The American Yawp Chapter 3: British North America

Summary

This script explores the unique challenges and experiences of early British North American colonies, shaped by a diverse immigrant population and interactions with Native Americans. It discusses the development of American-style slavery, economic disparities between the North and South, and the cultural and religious diversity that contributed to a distinct American identity. The script also touches on the tensions and conflicts that arose from these dynamics, foreshadowing the political and social changes that would lead to the American Revolution.

Takeaways

• 🌿 Early American colonies were shaped by a diverse mix of immigrants and were vastly different from life in England, facing unique challenges due to the untamed wilderness and native populations.
• 🏰 The Glorious Revolution in England influenced democratic reforms in the colonies, aligning them more closely with English Protestant interests and imperial aims.
• 🌱 The population in the colonies grew rapidly, doubling every twenty-five years, with agriculture and trade playing a significant role in this expansion.
• 🔄 There were significant differences between the northern and southern colonies, including life expectancy, sex ratios, parenting styles, and religious practices.
• 📛 The institution of slavery in the American colonies was a new and brutal system, initially fueled by enslaved Native Americans and later by the transatlantic slave trade of Africans.
• 🌾 The southern colonies' economy was heavily dependent on cash crops like tobacco, rice, and sugar, which drove the demand for slave labor.
• 🏭 The northern colonies developed a commerce economy with various trades and industries, creating a unique commercial middle class.
• 🏙️ New England cities like Philadelphia and New York City became centers of commerce, crime, and intellectualism, laying the groundwork for future political revolutions.
• 💵 The lack of a standardized currency in the colonies led to a barter-based economy, with goods like beaver skins and rum playing a significant role in trade.
• 🌐 The triangular trade system connected the West Indies, England, Europe, and West Africa, facilitating the exchange of goods and slaves.
• 📜 The American colonies experienced religious diversity and evolving faiths, with some regions like Rhode Island showing early signs of tolerance and egalitarianism.

Q & A

What was the demographic shift that occurred in the British North America colonies by the late 17th century?

By the late 17th century, the native Americans were no longer the most populous people on the continent, as the colonies were increasingly populated by immigrants from all over the world.

How did the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England impact the British North America colonies?

The Glorious Revolution led to democratic reforms in the colonies, making them more aligned with one another and more integral to the imperial aims of the English Protestant homeland.

What was the primary factor contributing to the early growth of the British North America colonies?

The early growth of the colonies was less about immigration and more about a healthy natural population increase, especially in the north.

What was the state of medicine in the British North America colonies during the early period of settlement?

Medicine was rudimentary and rooted in humoralism, with most people dealing with illness themselves or with the aid of a midwife.

How did the system of American-style slavery originate in the colonies?

The system of American-style slavery originated as a product of unique circumstances and was initially based on the enslavement of Native Americans captured during wars, as per 17th-century European legal thought.

What economic factors led to the rise of the transatlantic slave trade to the British North America colonies?

The demands of growing plantation economies for a more reliable labor force led to the rise of the transatlantic slave trade to meet market demands.

How did the legal status of slaves evolve in the American South?

Slavehood quickly became permanent in the American South, with children inheriting their parent’s bondage, and colonial assemblies passed slave codes that used color to mark status.

What were the economic patterns distinctive to the American coastal south in the 18th century?

The southern agricultural economies were prone to boom and bust due to unpredictable and uneven tobacco production, and South Carolina and Georgia became heavily reliant on rice production.

How did the commerce economy in New England differ from the agricultural economies of the South?

New England's less favorable soil and climate for crop-growing led to the development of a commerce economy, with businesses utilizing natural resources like animal furs, wood, minerals, and fish.

What were the characteristics of the triangular trade system that operated between the West Indies, England, Europe, and West Africa?

The triangular trade system involved Caribbean sugar being sent to New England to be distilled into rum, and then colonial rum, furs, and natural resources were traded to Africa and Europe in exchange for slaves and manufactured goods.

How did the myth of colonial self-sufficiency contrast with the reality of colonial life?

The myth of colonial self-sufficiency is challenged by the reality that few families made their own clothes, and most relied on imported manufactured goods, indicating a dependence on trade and commerce.

