CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
FALL 2011 - NYCCT
HISTORY 1110:
U.S. HISTORY
TO 1877
SECTIONS 6750 & 6752
BRENDAN O’MALLEY,
INSTRUCTOR
BO’MALLEY@GC.CUNY.EDU
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
The Early Chesapeake
 What does the author of the textbook mean that English North America
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remained a “borderland” or “middle ground” in the 1600s?
What other European powers had a presence in North American in the
early 1600s?
King James I issued a charter in 1606 giving two joint-stock companies
the right to create colonies in North, America: the Plymouth Company
and the London Company. Which succeeded?
The charter gave the king formal ownership of the land, but the jointstock companies could be tenants. How was this different from Spanish
colonization?
What were the stated and unstated motivations to create settlements?
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
The Founding of Jamestown
 Three small ships—Discovery, Susan Constant, and Godspeed—departed London
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on December 20, 1606, with 144 men.
The ships first land in Virginia on April 26, 1607, a voyage of four and a half
months (had to wait several weeks off England for favorable winds, then made
stops in the Canaries and Caribbean). Forty men died during the voyage.
The colony of Jamestown was established on May 14, 1607.
No women had been sent on the voyage; the first two did not arrive until
October 1608.
The site selected for Jamestown was on a swamp. What effect did that have?
Ships to resupply the colony arrived in January 1608 and found only 38 of the
first 104 colonists.
Captain John Smith had become president of the council in fall 1608, negotiated
and intimidated Indians for food, and imposed order; he was largely responsible
for anyone surviving the brutal winter.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
The Founding of Jamestown
Captain John Smith (1580-1631)
The captain of the three ships that
brought the initial Jamestown colonists,
Christopher Newport, thought Smith’s
behavior on the voyage was mutinous, so
he put him in chains and planned on
executing him on arrival. But the London
Company’s letter to be opened on arrival
declared Smith one of the seven
members of the leadership council of the
colony, thus Newport had to spare him.
There is considerable debate about where
or not Smith’s account of Pocahontas
saving his life is true. It is unlikely that
they had a romantic relationship; she
married the planter John Rolfe in 1614
and died in England in 1617.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
The Founding of Jamestown
 1609: The London Company was renamed the Virginia Company, and set upon
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expansion, receiving a new royal charter with more land, and sent a colonial
governor, Lord De La Warr.
Planters who could pay their own passage over could receive company stock;
poor people could seek their fortune by signing a seven-year indenture
contract.
The “Starving Time”: Winter 1609-1610 was a disaster because several supply
ships failed to arrive and many colonist died of fever; Indians killed off the
livestock, so the colonists ate dogs, rats, snakes, and even their own dead.
A supply ship arriving in May 1610 found 60 emaciated survivors alive, and
were about to set sail back home when Lord De La Warr’s fleet arrived.
Planter John Rolfe introduces the first marketable crop in 1612. What was it?
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
TOBACCO
This 1595 image is the first
known of a European smoking.
The dried leaf was introduced
in Spain by sailors in 1518, and
gradually spread across the
Continent. Europeans
believed that tobacco could
cure illness. By the time Jamestown was founded, tobacco
was well on its way to attaining global popularity.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
John
Smith’s
map of
Virginia,
published in
1612.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
The Founding of Jamestown: The Tobacco Economy
 Cash Crop: After Rolfe started growing tobacco, it became clear
that it would be very profitable. Dried tobacco travels fairly well.
 Interior Settlement: New planters had to move further inland
as the crop requires large plots of land. The English thus pushed
further into the interior along the James River, impinging deeper
into Indian territory, setting off sporadic violence.
 Headright System: A new charter allowed the Virginia
Company to give two “headrights”—100 acres—to those already
in the colony, and one headright to newcomers. This encouraged
the arrival of whole families.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
The Founding of Jamestown: Changes of 1619
 Women: While a few women—mostly wives of colonists already
there—had arrived before 1619, the company sent 100 that year
to marry single male colonists and create social stability.
 Representative Government: Delegates from surrounding
communities met as the House of Burgesses for the first time on
July 30, 1619.
