who visited New England twice in the seventeenth century, left us a
list, "Of Such Plants as Have Sprung Up since the English Planted and Kept Cattle in New England,"
which included couch grass, dandelion, shepherd's purse, groundsel, sow thistle, and chickweeds. One
of these, a plantain (Plantago major), was named "Englishman's Foot" by the Amerindians of New
England and Virginia who believed that it would grow only where the English "have trodden, and was
never known before the English came into this country." Thus, as they intentionally sowed Old World
crop seeds, the European settlers were unintentionally contaminating American fields with weed seed.
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More importantly, they were stripping and burning forests, exposing the native minor flora to direct
sunlight and to the hooves and teeth of Old World livestock. The native flora could not tolerate the
stress. The imported weeds could, because they had lived with large numbers of grazing animals for
thousands of years.
Cattle and horses were brought ashore in the early 1600s and found hospitable climate and terrain in
North America. Horses arrived in Virginia as early as 1620 and in Massachusetts in 1629. Many
wandered free with little more evidence of their connection to humanity than collars with a hook at the
bottom to catch on fences as they tried to leap over them to get at crops. Fences were not for keeping
livestock in, but for keeping livestock out.
Native American resistance to the Europeans was ineffective. Indigenous peoples suffered from white
brutality, alcoholism, the killing and driving off of game, and the expropriation of farmland, but all these
together are insufficient to explain the degree of their defeat. The crucial factor was not people, plants,
or animals, but germs. The history of the United States begins with Virginia and Massachusetts, and
their histories begin with epidemics of unidentified diseases. At the time of the abortive Virginia colony
at Roanoke in the 1580s the nearby Amerindians "began to die quickly. The disease was so strange
that they neither knew what it was, nor how to cure it."[1] When the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth,
Massachusetts, in 1620, they did so in a village and on a coast nearly cleared of Amerindians by a
recent epidemic. Thousands had "died in a great plague not long since; and pity it was and is to see so
many goodly fields, and so well seated, without man to dress and manure the same."[2]
Smallpox was the worst and the most spectacular of the infectious diseases mowing down the Native
Americans. The first recorded pandemic of that disease in British North America detonated among the
Algonquin of Massachusetts in the early 1630s: William Bradford of Plymouth Plantation wrote that the
victims "fell down so generally of this disease as they were in the end not able to help one another, no
not to make a fire nor fetch a little water to drink, nor any to bury the dead."[3]
The missionaries and the traders who ventured into the American interior told the same appalling story
about smallpox and the indigenes. In 1738 alone the epidemic destroyed half the Cherokee; in 1759
nearly half the Catawbas; in the first years of the next century two-thirds of the Omahas and perhaps
half the entire population between the Missouri River and New Mexico; in 1837-1838 nearly every last
one of the Mandans and perhaps half the people of the high plains.
European explorers encountered distinctively American illnesses such as Chagas Disease, but these
did not have much effect on Old World populations. Venereal syphilis has also been called American,
but that accusation is far from proven. Even if we add all the Old World deaths blamed on American
diseases together, including those ascribed to syphilis, the total is insignificant compared to Native
American losses to smallpox alone.
The export of America's native animals has not revolutionized Old World agriculture or ecosystems as
the introduction of European animals to the New World did. America's grey squirrels and muskrats and
a few others have established themselves east of the Atlantic and west of the Pacific, but that has not
made much of a difference. Some of America's domesticated animals are raised in the Old World, but
turkeys have not displaced chickens and geese, and guinea pigs have proved useful in laboratories, but
have not usurped rabbits in the butcher shops.
The New World's great contribution to the Old is in crop plants. Maize, white potatoes, sweet potatoes,
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various squashes, chiles. and manioc have become essentials in the diets of hundreds of millions of
Europeans, Africans, and Asians. Their influence on Old World peoples, like that of wheat and rice on
New World peoples, goes far to explain the global population explosion of the past three centuries. The
Columbian Exchange has been an indispensable factor in that demographicexplosion.