Outlines

00:00

🌳 Early Colonial Life and Slavery

The first paragraph discusses the early colonial experience in British North America, highlighting the differences between life in the colonies and England. It emphasizes the vast wilderness, the diversity of immigrants, and the influence of native Americans. The Glorious Revolution in England sparked democratic reforms in the colonies, which aligned with English Protestant interests. The growth of the colonies was primarily due to a healthy population rather than immigration, with the north experiencing quicker reproduction rates. Medicine was rudimentary, and the population doubled every twenty-five years. The paragraph also details the development of American-style slavery, which was a new global phenomenon, and how it was initially fueled by war and the enslavement of native Americans. As plantation economies grew, the transatlantic slave trade of Africans was established to meet labor demands. The legal status of slaves was ambiguous initially but became permanent in the American South, with slave codes passed that associated race with servitude. The paragraph concludes with the grim reality of the slave trade, where Africans were kidnapped and forced into slavery, leading to the tragic middle passage and acculturation process.

05:05

🌐 Diversity and Economic Patterns in Colonial America

The second paragraph explores the diversity of the American population, which was composed of various races, nationalities, and ethnicities, including Huguenots, German Protestants, and Scotch-Irish, among others. These groups arrived in America to escape religious persecution and economic hardships. The economic patterns in the Chesapeake region were characterized by boom and bust cycles due to tobacco production, while South Carolina and Georgia relied heavily on rice. The paragraph also describes the precarious nature of plantation life, the development of black society and culture, and the abuse that slaves often faced. In contrast, New England developed a commerce economy with various trades and businesses, creating a unique commercial middle class. The region also saw the rise of cities like Philadelphia and New York City, which became centers of commerce and intellectualism. The paragraph discusses the challenges of trade and commerce, including the lack of currency and reliance on bartering and commodity trade. It also touches on the triangular trade system involving the West Indies, England, Europe, and West Africa. The social structure of New England is highlighted, with practices like anti-primogeniture and town meetings, but also notes the tensions that arose over religion and gender roles, exemplified by the Salem witch trials.

10:07

🔥 Conflicts and Rebellions in Colonial America

The third paragraph delves into the conflicts and rebellions that shaped colonial America, including tensions with native populations and the influence of Enlightenment ideals on religious and political thought. It discusses the coexistence and evolution of various churches and faiths in the colonies, leading to a premium on tolerance, despite the denial of political rights to Catholics and Jews. The paragraph also covers Bacon's Rebellion, which was an expression of American hostility towards English aristocracy and a struggle for control over land and native relations. It then shifts to the Spanish experience in New Mexico, where the suppression of native beliefs led to a significant Puebloan rebellion. The paragraph also discusses the increasing demand for Indian lands by white colonists and the use of coercive negotiation methods, such as the Walking Purchase. It mentions King Philip's War as a pivotal conflict between natives and English settlers, introducing new weapons and foreshadowing future violence. The paragraph concludes with the realization by colonial elites that they needed to control their labor force, often through the acquisition of more African slaves, and the development of self-government in the colonies, which would later lead to an imperial identity crisis when England sought to tighten its control.

15:11

🏛️ The Emergence of an American Identity

The fourth and final paragraph addresses the emergence of an American identity as the colonies grew accustomed to self-government and social mobility. It highlights how the class system of England did not take root in the colonies, allowing white people to find economic opportunities, often at the expense of others. The paragraph also discusses the imperial identity crisis that arose when England attempted to exert more control over the colonies, threatening the self-governance and economic prospects that had become hallmarks of American life.

Keywords

💡Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution refers to the events of 1688 in England that resulted in the overthrow of King James II and the installation of William III and Mary II. In the context of the video, it is significant as it 'touched off democratic reforms' in the colonies, leading to a more unified and democratically inclined colonial society that was more aligned with the imperial aims of the English Protestant homeland.

💡Humoralism

Humoralism is an ancient medical theory that posited the body contained four humors—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile—that needed to be in balance for health. In the video, it is mentioned that 'Medicine was rudimentary and rooted in humoralism,' illustrating the primitive state of medical knowledge and practice in the early colonies, where people often dealt with health issues themselves or with the aid of a midwife.

💡Patriarchal Puritanism

Patriarchal Puritanism refers to the strict social and religious system where men held authority over women and children, and where life was governed by strict adherence to Puritan religious principles. The video mentions 'stricter adherence to patriarchal Puritanism in the South,' highlighting the cultural and religious differences between the northern and southern colonies, with the latter being more conservative and traditional in its social structures.

💡Transatlantic Slave Trade

The Transatlantic Slave Trade was the forced transportation of African people to the Americas, primarily to serve as slaves. The video explains that 'the transatlantic slave trade of Africans rose to meet market demands' as the plantation economies grew. This trade was a dark and defining feature of the colonial period, with the video noting that 'Eleven million people were taken against their will to North and South America before the African slave trade ended.'

