The New World does not begin with the arrival of the Europeans; it was new to the Europeans but had been a homeland to many other residents. Residents of the Americas were no more a single group than Europeans or Africans. They spoke hundreds of different languages and lived in numerous societies. North and South American societies-built roads, trade networks, and irrigation systems. the South American societies were grander and organization than the North American societies. North American, Indians lacked literacy, wheeled vehicles, metal tools, and scientific knowledge necessary for long-distance navigation. Cahokia was a City near present-day St. Louis with a community between 10,000 and 30,000 citizens. Residents built giant mounds that were hundreds of feet tall. It was the largest community in North America until New York and Philadelphia in the 1800s. Indian tribes living in the eastern part of North America sustained themselves with a diet of corn, squash, and beans and supplemented it by fishing and hunting. Tribes frequently fought with one another however, there were also many loose alliances. Indians saw themselves as one group among many diverse groups before the Europeans arrived. The idea of owning private property was foreign to Indians. Indians believed that land was a common resource, not an economic commodity. Wealth mattered little in Indian societies and generosity was far more important. Bartolome de las Casas wrote about the injustices of Spanish rule toward the Indians. He believed that “the entire human race is one,” but favored African slavery. Las Casas’s writings encouraged the 1542 New Laws, which forbade the enslavement of Indians. England’s stability in the sixteenth century was undermined by religious conflicts. England’s methods to subdue Ireland in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries established patterns that would be repeated in America.
The English crown issued charters for individuals such as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh to colonize America at their own expense, but both failed National glory, profit, and missionary zeal motivated the English crown to settle America. It was also argued that trade, not mineral wealth, would be the basis of England’s empire. A worsening economy and the enclosure movement led to an increase in the number of poor and a social crisis. Unruly poor were encouraged to leave England for the New World. The land was the basis of liberty. The land was also a source of wealth and power for colonial officials. The English were chiefly interested in displacing the Indians and settling on their land. Most colonial authorities in practice recognized the Indians’ title to land based on occupancy. English goods were eagerly integrated into Indian life. Settlement and survival were questionable in the colony’s early history because of high death rates, frequent changes in leadership, inadequate supplies from England, and placing gold before farming. Pilgrims sailed in 1620 to Cape Cod aboard the Mayflower. Adult men signed the Mayflower Compact before going ashore. The Massachusetts Bay Company was charted in 1629 by London merchants wanting to further the Puritan cause and to turn a profit from trade with the Indians. The Pequot War As the white population grew, conflict with the Indians became unavoidable, and the turning point came when a fur trader was killed by Pequots. Colonists warred against the Pequots. After the English Civil War, there emerged a more general definition of freedom grounded in the common rights of all individuals within the English realm: A belief in freedom as the common heritage of all Englishmen A belief that England was the world’s guardian of liberty. The Civil War and English America Most New Englanders sided with Parliament in the civil war. Ironically, Puritan leaders were uncomfortable with the religious tolerance for Protestants gaining favor in England, as it was Parliament that granted Williams his charter for Rhode Island Many of Hutchinson’s followers became Quakers but were hanged in Massachusetts. The Crisis in Maryland Virginia sided with Charles I, but in Maryland, a crisis erupted into civil war.in 1649, Maryland adopted an Act Concerning Religion, which institutionalized the principles of toleration that had prevailed from the colony’s beginning. The Mercantilist System in England attempted to regulate its economy to ensure wealth and national power. Commerce was the foundation of the empire, not territorial plunder. The Navigation Acts required colonial products to be transported on English ships and sold at English ports. Land and Labor in Virginia Virginia’s shift from white indentured servants to African slaves as the main plantation labor force was accelerated by Bacon’s Rebellion. Virginia’s government ran a corrupt regime under Governor Berkeley. Good, free land was scarce for freed indentured servants, and taxes on tobacco were rising as the prices of selling tobacco were falling. Nathaniel Bacon, an elite planter, called for the removal of all Indians, lower taxes, and an end to rule by “grandees” a campaign that gained support from small farmers, indentured servants, landless men, and even some Africans. The End of the Rebellion and Its Consequence. Bacon spoke of traditional English liberties.
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The rebellion’s aftermath left the Middle Passage was the voyage across the Atlantic for slaves. Slaves were crammed aboard ships for maximum profit. The number of slaves increased steadily through natural reproduction. Three distinct slave systems were well entrenched in Britain’s mainland colonies Chesapeake, South Carolina, and Georgia, and the Nonplantation societies of New England and the Middle Colonies. Chesapeake slavery was based on tobacco. Chesapeake plantations tended to be smaller and daily interactions between masters and slaves were more extensive. Slavery transformed Chesapeake society into an elaborate hierarchy of degrees of freedom Large planters, Yeomen farmers, Indentured servants, and tenant farmers. Slaves With the consolidation of a slave society, planters filled the law books to protect their power over the slaves. The Seven Years' War began in 1754 as the British tried to dislodge the French from western Pennsylvania. For two years, the war went against the British. the tide of war turned in 1757 when William Pitt became the British prime minister. Thomas Hutchinson Before the Seven Years’ War, London had loosely tried to regulate some of the colonies’ economies. After the Seven Years’ War, London insisted that the colonists play a subordinate role to the mother country and help pay for the protection the British provided. Members of the British Parliament had virtual representation. The colonists argued London could not tax them because they were underrepresented in Parliament. The Boston Massacre The March 1770 conflict between Bostonians and British troops left five Bostonians dead. Crispus Attucks The boycott ended after the Townshend duties were repealed, except for a tax on tea. The Declaration of Independence declared that Britain aimed to establish “absolute tyranny” over the colonies and, as such, congress declared the United States an independent nation. Jefferson’s preamble gave the Declaration its enduring impact. The Declaration of Independence completed the shift from the rights of Englishmen to the rights of mankind as the object of American independence. All states wrote a new constitution and agreed that their governments must be republics. States disagreed as to how the government should be structured, Pennsylvania’s one-house legislature and John Adam’s “balanced governments” of two-house legislatures The property qualification for suffrage was hotly debated. The least democratization occurred in the southern states whose highly deferential political traditions enabled the landed gentry to retain their control of political affairs. American independence resulted in the loss of freedom for the Indians. Indians were divided in allegiance during the War of Independence. The British and Americans were guilty of savagery toward the Indians during the war. With too many patriots, access to Indian land was one of the fruits of the American victory. But liberty for whites meant a loss of liberty for Indians. The Treaty of Paris marked the culmination of a century in which the balance of power in eastern North America shifted away from the Indians and toward white Americans freedom had not played a major part in Indians’ vocabulary before the Revolution, but now freedom meant defending their independence and retaining possession of their land. Shays’ Rebellion Facing the seizure of their land, debt-ridden farmers closed the courts. Invoked liberty trees and liberty poles. Shays’ Rebellion demonstrated the need for a more central government to ensure private liberty.
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