All this had nothing to do with superiority or inferiority of biosystems in any absolute sense. It has to do
with environmental contrasts. Amerindianswere accustomed to living in one particular kind of
environment, Europeans and Africans in another. When the Old World peoples came to America, they
brought with them all their plants, animals. and germs, creating a kind of environment to which they
were already adapted, and so they increased in number. Amerindians had not adapted to European
germs, and so initially their numbers plunged. That decline has reversed in our time as Amerindian
populations have adapted to the Old World's environmental influence, but the demographic triumph of
the invaders, which was the most spectacular feature of the Old World's invasion of the New. still
stands.
[1] David B. Quinn, ed. The Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1590: Documents to Illustrate the English
Voyages to North America (London: Hakluyt Society. 1955),378.
[2] Edward Winslow, Nathaniel Morton. William Bradford, and Thomas Prince, New England's Memorial
(Cambridge: Allan and Farnham, 1855), 362.
[3] William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation,
1952),271.
162~1647,
ed. Samuel E. Morison (New York: Knopf,
Alfred W. Croaby IS pror.s,or emeritu, of history. geography, end American ,tudie, at the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to his saminal work on this
topic, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Conaequances 011492 (1972), "- has a/.o wrilt8n America'. Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of
1918 (1989) and Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion 01 Europe. 900-1900 (1986).
The Discovery of the Americas and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
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The Discovery of the Americas and the
Transatlantic Slave Trade
by Ira Berlin
In the middle of the fifteenth century, Europe, Africa, and the
Americas came together, creating-among other things-a new
economy. At the center of that economy was the plantation, an
enterprise dedicated to the production of exotic commodities-the
most prominent being sugar-for a distant market. The sugar
plantation, which first developed in the Mediterranean, was an
enormously complex unit of production requiring the mobilization of
vast amounts of capital, the development of new technologies
(agricultural, industrial, and maritime), the invention of management
Detail of EI Mina from a portolan chart
of the Atlantic Ocean published in
techniques, and-because sugar production was extraordinarily labor 1633. (Library of Congress,
intensive-the employment of huge numbers of workers. Because
Geography and Map Division)
sugar was also a most lucrative commodity, plantation entrepreneurs
drew capital from all corners of the Mediterranean and Europe, from as far away as the Germanies and
the Netherlands. They also developed new technologies to grow, manufacture, and transport sugar
great distances. But perhaps the most difficult problem these businessmen faced was securing the
labor to sustain the vast economic enterprise they were creating.
Few people wanted to work on a sugar plantation. In the fifteenth century, most men and women
labored to gain a competency-a livelihood-for themselves and their families. In the Mediterranean,
peasants (generally attached to a lord in some sort of feudal subordination) grew enough to feed
themselves and their families and a bit more to satisfy the demand of the lord. They wanted little to do
with sugar, whose empty calories might provide a quick burst of energy but could not sustain life. Free
workers also disdained sugar plantations, appreciating that the labor was brutal and dangerous­
literally killing. Sugar entrepreneurs turned to enslaved labor, an ancient form familiar to all in the
fifteenth-century Mediterranean, although rarely employed on a massive scale.
At first, the sugar entrepreneurs enslaved any men and women they could buy or capture. Christian and
Muslim, European and African slaves worked side-by-side on the sugar estates. For reasons of
propinquity, Slavic people taken from the Black Sea composed the majority of the enslaved population
-hence the word "slave." But, in 1453, when Ottoman Turks seized Constantinople and denied
Christian Europeans access to the Black Sea, Africans-who had been carried across the Sahara­
began to make up a larger and larger proportion of the slave labor force.
HIDE FULL ESSAY ...
Africans loomed even larger in the slave population when the Portuguese carried the sugar enterprise
onto newly discovered Atlantic islands: the Azores, the Canaries, and Madeira. On these islands,
plantations were even larger and required even more labor. Portuguese planters, often backed by
Italian bankers, began raiding along the west coast of Africa, seizing Africans and carrying them back to
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Lisbon, where they were sold to locals, sent to the Atlantic islands, or re-exported to other parts of
Europe.
The Portuguese found slave raiding lucrative, but it was also dangerous. Africans resisted,
counterattacking with punishing blows. Eventually, they forced the Portuguese to turn from unabashed
kidnapping to trade, which proved more efficient, more profitable, and safer.