💡Seasoning

Seasoning in the context of the slave trade refers to the brutal process of acculturation that enslaved Africans underwent, often involving breaking their spirits and preparing them for a life of servitude. The video describes it as 'the last leg of their terrible journey,' indicating the harsh realities and suffering that slaves faced upon arrival in the Americas.

💡Triangular Trade

Triangular Trade refers to the trade network that existed between Europe, Africa, and the Americas, where goods and people were exchanged in a triangular pattern. The video mentions this system, explaining that 'Caribbean sugar went to New England to be distilled into rum, and then colonial rum, furs, and natural resources were funneled to Africa and Europe in exchange for slaves and manufactured goods.' This trade system was a significant economic driver of the colonial period.

💡Anti-primogeniture

Anti-primogeniture is the practice of distributing inheritance equally among all sons, rather than giving it all to the eldest. The video states that New England communities practiced 'an equalizing practice of anti-primogeniture,' which helped to diversify power and prevent the concentration of wealth and land, reflecting a more egalitarian approach to inheritance compared to the class systems of Europe.

💡Bacon's Rebellion

Bacon's Rebellion was an uprising in 1676 led by Nathaniel Bacon against the ruling class in Virginia. The video describes it as 'a “Backcountry” rebellion in Virginia politics' and an early expression of American hostility towards traditional English aristocracy. It was a significant event that highlighted the growing tensions between the colonial settlers and the English authorities, as well as the desire for more local control and representation.

💡Walking Purchase

The Walking Purchase was a fraudulent land deal in 1737 between the Lenape Native Americans and the Province of Pennsylvania, where the colonists took advantage of a misunderstanding to claim a much larger tract of land than agreed upon. The video refers to it as 'emblematic of both colonists’ desire for cheap land and the unbalanced relationship between white colonists and their Native neighbors,' illustrating the exploitative and coercive methods used by colonists to acquire land from indigenous peoples.

💡King Philip's War

King Philip's War, also known as Metacom's War, was a conflict in 1675-1676 between the Wampanoag people led by Metacom (King Philip) and the English colonists in New England. The video mentions it as 'the first formal conflict between the Old and the New World on the North American continent,' marking a significant escalation in the violence and conflict between the native populations and the English settlers.

Highlights

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England initiated democratic reforms in the colonies, aligning them more closely with the imperial aims of the English Protestant homeland.

The early growth of the colonies was driven by a healthy population rather than immigration, especially in the north.

Medicine in the colonies was rudimentary, with most people self-treating or relying on midwives for medical aid.

The population in the colonies doubled every twenty-five years, with two million English people living in the colonies by the start of the revolution.

Life in the colonies was not uniform, with differences between the north (New England) and the south (The Chesapeake), including life expectancy and sex ratios.

The system of American-style slavery was a new global phenomenon, rooted in unique historical and geographical circumstances.

Enslaved Native Americans were initially acquired through war, with European legal thought justifying their enslavement as prisoners of war.

The transatlantic slave trade of Africans rose to meet the labor demands of growing plantation economies.

Southern and Caribbean planters turned to the north African slave trade directly as their demand for slaves outgrew the supply from Spanish island plantations.

The slave trade was influenced by economic laws, with prices falling and slave ownership becoming more culturally permissible and affordable by the early 1700s.

Slave codes passed by colonial assemblies in the American South used color to mark status, legally establishing permanent servitude for blacks.

Francis Le Jau's ministry to slaves was conducted without permission from slave masters, who feared baptism could lead to emancipation.

An equal number of Europeans migrated to the Americas voluntarily during the period of forced African migration.

The American population is characterized by a diversity of races, nationalities, and ethnicities, including Huguenots, German Protestants, and Scotch-Irish migrants.

The southern agricultural economies of Maryland and Virginia were subject to boom and bust cycles due to tobacco production, while South Carolina and Georgia relied heavily on rice.

New England's less favorable soil and climate led to the development of a commerce economy, with various trades and businesses emerging.

Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations were pioneers in egalitarianism and tolerance, abolishing chattel slavery in 1652.

Colonial self-sufficiency was a myth, as most families relied on imported manufactured goods and bartering due to the lack of ready currency.

The triangular trade system connected the West Indies, England, Europe, and West Africa, facilitating the exchange of goods and slaves.

New England communities were built on principles of neighborliness and equal inheritance, preventing the concentration of wealth and land.

Religious and gender role tensions in New England manifested in witchcraft scares and the Salem witch trials.

Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia was an early expression of American hostility towards English aristocracy and a challenge to the colony's unrepresentative government.

