James A. Henretta
Eric Hinderaker
Rebecca Edwards
Robert O. Self
America’s History
Eighth Edition
America: A Concise History
Sixth Edition
CHAPTER 2
American Experiments
1521‒1700
Copyright © 2014 by Bedford/St. Martin’s
II. Plantation Colonies
A. Brazil’s Sugar Plantations
• By 1590, Portuguese colonists transformed coastal
Brazil into a sugar plantation zone; plantations
included both sugar cultivation and milling,
extracting, and refining operations.
• The diminished Indian population’s inability to
provide sufficient labor led colonists to import
growing numbers of African slaves;
• by 1620, Brazil was a sugar colony based on a
slave labor system.
II. Plantation Colonies
B. England’s Tobacco Colonies
1. The Jamestown Settlement
• In 1606, a charter was granted to the Virginia Company for land
from present-day North Carolina to southern New York; primary goal
was trade with native people.
• In 1607 traders (all men) sent for economic venture; settlement
failed horribly; only 38 of 120 men were alive after nine months;
many destroyed by disease, warfare, and famine.
• Powhatan (Algonquin) forged relations with later settlers, marrying
his daughter Pocahontas to John Rolfe; Rolfe produced tobacco in
the region; production of tobacco and availability of land grants
encouraged migration to the region.
• In 1619, House of Burgesses convened to make laws and levy
taxes.
• The Indian War of 1622 – Powhatan’s brother
Opechancanough [O-pee-chan-KA-no] led an
unsuccessful uprising in 1607; captured John Smith;
later became chief and vowed another uprising; 1622
revolt killed 347 English settlers;
• King James revoked the charter and made Virginia a
royal colony in 1624; settlers now followed English
rule: appointed governor, elected assembly, formal
legal system, and the Anglican Church.
• 3. Lord Baltimore Settles Catholics in
Maryland – A second tobacco-growing colony
was created by King Charles’s granting of land
to Lord Baltimore (Cecilius Calvert); became a
refuge for Catholics; population grew quickly;
1649 Toleration Act granted all Christians in
the colony the right to religious freedom.
II. Plantation Colonies
C. The Caribbean Islands
1. European colonization – In 1624, English and
French colonists occupied St. Christopher (St. Kitts)
in the Caribbean; by 1655, French also occupied
Martinique, Guadeloupe and St. Bart’s; English
occupied Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat, Anguilla,
Tortola, Barbados, and Jamaica; Dutch occupied St.
Eustatius.
II. Plantation Colonies
C. The Caribbean Islands
2. Plantation economy – England, France, and Holland
established plantation economies in the region and,
after experimentation with tobacco, indigo, cotton,
cacao and ginger, many planters shifted focus to
sugar cultivation wherever possible.
1. Who are the people
depicted in this image?
What are they doing?
2. What does this image
suggest about the process
of sugar refining and the
people who controlled it?
3. What does the image
suggest about the people
who actually worked on
sugar plantations?
II. Plantation Colonies
D. Plantation Life
Indentured Servitude – By 1700, more than 100,000
English migrants had come to Chesapeake as
indentured servants;
• many were men seeking land and opportunity who
could not afford passage; some were women;
• all were valuable but severely exploited;
• many died before their indenture had ended;
• those who survived rarely received what had been
promised.
II. Plantation Colonies
D. Plantation Life
African Laborers – In 1619, John Rolfe noted first
Africans sold in the Chesapeake;
• at first these men were not legally enslaved; by
1660s status was changing;
• value of tobacco declined and landowners desired
ways to make a profit despite declining prices;
African labor was “cheaper” than white labor, they
concluded;
• residents of the Chesapeake became increasingly
race conscious, referring to color (white-black).
III. Neo-European Colonies
A. New France
• Fur trade – In the 1530s, Jacques Cartier ventured
up the St. Lawrence River and claimed it for France;
• in 1608, Samuel de Champlain founded the furtrading post of Quebec;
• the French traded manufactured goods and guns to
Native Americans in the region for beaver pelts and
other furs which were popular in Europe.
III. Neo-European Colonies
A. New France
• The Jesuit missions – From 1625–1763, hundreds
of French Jesuit priests lived among the Indian
peoples and came to understand and respect them;
• conversion failed when Indians did not see results
from the use of Christian prayers.