In Africa, native merchants were more than willing to sell slaves to European outsiders, but they did not
sell their own people; rather they sold men and women of nations other than their own, usually men
captured in war or guilty of some heinous offense. They also sold them on their terms. They kept the
Portuguese and other Europeans who entered the trade at a distance, never allowing them onto African
soil without permission, which generally had to be purchased by paying a tax of some sort. African
merchants drove hard bargains with European traders, giving as good as they got. Responsibility for the
slave trade rested with both Europeans and Africans.
The exchange of European goods for enslaved Africans that began in the middle of the fifteenth century
set the terms of the slave trade for the next four hundred years, but the character of that trade was
constantly changing for both traders and slaves. The number of slaves grew; their nationality, sex, and
age fluctuated. New maritime technology changed the transport that carried slaves, which, in turn,
affected everything from the price of slaves to the slaves' mortality and morbidity. And while the trade
expanded enormously, reaching deep into the African interior and to all parts of the Americas, it also
created opposition among Africans, Europeans, and the Americas, which eventually led to the slave
trade's final demise during the middle years of the nineteenth century.
Over the course of its history, the largest change in the nature of the slave trade was simply the growth
of the numbers. During the fifteenth century, some fifty thousand slaves entered Europe and the Atlantic
islands. The number of Africans shipped across the Atlantic during the sixteenth century topped one
quarter of a million. That number grew to nearly two million in the seventeenth century, some six and
one half million in the eighteenth, and another three million plus in the nineteenth century, for an
estimated total of some twelve and a half million.
The origins of the slave population and their destinations also changed over time. The vast majority of
slaves sent to the Americas sailed from west central Africa-Angola and the Kongo-(over 5.5 million),
followed by the Bight of Benin (nearly 2 million), Bight of Biafra (one and a half million), the Upper
Guinea coast (1.5 million), and the Gold Coast (1.2 million). However, the point of disembarkation only
provides partial clues to the origins of the Africans sent to the Americas, as slaves taken from various
places in the interior often left from the same port.
The destinations of slaves taken to the Americas were equally diverse. Slavers carried most of the
Africans caught up in the trade to Brazil (approximately five million), with another 2.25 million sent to the
British Caribbean, and about 1.75 million to the French Caribbean. Most of the rest landed in Spanish
America. The mainland North American colonies and United States, which would eventually have the
largest slave population in the Americas, received less than 400,000 African slaves.
This distribution changed radically over time. For example, most of the slaves imported to the United
States arrived before the American Revolution, while most of those shipped to Cuba landed during the
nineteenth century. Likewise, the Bight of Benin was a bigger source of slaves than the Bight of Biafra
during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, but the reverse was true in the late eighteenth
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and nineteenth centuries. Through the entire period of the slave trade, West Central Africa remained the
largest source of slaves. In short, any account that estimates which slaves went where and when must
consider changes of time and place. And what was true of slaves was also true of slave traders. The
English who were hardly involved in the early slave trade became the largest slave traders in the world
by the eighteenth century.
Although the nature of the slave trade constantly changed, one thing remained the same. The trade was
a violent, deadly business that killed millions, mutilated millions, and traumatized millions. Enslaved
Africans everywhere endured the trauma of enslavement. Although the initial deportees may have been
drawn from wartime prisoners, by the eighteenth century enslaved peoples were rarely guilty of
anything more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, taken by mercenary armies, bandits,
and professional slavers.
Captured deep in the African interior, Africans faced a long, deadly march to the coast. Traveling
sometimes for months, they were passed from group to group, as many different African nations
participated in the slave trade. But whoever drove the captives to their unwanted destiny, the
circumstances of their travel were extraordinarily taxing. III-clothed and ill-fed, the captives moved at a
feverish pace, only to stop and languish in some pen, while middlemen bartered over their bodies, sold
some, and purchased yet others to add to the sad coffle. The journey then began again. Taken
together, the movement to the coast was nothing more than a death march for many. In some places,
some 40 percent of the slaves died between their capture in the interior and their arrival on the coast.