 Birth of American Slavery: In August 1619, “20 and odd
Negroes” arrived on a Dutch warship and were sold to wealthier
planters as “indentured servants” since slavery did not exist in
English law until later. Not until the 1670s would planters begin
to prefer African slaves over white indentured servants.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
The Founding of Jamestown: Conflict with the Indians
 Governor Sir Thomas Dale: Succeeding De La Warr as governor, Dale
carried out assaults against the Powahatan Indians during the early 1610s.
 Pocohontas: Dale’s men captured the Powahatan chief’s daughter, Pocohontas.
The chief’s real name was Wahunsonacock, but the English just called him
Powahatan. She had mediated between the Europeans and Indians before, but
her father refused to ransom her. She became a Christian and married planter
John Rolfe in 1614, and in 1616 traveled with him to England, where she died a
year later just as she was about to return to Virginia.
 Opechancanough: Powahatan stopped attacking the English with the
marriage of his daughter to Rolfe, but a successor, Opechancanough, resumed
attacks, including a bloody massacre of 347 white colonists in 1622.
 Charter Revoked: In part due to the Virginia Company’s inability to deal
with the Indians, James I to revoked its charter in 1624, putting Virginia under
direct control of the crown.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
Maryland and the Calverts
• Sir George Calvert (1579-1632),
First Lord Baltimore, asked James I
for a charter for a colony to harbor
English Catholics, but died in 1632
before negotiations were completed.
• Calvert’s son, Cecilius (1605-1675)—
pictured to the right—received the
charter later in 1632, and outfitted two
ships with 200-300 men to set sail,
including his younger brother, Leonard,
whom he chose to be governor.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
Maryland and the Calverts
 “Catholics Only” Policy Unprofitable: The Calverts had to attract more
than just the small English Catholic minority to make the colony a financial
success. The colony had a labor shortage from the beginning.
 House of Delegates: The Calverts allowed this representative body to be
created in 1635, allowing a degree of self-government as in Virginia.
 Headright System: In 1640, Maryland adopted an even more generous
headright system than Virginia , offering 100 acres for each male settlers, 100
for his wife and each servant, and 50 for each of his children.
 Maryland “Act Concerning Religion”: In 1649, the Maryland Assembly
of Delegates passed an act of tolerance of most Christian religions (excepting
ones that did not believe in a Holy Trinity, which Catholicism and more
mainstream Protestantism both embrace) to attract non-Catholic colonists. It
was too small to be profitable with only Catholics.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
GROWTH OF THE
CHESAPEAKE,
1607 – 1750
Two Types of Governance:
• Virginia under direct royal control (1624)
• Maryland, North Carolina, and Northern
Virginia under “proprietary” control of
powerful English aristocrats who had been
rewarded the territory by the monarch.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
Bacon’s Rebellion
• Sir William Berkeley (1605 – 1677) ruled as colonial
governor of
governor of Virginia from 1642 to 1677.
• Politics: The vote for House of Burgesses representatives was limited
only to landholders in 1670; those in newly settled lands to the west
(called “backcountry”) felt underrepresented compared to the powerful
Eastern Tidewater merchants, and also resented Berkley’s refusal to use
military force to push back the Indians and open up more land. Why
might Berkeley refuse to to this?
• Population: From 1640 to and 1660, Virginia’s population jumped
from 8,000 to over 40,000 (largely because of indentured servants).
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
Bacon’s Rebellion
• A large-scale conflict on frontier erupted between settlers and natives in 1675,
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and Nathaniel Bacon, who owned a good-sized western farm, and many of his
backcountry men demanded that Berkeley send a militia.
When Berkeley refused, Bacon offered to put together a militia of backcountry
men, but Berkeley refused.
Bacon went ahead and organized a militia anyway, carrying out vicious but
ineffective attacks against the Susquehannock, which made Berkeley declare
Bacon and his men rebels, at which time Bacon led his men on two attacks
against Jamestown, succeeding in burning it and driving Berkeley into exile on
the second one.
Bacon suddenly dies of dysentery on October 26, 1676, and the rebellion stalls.
Consequences: United eastern and western elites; led to an increased reliance
on African slave labor rather than European indentured servants. Slaves were
not freed, and thus would not create an unpropertied and unstable class.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
THE GROWTH OF NEW ENGLAND - PLYMOUTH
•
Plymouth Company: Charter falls into disuse after first attempt to create a colony in
present-day Maine in 1607 was abandoned after a year (the “Popham Colony”).