III. Neo-European Colonies
A. New France
• Life in New France – In 1662, King Louis XIV made
New France a royal colony, but migration and
farming languished; New France’s population
remained small.
• France eventually claimed a vast quantity of land
from St. Lawrence Valley through the Great Lakes
and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers;
• by 1718, Robert de La Salle had founded the port of
New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi.
III. Neo-European Colonies
B. New Netherland
Hudson River settlement – In 1609 with Dutch support,
Englishman Henry Hudson located a wealth of fur along
a river in present-day New York;
• in 1621, Dutch founded the colony of New Netherland,
sending farmers and artisans to the region to build a
community; the new colony failed;
• the small population of Holland meant few migrants
would go to North America;
• West India Company granted land to wealthy Dutch
along the Hudson who were unsuccessful in populating
the estates.
III. Neo-European Colonies
B. New Netherland
England invaded
• Settlers had hostile relations with Algonquin neighbors; formed an
uneasy alliance with Mohawks.
• Dutch focused on business profits and not land acquisition.
• New Netherland had a diverse population of Dutch, English, and
Swedish;
• England invaded and took control of the colony in 1664; leadership
was uncertain in the years that followed, as Dutch culture remained
but political control was contested;
• in 1699, a colonist observed region was “like a conquered Foreign
Province.”
III. Neo-European Colonies
C. The Rise of the Iroquois
Iroquois domination
• The Five Nations of the Iroquois bartered with French
and Dutch traders for European guns;
• Iroquois grew their population quickly and became
powerful with the use of European weapons;
aggressively attacked other groups, ritually killing the
men and capturing women and children.
• In the 1660s, New France committed to all-out war
against the Iroquois; in 1667, the Five Nations in New
France admitted defeat, accepted Jesuit missionaries
into their communities, and settled in St. Lawrence
Valley.
III. Neo-European Colonies
C. The Rise of the Iroquois
Alliance with English settlers
• Iroquois in NY survived war with France and forged
new alliance with Englishmen who had taken control
of New Netherland;
• they remained a dominant force in politics of the
Northeast for generations to come.
III. Neo-European Colonies
D. New England
The Pilgrims
• Religious separatists who left the Church of
England; lived briefly among Dutch Calvinists in
Holland; 35 then migrated to America along with 67
who left England; led by William Bradford aboard the
Mayflower;
• first winter extremely harsh, only half survived until
spring; built a community of houses and planted
crops;
• by 1640, Plymouth had 3,000 settlers because of
worsening religious tensions in England.
III. Neo-European Colonies
D. New England
John Winthrop and Massachusetts Bay
• In 1630, Winthrop led 900 Puritans to America and
became the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony;
• wanted to create an ideal “City upon a Hill”;
• joint-stock corporation was transformed into a
representative government with council and assembly,
ruled by “the godly”;
• Puritans limited voting rights to those who were
members of the church; unlike Plymouth Colony,
Massachusetts Bay established Puritanism as the statesupported religion.
III. Neo-European Colonies
D. New England
Roger Williams and Rhode Island
• Massachusetts Bay was purged of all dissenters;
• Williams was a Puritan minister in Salem who
opposed establishing Congregationalism as official
religion of the colony and advocated tolerance; he
also questioned the practice of taking Indian land;
• was banished in 1636; established Providence on
land purchased from Narragansett Indians.
• In 1644, a new colony was established, Rhode
Island, with no legally established church and
religious tolerance.
III. Neo-European Colonies
D. New England
Anne Hutchinson
• Wife and mother of seven; held weekly prayer
meetings for women and made accusations against
Boston ministers;
• believed in a “covenant of grace” not “works”;
• declared that God “revealed” divine truth to
individuals and not only through ministers.
• Puritan belief that women were inferior to men
hastened officials’ anger towards Hutchinson; she
was banished in 1637; settled in Rhode Island.