Herded into dismal holding pens or factories along the Atlantic, the survivors-weakened and
traumatized-did not simply await their fate. Even at this last moment, the captives sought to regain
their freedom. Some tried to get word to their families, so they might be ransomed. A handful sought to
escape, although once they entered the walled castles of the slave ports flight became increasingly
difficult. That of course did not prevent them from trying and a small number from succeeding.
These were the fortunate few. Most captives faced the nightmarish transatlantic crossing, the dreaded
Middle Passage. The depths of human misery and the astounding death toll of men and women packed
in the stinking hulls shamed the most hard hearted. Slave traders themselves admitted the deleterious
effects of the trade. Even among those who defended slavery, there were those who condemned the
Middle Passage as an abomination. But, like all human experiences-even the worst-the Middle
Passage was not of one piece. While the vast majority suffered below deck, a few men and women
chosen from among the captives helped set the sails, steer the ships, and serve the crews that carried
the mass of Africans across the Atlantic. Denmark Vesey, the former slave whose alleged conspiracy
shook South Carolina in the 1820s, was but one of many slaves who sailed the Atlantic as the personal
servant of the captain of a slave ship. The Atlantic passage of these captives differed greatly from those
stowed below deck.
For all captives, however, some things never changed. Fear was omnipresent as the Africans, stripped
naked and bereft of their every belonging, boarded the ships and met-often for the first time-white
men. Brandishing red hot irons to mark their captives in the most personal way, these "white men with
horrible looks, red faces, and long hair" left more than a physical scar.[1] Many enslaved Africans
concluded the slavers were in league with the devil, if not themselves devils. For others, the searing of
their skin confirmed that they were bound for the slaughterhouse to be eaten by the cannibals who had
stamped them in much the way animals were marked.
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The branding iron was but the first of many instruments of savagery the captives faced. Eighteenth­
century ships were violent places where imperious captains ruled with the lash, and the barbarity of the
maritime world reached new heights on the slave ship, where whips, chains, shackles, and
thumbscrews were standard equipment. When it came to subduing slaves, the captains' autocratic
power was extended to the crew, and men who had been brutalized often felt little compunction in
brutalizing others. Indeed, the inability of the captives to defend themselves unleashed the most sadistic
impulses among members of the crew.
While violence was ubiquitous on the slave ship, it was neither random nor purposeless. Rather, it was
carefully orchestrated to intimidate captives in circumstances where there were few incentives for men
and women to submit. Slavers hoped that awing captives with overwhelming power wielded without
compunction for life or limb would convince them that resistance was futile. To that end, captives were
stripped of their humanity: denied personal possessions, privacy, and other prerogatives accorded the
meanest members of free society. Slavers used every occasion to emphasize the captives' degraded
status, indeed their lack of status. The filth and violence dissolved the carefully developed distinctions
between the pure and impure upon which many African societies rested. The humiliation that
accompanied such degradation was almost always public, giving the captives little means to maintain
their dignity. Among the lessons taught in this systematic debasement was the sacrosanctity of a white
skin. More than any single place, the origins of white supremacy can be found in the holds of the slave
ship. Speaking though a black interpreter, one captain informed his captives "no one that killed a white
man should be spared."[2]
Equally inescapable was the horror and anguish that accompanied the captives' stark realization of
what plantation slavery in the Americas entailed. Sometime during their journey, in one terrifying
moment. they understood that family, friends, and country were gone, never to be seen again. The
markers of identity-many of which were physically inscribed upon their bodies in ritual scarification,
tooth filing, body piercing, and tattooing-were rendered meaningless, if not a source of ridicule.
Lineage, the most important source of social cohesion in African society, was dissolved. Sons could no
longer follow fathers or daughters follow mothers. The captives had been orphaned, and their isolation
shook them to the very essence of their beings. They had been separated from everything they knew
and loved.