•
Scrooby Separatists: Congregation from the village of Scrooby in England illegally
flee to Leyden, Holland, in 1608, since Holland had freedom of religious practice. By
1620, many were alarmed by their children adopting Dutch customs, and wanted to go
found a new religious community in the New World.
•
Saints and Strangers: The group receives permission from Virginia Co. to settle in the
company’s northern-most territory near the Hudson River, and 35 “saints” (members of
the congregation) and 67 “strangers” make the journey.
•
Plymouth: Self-described “Pilgrims” sight what is now Cape Cod in November 1620,
and make their way to the site of Plymouth. The 35 members of the congregation drew
up the “Mayflower Compact” to set up self-governance before going ashore.
•
Pilgrim-Indian Relations: Half of the colonists die in the first winter, but the rest
survive largely due to Indians providing furs and teaching them how to hunt game.
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Commerce: Traded in fish and furs, as the soil around Plymouth was sandy and poor.
Pilgrims remained poor for decades, sharing one plow between them even in the 1640s.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
THE GROWTH OF NEW ENGLAND: THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY
EXPERIMENT
• Persecution of Puritans by King Charles I: Charles, who took the throne on
James’s death in 1625, intensified the persecution, and even dissolved Parliament
for 11 years starting in 1629.
• Massachusetts Bay Company Formed: Puritan merchants obtained a grant of
land comprising what is now most of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and
acquired a charter from the king to form the Massachusetts Bay Company. Those
wanting to create a refuge for Puritans bought out those who saw it as just an
investment. Over 1630, Puritans sent 17 ships with 1,000, the largest migration of
of its kind in the seventeenth century.
• Boston Founded: The port of the Boston was made the capital, but many other
settlements followed, including Charlestown, Newton (Cambridge), Roxbury,
Dorchester, etc. (A small colony in Salem, founded in 1626 by Separatists, was
incorporated into the bigger colony).
• Family Migration: Unlike the Virginians, the Pilgrims and Puritans came as
whole families. Although 100 people died the first winter, commitment remained
strong.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
John Winthrop (1587-1649):
First governor of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony who wrote of the
Puritan colony as a “City on the
Hill,” meaning a beacon of
enlightenment for the world to see.
Unlike the Pilgrims who wanted to
separate from the Church of
England, the Puritans hoped their
example would help reform the
Church. The Puritans were also
considerably wealthier. The Puritans
created a “theocracy,” meaning the
Church and Government were
indistinguishable.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
Pilgrims vs. Puritans
PILGRIMS
PURITANS
 Plymouth - 1620
 Separatists from Church of
England
 Came by way of Holland
 Smaller migration of just 107
people
 First Governor:
William Bradford (1590-1657)
 Poorer than the Puritans; had
worked menial jobs during the
Holland exile.
 Boston - 1630
 Wanted to reform Church of
England; not separate from it
 Came directly from England
 Large migration: 17 ships
carrying 1,000 in 1630
 First Governor:
John Winthrop (1587-1646)
 Fairly well-to-do merchants;
their settlement was highly
organized and well planned.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
THE GROWTH OF NEW ENGLAND
Dissent and Expansion
• Fundamental Orders of Connecticut: In 1635, Thomas Hooker
(1586 – 1647) and his followers left Boston’s oppressive religious
environment to found Hartford in the fertile Connecticut River Valley.
On the other hand, the migrants who founded New Haven in 1639 felt
that Boston Puritans were too lax in their worship.
• Rhode Island: A minister from Salem, Rogers Williams (1603-1683),
was a banished for being a Separatist, wanting Massachusetts Bay to cut
ties with the Church of England, and also for preaching that the land
belonged to the Indians. He created a colony that allowed absolute
religious freedom, obtaining a charter from Parliament in 1644 to create
a government similar to the one of Massachusetts, but with separation of
church and state.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
THE GROWTH OF NEW ENGLAND
Dissent and Expansion
• Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643): John Winthrop characterized this
charismatic Bostonian as “a woman of ready wit and bold spirit.” She
greatly annoyed the Puritan fathers by preaching, leading a Sunday prayer
group composed of both men and women, and generally not acting as
they thought a Puritan woman should. She was deported for heresy in
1637 and moved to Rhode Island. She was widowed in 1642 and in 1643
took her family to what is now the Bronx, where they were all massacred
in by Indians who were fighting the Dutch.