III. Neo-European Colonies
D. New England (cont.)
5. The Puritan Revolution in England – Religious war broke
out in England; English Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians
demanded religious reform and parliamentary power; after
years of civil war, Oliver Cromwell emerged victorious. In
1649, a republican Commonwealth was declared; elaborate
rituals and bishops were banned from the Church of
England. The crown was restored in 1660 after Cromwell’s
death; restoration of the monarchy dashed Puritans’ hopes
to return to England; the Puritan colonies now stood stand
as outposts of Calvinism and the Atlantic republican
tradition.
III. Neo-European Colonies
D. New England (cont.)
6. Puritanism and Witchcraft – Puritans saw signs of God and Satan in
the physical world (birth defects, storms, unusual events, etc.). Many
Christians incorporated some pagan practices into their daily lives;
condemned those who claimed powers as healers or prophets.
Between 1647 and 1662, fourteen New Englanders were hanged for
witchcraft. The 1692 episode in Salem was America’s most dramatic
episode of witch-hunting; after young girls claimed to experience
seizures and accused neighbors of bewitching them, accusations spun
out of control. Massachusetts Bay tried 175 people for witchcraft and
executed 19 of them. Debate continues among historians as to whether
the witchcraft hysteria was the result of class differences or efforts to
control/limit the activities of women in the colonies. Charges of
witchcraft were significantly reduced as colonists began to adopt the
philosophies of the European Enlightenment, including rational and
scientific thought.
III. Neo-European Colonies
D. New England (cont.)
A Yeoman Society, 1630–1700
• Proprietors received tracts of land from the general
courts of the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut
and then distributed the land to male heads of
household; all families received some land;
• most adult men could vote in town meeting (local
government); largest plots of land went to men of high
social status;
• the possibility of land ownership made New England a
place of great opportunity for men.
IV. Instability, War, and Rebellion
A. New England’s Indian Wars
Puritan-Pequot War
• In 1637, a combined force of Massachusetts and
Connecticut militiamen, accompanied by Narragansett
and Mohegan warriors, attacked a Pequot village and
massacred five hundred men, women, and children;
• acting on the belief that their presence was divinely
ordained, Puritans drove surviving Pequots into oblivion
and divided their lands;
• only rarely did Puritans make effort to convert Indians to
Puritan religion.
IV. Instability, War, and Rebellion
A. New England’s Indian Wars
Metacom’s War, 1675–1676
• The Wampanoag leader Metacom (known to English as King Philip)
wanted to expel Europeans; forged an alliance with the
Narragansetts and Nipmucks to attack settlements in New England;
• Indians destroyed one-fifth of the English towns in Massachusetts
and Rhode Island; nearly 5 percent of the adult population in New
England was killed;
• approximately 4,500 Indians died and more were displaced from
land;
• Metacom was killed by Mohegan and Mohawk warriors hired by
Massachusetts Bay leaders.
IV. Instability, War, and Rebellion
B. Bacon’s Rebellion
Frontier War
• Poor freeholders and former indentured servants in the Chesapeake
wanted lands occupied by Native Americans in Virginia;
• in 1675, fighting broke out when vigilante Virginia militiamen
murdered thirty Indians;
• intensified when group defied Governor Berkeley’s orders and killed
five Susquehannock leaders; Susquehannocks retaliated by killing
three hundred whites.
• Settlers dismissed Berkeley’s proposed defensive strategy as a plot
to impose high taxes on the poor.
IV. Instability, War, and Rebellion
B. Bacon’s Rebellion
Challenging the Government
• Nathaniel Bacon, an English migrant with a position on the governor’s council,
emerged as leader of Virginia rebels; disagreed with Berkeley on frontier policy;
demanded a military commission but was denied; organized a militia to attack Indians
on the frontier.
• Political struggle began between Bacon and the governor; Bacon issued “Manifesto
and Declaration of the People,” calling for death or removal of Indians and an end to
rule by wealthy “parasites” in Virginia.
• Bacon’s army burned Jamestown and plundered the plantations of wealthy. Bacon
died suddenly in October 1676 of dysentery; 23 of his followers were hanged.
• Wealthy leaders in Virginia realized that they had to appease the poor and landless:
cut taxes, expelled Indians from the frontier,
• increased importation of slaves while decreasing use of indentured servants. In 1705,
House of Burgesses legalized chattel slavery.