The violence and horror of isolation soon yielded to an even more pervasive companion. As the sharks
that trailed understood, death was a universal presence aboard the slave ship. Its ubiquity was matched
only by its variety, as some men and women died from disease, dehydration, and abuse. The damp,
dank, crowded holds spawned an endless variety of deadly afflictions. Children, whose mortality
exceeded that of adults, fared particularly poorly. Although mortality rates of those crossing the Atlantic
improved over time, on average more than one in seven Africans who boarded a slave ship died, as the
enslaved struggled for space, food, and water. Slaves squabbled among themselves endlessly. Men
and women of many nations who spoke many languages and who frequently belonged to nations with
long histories of animosity did not come automatically or easily make shipboard alliances. Indeed, to
prevent such alliances, slavers sometimes deliberately loaded their ships with men and women of
different nationalities and placed them in close proximity to one another. They understood that old
enmities lingered. It was often easier-and more rewarding-to collaborate with slavers as an informer
than with one's fellows. Slavers depended upon these collaborators as much as they did their own
guns. When "the Jollofes rose," according to one report, "the Bambaras sided with the Master."[3]
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But as the inevitability of a common future manifested itself, the captives found reason to join together.
Confederations born of shared anguish and pain made impossible situations bearable, as captives
bolstered each others' spirits, shared food, and nursed one another through the inevitable bouts of
nausea, fever, and dysentery-the feared bloody flux. Small acts of kindness provided the basis for
resistance. A new order took shape below deck. Sullen men and women began to forge a new
language from knowing glances and a few shared words. They watched the slavers carefully, studying
their routines and habits so that they Ultimately knew more about their captors than their captors knew
about them. They awaited their chance, and when it arrived, they struck their enslavers hard. About one
in ten slave ships faced some kind of insurrection. Most failed, and punishment was swift and
unforgiving, but even those who watched the proceeding in silence learned powerful lessons. Shipboard
alliances marked the beginnings of new solidarities.
Surviving the Middle Passage was but the first of the many tests faced by the forced immigrants. They
would now have to make their way in perhaps the most difficult situations human beings have ever
faced.
[1] Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the
African, 9th ed. (London, 1794),47.
[2] William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea, and the Slave Trade (London, 1734),
184.
[3] Quoted in David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), 229; Marcus V. Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York: Viking Penguin,
2007),271-276,297-298; Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to
American Diaspora (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 103.
Ira Berlin, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, is
a leading historian of
slavery in North America and the Atlantic World. His books include Generations of Captivity: A History
of Slaves in the United States (2002) and Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in
Mainland North America (1999), which received the Bancroft Prize and the Frederick Douglass Book
Prize.
Jamestown and the Founding of English America
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HISTORY~NOW
The Age Of Exploration
Jamestown and the Founding of
English America
by James Horn
Shortly before Christmas 1606, three small ships left London's Blackwall docks
to establish a settlement on Chesapeake Bay, in North America. The largest of
the ships, the heavily armed, 120-ton merchantman Susan Constant, carried
seventy-one passengers and crew, including the experienced commander of
the fleet, Captain Christopher Newport; a highly successful privateer during the
sea war with Spain, he had made many voyages to the Caribbean in the 1590s
and early years of the seventeenth century and knew as much about American
waters as any Englishman alive. The Godspeed followed with fifty-two men on
board, while bringing up the rear was the tiny pinnace Discovery, which carried
twenty-one men crammed together wherever they could find space in between
Detail of Jamestown from
1624 map of Virginia
engraved by William Hole.
(Library of Congress,
provisions and equipment. Altogether, thirty-nine mariners and 105 adventurers Geography and Map
Division)
set out to found what would be England's first permanent colony in America.
The Jamestown expedition was not the first attempt to establish a colony on the mid-Atlantic coast. In
1585, Sir Walter Ralegh sponsored a colony on Roanoke Island, off the mainland of North Carolina,
which ended the following year with the abandonment of the settlement. Another attempt made in 1587
under the leadership of John White also ended in failure and the disappearance of 117 men, women,
and children (known since as the Lost Colony of Roanoke). On the eve of Jamestown's founding, the
English still had not succeeded in establishing a single colony in America.
In some respects, Jamestown was a belated continuation of Ralegh's Roanoke ventures. In the winter
of 1586, a small exploratory party had been dispatched from Roanoke Island to survey the Chesapeake
Bay. The men had returned with highly favorable reports of the land and deep-water rivers that would
make superb harbors for ocean-going ships and privateers, which could then plunder Spanish treasure
fleets on their way across the Atlantic.