The Puebloan rebellion against the Spanish in 1680 was a significant act of Indigenous resistance and marked the decline of Spanish power in North America.

The Walking Purchase of 1737 exemplified the coercive and fraudulent methods used by colonists to acquire cheap land from Native Americans.

King Philip's War was the first formal conflict between natives and English settlers in North America, introducing new weaponry and foreshadowing future conflicts.

The American colonies had become accustomed to limited self-government and social mobility, which was threatened when England began to tighten its control.

Transcripts

3: BRITISH NORTH AMERICA Though Chesapeake and New  

England colonists proudly considered themselves  “English,” the realities of the continent they  

inhabited made life in the colonies different and  unique. America was a vast and untamed wilderness,  

increasingly populated by immigrants from all over  the world, and yet dominated by native Americans,  

who were the most populous people on the  continent until the late 17th century.  

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 back in  England touched off democratic reforms  

in these remote colonies, which  become more aligned with one another  

and became even more integral to the imperial  aims of the English Protestant homeland.

The second wave of English  colonists reproduced quickly.  

The early growth of the colonies was less  about immigration than a healthy population,  

at least in the north. Medicine was  rudimentary and rooted in humoralism,  

though most people dealt with illness and medicine  themselves or with the aid of a midwife. Still, as  

agriculture and imports improved, the population  in the colonies doubled every twenty-five years,  

and two million English people called the  colonies home by the start of the revolution.

That is not to say that life in the colonies  offered a common experience. Differences between  

the people of the north (New England)  and the south (The Chesapeake) certainly  

existed and included longer life expectancy in the  north, a more distorted sex ratio in the south,  

differences in parenting styles, and stricter  adherence to patriarchal puritanism in the South.

The system of American-style slavery that took  root in the colonies was something new on the  

face of the globe, and it existed as a product  of circumstances unique to time and place.  

War offered the most common means for colonists  to acquire enslaved Native Americans in the early  

days of colonial settlement. Seventeenth-century  European legal thought held that enslaving  

prisoners of war was not only legal but more  merciful than killing the captives outright. When  

demands of growing plantation economies  required a more reliable labor force,  

the transatlantic slave trade of  Africans rose to meet market demands.

Southern and Caribbean planters had money but  struggled to maintain and control a sufficient  

white labor force under tropical conditions; the  first American slaves were purchased from older  

Spanish island plantations, slaves from the old  trade who weren’t necessarily African or black.  

As the sugar, tobacco and rice industries boomed,  American planters required more slaves than the  

Spanish could sell them, so they turned to the  north African slave trade directly. As demand  

for slaves in the Americas increased, it became  financially beneficial for slave traders to find  

more reasons to put more Africans into slavery.  Slavers soon resorted to kidnapping people from  

neighboring tribes in order to fill the orders  placed by American planters and traders.  

The trade quickly devolved, and African slaves  and whites worked together to capture free and  

innocent people (typically from neighboring  tribes), forcing them to take the middle passage -  

the terrible journey across the  Atlantic packed in ships like sardines,  

a journey marked by dysentery, physical abuse,  and death. Acculturation or seasoning - the last  

leg of their terrible journey -- soon  followed. Eleven million people were  

taken against their will to North and South  America before the African slave trade ended.

The slave trade was certainly  affected by the laws of economics;  

prices fell when competition for slave labor  began in earnest in 1697. It first became  

affordable -- and only then culturally permissible  -- to own slaves in the colonies as early 1700.  

The number of slaves in the colonies soon  exploded (250,000 by 1760) and their legal  

status was initially ambiguous. In the American  South, slavehood quickly became permanent,  

and children inherited their parent’s  bondage. This arrangement was made legal  

when colonial assemblies began to pass slave  codes that used color to mark status; whites  

were universally free, blacks in these colonies  were permanent servants by virtue of their race.  

For American slaves and their families, the only  way out of forced labor was death. Francis Le Jau,  

who baptized and ministered to the slaves,  did so without permission of slave masters,  

many of whom feared Christian baptism  was a slippery slope to emancipation.

While hundreds of thousands of blacks  were being forced to the Americas,  

an equal number of Europeans were  arriving of their own volition.  

The most distinctive and enduring feature  of the American population is that it is  

comprised by a diversity of races,  nationalities, and ethnicities.  

Huguenots (French Calvinists), German  Protestants, Palatinates (Penn. Dutch),  

German Mennonites, and Scotch-Irish, and other  Scottish and Irish migrants arrived by the tens  

of thousands in the 18th century. These people  came to America to escape religious persecution,  

but they also came for more recognizable problems,  like unemployment and the high price of rent.