• New Hampshire and Maine: Two proprietary land grants opened
these areas for settlement in the 1620s, though they technically remained
part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Religious dissenters began to settle
in the 1630s. New Hampshire broke off from Massachusetts in 1679, but
Maine remained a part of it until it became a state in 1820.
THE GROWTH OF NEW ENGLAND
Conflict Between Settlers and Natives
•
Indians Aid in Survival and Commerce: Indians taught New Englanders to plant
New World crops and hunt, and trade for animal skins became an important source of
revenue. But the English hunger for land led to conflict.
•
Religious Belief of Natives as Heathens: New England religious leaders changed
their view of Indians as helpers to heathens and barbarians who presented an obstacle to
the establishment of their godly communities.
Pequot War (1637):
Bloody conflict in the
Connecticut River
Valley in which most
of the Indians in the
region are wiped out.
Other tribes took aided
the English in killing
off the Pequots.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
THE GROWTH OF NEW ENGLAND
King Philip’s War (1675-76)
• The leader of the Wampanoag Confederacy, Metacomet (ca. 1639-1676),
called King Philip by the English, had become sachem of this group of
tribes after the death of his older brother, Wamsutta, who had maintained
an uneasy truce with the colonists for the benefit of trade.
• Metacomet distrusted the colonists and negotiated an alliance with many
of the region’s tribes to undertake coordinated attacks beginning in 1675
and lasting through 1676 (with a few attcks in Maine in 1677). This
campaign struck many Massachusetts towns, leaving over a thousand
colonists dead. Indian attacks often came at night, and women and
children were not spared. The Indians had the upper hand until
Metacomet was killed in August 1676, when the alliance collapsed.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
THE GROWTH OF NEW ENGLAND
King Philip’s War (1675-76)
• Indians had adopted the new flintlock rifles more quickly than the
colonists, many of whom still used older matchlock rifles (which
actually used a mechanism that lowered a slow-burning match into
the powder). The flintlock inflicted many casualties on both sides.
• Indians also built many forts, including one stone fort based on
English masonry techniques that some had learned.
• A larger numbers of English colonists—probably about 80,000 in
New England at the time—and their greater number of rifles were
too much for the Indians, who had their numbers significantly
thinned by outbreaks of disease.
CHAPTER TWO
Transplantations and Borderlands
THE RESTORATION COLONIES
The English Civil War, Commonwealth, and Restoration(1642-1660)
•
Charles I: The monarch dissolved Parliament in 1629 and begins ruling like an absolute
monarch. Calls Parliament back in session in 1640 because he needed money. He
dismisses Parliament twice in two years, greatly frustrating his opposition, who initiate a
military struggle: the “Cavaliers” (supporters of the King) vs. “Roundheads” ( supporters
of Parliament).
•
Roundhead Victory: The Parliamentary forces defeated the Royalists decisively in
1648, and shocked all of Europe by beheading the defiant Charles I in January 1649.
•
Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658): The Puritan leader of the Roundheads became
England’s “Protector” and the government became a “Commonwealth.” Cromwell was
pretty much a dictator, and his regime disintegrated after his death in 1658.
•
Charles II (1630-1685): When the son of Charles I assumed the throne in 1660, his
rule became known as the “Restoration.”
•
Restoration Colonies: Charles II rewarded his loyal aristocratic supporters with land
grants in North America, creating the colonies of Carolina, New York, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania.
CHAPTER TWO: Transplantations and Borderlands
THE RESTORATION COLONIES: The Carolinas
• In two grants in 1663 and 1665, Charles II granted eight proprietors a massive
territory stretching from the southern border of Virginia to the Florida
peninsula; they named it “Carolina,” based on the Latin name for “Charles.”
• Attempts to colonize the area failed and the proprietors quit trying except for
Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621-1683), who convinced the other
proprietors to fund a 1670 voyage that created the colony of Port Royal, and
also a voyage in 1680 that created Charles Town, which became the colonial
capital in 1690.
• Cooper, who had been given the title Earl of Shaftesbury, and the philosopher
John Locke (1632-1704) drew up the Fundamental Constitution for
Carolina. It created a hierarchical society with the proprietors at the top,
followed by a local aristocracy, ordinary settlers, poor whites, and then slaves.