HIDE FULL ESSAY
&
By the time planning began to establish a colony on the Chesapeake Bay, James I of England had
already concluded a peace treaty with the Spanish and would not tolerate piracy, but he was prepared
to allow the planting of English settlements in North America as long as they were located in lands
uninhabited by other Europeans. On April 10, 1606, the king granted a charter to the Virginia Company
to create two colonies, one to the south between latitudes 34° and 41° North (from modern-day North
Carolina to New York), and the other between 38° and 45° (from the Chesapeake to northern Maine).
The Virginia Company of London was responsible for promoting and governing the southern colony.
Owing to the practical difficulty of overseeing day-to-day affairs in Virginia, the Company created a local
council to rule the colony headed by an annually elected president.
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The aims of the Jamestown expedition were to establish England's claim to North America, search for
gold or silver mines, find a passage to the Pacific Ocean (the "Other Sea"), harvest the natural
resources of the land, and trade with Indian peoples. The settlers arrived off the Virginia capes on April
26 and the ruling council chose Edward Maria Wingfield, one of the prime movers of the expedition and
a veteran of wars in the Netherlands and Ireland, as the colony's first president. After reconnoitering
lands along the James River for a couple of weeks, the council selected a site on a peninsula about fifty
miles from the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, where they landed on May 14. They named the settlement
Jamestown in honor of their king.
The English had settled in a region ruled by a powerful chief named Powhatan. Powhatan's domains
(called by the Indians Tsenacommacah) stretched from south of the James River to the Potomac River,
and included more than thirty tribes numbering approximately 14,000 people. The colonists had been
instructed by the Company to be cautious in their dealings with the Indians but to try to keep on good
terms so as to encourage trade. Initial contacts indicated that some peoples were friendly but an attack
on the English settlement by several hundred warriors at the end of May persuaded the colony's leaders
to construct a sturdy fortification. Work began on a triangular fort facing the James River, and was
completed within three weeks.
Early explorations confirmed the area's natural abundance, and information passed on by Indians
hinted at great wealth to be found in the piedmont and mountains to the west. Secure within the
palisades of their newly constructed fort, the settlers' prospects appeared rosy, but after Newport
returned to London in June 1607, the colony suffered a number of setbacks. During the summer and fall
a combination of disease, sporadic Indian attacks, polluted drinking water, and poor diet led to the
deaths of about two-thirds of the men. By December, only thirty-eight of the original 104 colonists who
arrived at Jamestown survived. The colony was on the brink of collapse.
Reinforced by more colonists and fresh supplies early in 1608, the English continued to search for
precious minerals and a river passage through the mountains that would lead them to the Pacific.
Captain John Smith carried out two explorations of the Chesapeake Bay and its major rivers, revealing
the extensiveness of the region, but found no evidence of mineral deposits or a passage. When he took
over leadership of the colony in September 1608, he urged the colonists to give up the search for gold
and silver and concentrate instead on producing goods and manufactures to return to England.
Meanwhile, the London Company, now led by the powerful merchant and financier Sir Thomas Smythe,
had decided to thoroughly reform the colony to attract new investors and make the venture profitable.
Emphasis was given to strengthening the colony's leadership, producing manufactured goods and
commodities, continuing the effort to find precious minerals, and bringing about the conversion of the
Powhatans to Christianity.
The arrival of several hundred colonists during 1608 and 1609 led to a steady deterioration in relations
with the Powhatans. Full-scale hostilities broke out in the fall of 1609 and in the winter the Powhatans
sealed off Jamestown Island in an effort to starve the colony into submission. During the siege, later
called by colonists "the starving time," the colony's numbers dropped from about 280 to ninety. Only the
arrival of Sir Thomas Gates followed by Lord Delaware, along with hundreds of new settlers, in the
spring of 1610 saved the settlement from abandonment.
Gates, Delaware, and another influential leader of this period, Sir Thomas Dale, all men with extensive
military experience, introduced a severe code of martial law to maintain order among the colonists and
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prosecute the war. The "Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall," as they were later known, set out the duties
and obligations of settlers as well as penalties for transgressions. Officers were required to ensure all
those under their command attended divine service twice daily and to punish anyone who blasphemed
"Gods holy name" or challenged the authority of any preacher or minister. Serious crimes such as
murder, treasonous acts and speeches, theft, trading with the Indians without permission, and
embezzlement of Company goods were all punishable by death, while lesser offences such as
slandering the Virginia Company or the colony's leaders carried the penalty of whippings and galley
service (serving at the oars of longboats).
War dragged on for four years before ending inconclusively in 1614. The marriage of Pocahontas, one
of Powhatan's favorite daughters, to John Rolfe, a prominent gentleman, was interpreted by the English
as a diplomatic alliance and heralded an uneasv truce between the two peoples. Rolfe had been
experimenting with the cultivation of tobacco for a couple of years and introduced a new type of leaf
from the West Indies that was sweeter than the native Virginia plant and more palatable to English
tastes. Settlers enjoyed a rapidly expanding market for tobacco in England leading to the rapid
expansion of English settlement along the James River Valley. The Company proceeded with the
establishment of a range of industries including glass blowing, iron smelting, and manufacture of
potash, soap ashes, pitch, and tar. Settlers also produced a variety of timber goods, as well as
attempting unsuccessfully to cultivate grapes for wine-making and mulberry trees for silk production.
In 1618, the Company introduced sweeping reforms designed to replace martial law with laws more like
those of England. Land reforms permitted the acquisition of private property (previously all land and
profits belonged to the Company). The following year the first representative legislative assembly in
America, convened in Jamestown's church at the end of july 1619, underlined that colonists would
have some say in running their own affairs.
Just a few weeks later, in August of 1619, The White Lion, a privateer carrying about two dozen
Africans, sailed up the James River. The Africans had been captured by Portuguese colonists in Angola
and put on board a slave ship, the St. John the Baptist, bound for Vera Cruz in Spanish America. The
White Lion had attacked the ship in the Gulf of Mexico and plundered her cargo. In Jamestown, the
Africans were exchanged for provisions. Their status as slaves or indentured servants is uncertain but
their arrival was an early forerunner of the tens of thousands of enslaved Africans who would follow
over the next century and a half, and who would be the main source of labor in Virginia's tobacco fields.
By the early 1620s the colony was booming. The white population, which had never been more than a
few hundred in the early years, had risen to well over a thousand. As tobacco exports increased, profits
multiplied and planters sought more laborers. The first mass migration to English America occurred
between 1618 and early 1622 when at least 3,000 settlers arrived. Yet the spread of English settlement
and taking of Indians' lands brought misery and bitterness to local peoples. Led by Opechancanough
(who had succeeded his elder brother, Powhatan, as de facto paramount chief on the latter's death in
1618), Indian warriors attacked settlements all along the James River on March 22, 1622, killing about
350 settlers-one-quarter of the colony's white population. The uprising and further losses of life and
property over the next year were devastating blows to the Company, which, after a government
investigation, collapsed in 1624.
Following the demise of the Company, the crown took control of Virginia, which became England's first
royal colony in America. The war with the Powhatans lingered on for the rest of the decade, but
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colonists quickly rebuilt plantations in response to the continuing demand for tobacco. The success of
tobacco cultivation and defeat of the Powhatans secured the colony's future after 1625.
At Jamestown the English leamed the hard lessons of sustaining a colony. All successful English
colonies followed in its wake, but Jamestown also presents two sides of America's founding. On the one
hand, England's New World offered many settlers opportunities for social and economic advancement
unthinkable at home; while on the other, colonization unleashed powerful destructive forces that were
catastrophic for Indian peoples, whose lands were taken by colonists, and for enslaved Africans and
their posterity, whose labor enabled Jamestown, and indeed America, to flourish.
James Hom is Colonial Williamsburg's vice president of research and historical interpretation. He is the
author of numerous books and articles on co(nnia( America, inc/mting A Land as God Made It:
Jamestown and the Birth of America (2005).
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