• Carolina did not develop in the orderly fashion that Cooper and Locke
imagined. The north and south developed in different ways: egalitarian
backwoods farmers in the north and a more stratified and aristocratic society
emerged in the South, particularly with the coming of rice in 1660s.
CHAPTER TWO: Transplantations and Borderlands
THE RESTORATION COLONIES: The Carolinas
• Southern Ties to Barbados: Early settlers of southern
Carolina were mostly from overcrowded British Caribbean
island of Barbados, where the use of African slaves was
widespread.
• Tensions in Carolinas: Small northern farmers resented
the political clout of the wealthy planters in the south, and
small farmers in the south also resented them.
• End of Proprietary Rule: When Lord Shaftesbury
(Cooper) died in 1683, the proprietors could not maintain
order in the colony. In 1719, the colonists seized control
away from the proprietors. In 1729, the king divided
Carolina in two.
CHAPTER TWO: Transplantations and Borderlands
THE RESTORATION COLONIES: The Carolinas
• In two grants in 1663 and 1665, Charles II granted eight proprietors a massive
territory stretching from the southern border of Virginia to the Florida
peninsula; they named it “Carolina,” based on the Latin name for “Charles.”
• Attempts to colonize the area failed and the proprietors quit trying except for
Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621-1683), who convinced the other
proprietors to fund a 1670 voyage that created the colony of Port Royal, and
also a voyage in 1680 that created Charles Town, which became the colonial
capital in 1690.
• Cooper, who had been given the title Earl of Shaftesbury, and the philosopher
John Locke (1632-1704) drew up the Fundamental Constitution for
Carolina. It created a hierarchical society with the proprietors at the top,
followed by a local aristocracy, ordinary settlers, poor whites, and then slaves.
• Carolina did not develop in the orderly fashion that Cooper and Locke
imagined. The north and south developed in different ways: egalitarian
backwoods farmers in the north and a more stratified and aristocratic society
emerged in the South, particularly with the coming of rice in 1660s.
THE RESTORATION COLONIES: The Quaker Colonies
Pennsylvania & Delaware
• The Quakers: Religious movement that developed in England in the mid-
1600s under the leadership of a shoemaker, George Fox (1624-1691). The
Quakers—also known as the Society of Friends—rejected the Calvinist idea of
predestination, believed all people had divinity within them, had no formal
clergy, and were pacifists. They were despised in England and wanted a colony
as a refuge, but could not get a royal grant.
• William Penn (1644-1718): This wealthy son of an aristocratic admiral
converted to Quakerism and was sent to prison for evangelizing. When his
Penn’s father died, James II gave Penn an enormous land grant between New
York and Maryland to pay off a debt the king owed to the elder Penn. He sailed
to Pennsylvania in 1682 to personally watch over the building of its capital city,
Philadelphia. He made sure to reimburse the Indians for their land.
• Charter of Liberties: By the late 1690s, residents were tiring of the
proprietorship, so Penn issued a Charter of Liberties in 1701 that established a
representative assembly (consisting of just one house) and allowed Delaware to
break away and form its own representative body in 1703 (although it still had
the same governor as Pennsylvania until the Revolution).
CHAPTER TWO: Transplantations and Borderlands
BORDERLANDS AND MIDDLE GROUNDS: ENGLISH CARIBBEAN
• Importance of the English Caribbean: With the Dutch and Spanish at war
in the 1620s, the English seized Caribbean islands and colonized more while the
others were distracted: Antigua, St. Kitts, Jamaica, Barbados, etc.
• Shift to Sugar: The English in the Caribbean experimented with tobacco and
cotton, but soon found sugar to be most profitable, leading to a greater reliance
on African slave labor, who greatly outnumbered the English by the late 1600s.
• Masters and Slaves: Outnumbered, white slave owners instilled intense
discipline and physical intimidation to keep order and maintain control. The
harsh climate and brutal working conditions killed slaves off within a few years.
Slaves did manage to sustain African cultural traditions, especially music and
religion.
CHAPTER TWO: Transplantations and Borderlands
SOUTHWEST BORDERLANDS
• Spanish borderlands in North America—Florida, Texas, New
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•
•
•
Mexico, Arizona, and New Mexico—were all of relatively minor
economic importance to the Spanish empire.
By the end of the 1700s, New Mexico had 10,000 non-Indian
settlers.
In the 1760s, the Spanish governor of Baja California was ordered
to create forts up the California coast called presidios, building ones
in San Francisco in 1776 and Los angeles in 1786.
Spanish feared the French coming down from the north, and
created new forts in Texas to assert their claim, creating San
Fernando (later San Antonio) in 1731.
Overall, Spanish North American colonies were sparsely
populated and dedicated to making Indians converts to
Catholicism.
CHAPTER TWO: Transplantations and Borderlands
SOUTHEAST BORDERLANDS
• Spanish threat to the English coming from the southeast:
Florida and what is now coastal Georgia.
• Spanish had claimed the area since the 1660s, building St.
Augustine in 1565.
• No formal war, but considerable tensions: English pirates
sacked St. Augustine in 1668; English encouraged Indians
to rise up against Spanish missions, and Spanish offered
freedom to African slaves who fled from the English.
• The English eventually gained Florida in the aftermath of
the Seven Year’s War, which ended in 1763.
CHAPTER TWO: Transplantations and Borderlands
THE FOUNDING OF GEORGIA
•General James Oglethorpe (1696-1785), a
veteran of war with Spain, understood the value
of having a buffer between the Spanish in Florida
and the Carolinas.
•Oglethorpe envisioned his colony as a place
where the English poor could make a new life,
becoming farmer-soldiers.
•King George II gave him a grant in 1732 and he
led the expedition himself in 1733. Africans and
Catholics were not allowed in the colony since
Oglethorpe thought they might ally themselves
with the Spanish.
•As the Spanish threat dissipated, Oglethorpe lost
his grip and Georgia slowly became like other
British colonies with an elected assembly and a
significant degree of self-government.
CHAPTER TWO: Transplantations and Borderlands
MIDDLE GROUNDS
• Some places were settled quickly by the English and were not
middle grounds, namely Virginia and New England.
• What do we mean by “middle ground”? A place where no one
power is dominant, or if it is, its grasp on power is tenuous. The
English and Indians lived to gather in many places for many years in
which neither side appeared to be dominant: peripheries of empire
where protection was not so strong.
• Without strong protection, local colonists needed to negotiate their
own relationship with Indians.
• The French, in sparsely populated Canada, seemed well suited to
carving out relationships with Indians for trade, with some traders
even marrying into tribes.
• With the English, the balance of power had begun to change in the
later 1700s, when the population of colonists began to take off.
CHAPTER TWO: Transplantations and Borderlands
DEVELOPMENT OF EMPIRE
• Regulating Colonial Trade: Parliament first tried to
regulate colonial trade with a 1650s law forbidding
Dutch ships from entering English colonial ports.
• Navigation Acts: These three acts passed by
Parliament from 1660 to 1673 required that colonial
ports only trade with English ships and ports, and
provided for customs officials to enforce the Acts.
• Dominion of New England: London officials wanted
to create a more centralized form of government not as
tied to local assemblies. In 1685, James II came to the
thrown and combined the governments of the New
England colonies, as well as New York and New Jersey,
and appointed Edmund Andros as new governor of the
combined territory. The move was highly unpopular.
CHAPTER TWO: Transplantations and Borderlands
DEVELOPMENT OF EMPIRE
• The “Glorious Revolution”: The Catholic James II’s attempts to control
Parliament and appoint Catholic officials alienated him from the
mainstream. Parliament offered his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her
husband, William of Orange, to take the throne. James II fled without a
struggle.
• Reaction in the Colonies: When Bostonians heard that James II fled, they
arrested the unpopular Andros. The new joint sovereigns did away with the
Dominion and had them revert to earlier colonial governments. They did,
however, merge the colonies of Massachusetts and Plymouth in 1691.
• Jacob Leisler (1640-1691): Andros’s lieutenant governor in New York,
Francis Nicholson, was favored by the wealthy merchants. Less well-to-do
New Yorkers, like German immigrant Jacob Leisler, resented him and
formed a militia to drive him into exile, which he managed to do for two
years. A new governor appointed by William and Mary came in 1691 and
put Leisler on trial for treason. He was found guilty and executed.
• William & Mary: Their changes strengthened imperial authority rather
than weaken it.