Economics in the American coastal south,  or the Chesapeake, took on distinctive  

patterns in the 18th century. The southern  agricultural economies of Maryland and  

Virginia were prone to boom and bust due to  unpredictable and uneven tobacco production.  

South Carolina and Georgia became  heavily reliant on rice production. Cash  

crops and raw production soon became  the name of the game in the Chesapeake.

Plantation life was precarious and tumultuous for  most white owners in the south. As plantations  

grew in size, black society, culture, and  religion found expression, though slaves often  

found themselves at the mercy of sexual, physical,  and emotional abuse common on many plantations.

Across New England, the soil and  climate were not as favorable for  

crop-growing as in the South, so  a commerce economy took shape.  

Fur trappers, metalworkers, miners, blacksmiths,  bankers, cobblers, riflemakers, millers, printers,  

and shipbuilders took root across the northeast.  Businesses that utilized and exploited natural  

resources like animal furs, wood, minerals,  and fish created a commercial middle class  

unique to the Northern colonies. Rhode  Island and the Providence Plantations  

took strides toward egalitarianism and  tolerance, abolishing witchcraft trials,  

imprisonment for debt, and, in 1652, chattel  slavery, while Pennsylvania's Quakers committed  

the colonial to pacifism and unity, seeking  to create a new heaven on earth. Cities  

of New England included Philadelphia (pop.  28,000) and New York City (population 25,000),  

which existed as urban centers of  commerce, crime, imported goods, traffic,  

and intellectualism - including the intellectual  roots of the coming political revolution.

For most colonists, poverty and isolation were  early markers of their American experience.  

Lack of access to commercial  markets meant few pots, few candles,  

few wagons, and few roads connecting rural  colonial communities. The myth of colonial  

self-sufficiency, though, is challenged by  reality and sober historical reflection.  

Few families made their own clothes, and most  relied on imported manufactured goods. Obstacles  

to trade and commerce were, however, incredible  - no ready currency existed, and gold and silver  

were rare, so bartering and the trade of beaver  skins and other commodities made the economy work.  

Trade between the West Indies (Caribbean  islands), England, Europe, and West Africa  

created a sort of triangular trade system  whereby Caribbean sugar went to New England  

to be distilled into rum, and then colonial  rum, furs, and natural resources were funneled  

to Africa and Europe in exchange  for slaves and manufactured goods.

In New England, communities were built to be  neighborly, featuring annual town meetings and  

an equalizing practice of anti-primogeniture,  where inheritance spread among sons instead  

of to the eldest, diversifying power and  preventing the concentration of wealth and land.  

Tensions flared up, though, when sons who stood  to inherit very little organized new communities.  

Anxieties over religion and gender roles in  New England expressed themselves in repeated  

witchcraft scares a preoccupation over Satan’s  influence and other religious extremism.  

Twenty men and women were executed  in and around Salem, Massachusetts  

at the end of the 17th century alone. The causes  of the trials may have included local rivalries,  

political turmoil, faulty legal procedure where  accusing others became a method of self-defense,  

or perhaps even low-level environmental  contamination of stored foods. Enduring  

tensions with Indians framed the events, however,  and an Indian or African woman named Tituba  

enslaved by the local minister  was at the center of the tragedy.

As differences between the New England  and Chesapeake colonies solidified,  

an emerging conflict between the traditional  “personal” God and the Enlightenment ideals of  

science and human reason played out in America  in a way unlike anywhere else on the planet.  

From the get-go, American colonial churches  and faiths coexisted, changed, and multiplied,  

putting tolerance of difference at a premium  in the colonies. (Catholics and Jews, though,  

were often denied voting and political  rights across English colonies.)  

Western migrations though continually split  up churches and made the “declension” of  

religious piety a perceived  problem across New England.

Bacon’s Rebellion was a “Backcountry”  rebellion in Virginia politics and an  

early expression of “American” hostility to  traditional English patterns of aristocracy.  

An effort, unaided by the colony’s English  governor, to displace and fight back against raids  

by Doeg Indians threatened the legitimacy  of the colony’s unrepresentative government.  

It expressed frustration on the part of colonists  unable to shape colonial decisions and unwilling  

to draw lines between native and colonial  territory. Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion is an  

example of the continuing problem of defining  white and native “spheres” in the New World.

Just a few years after Bacon’s Rebellion,  the Spanish experienced their own tumult  

in the area of contemporary New Mexico.  The Spanish had been maintaining control  

partly by suppressing Native American beliefs.  Friars aggressively enforced Catholic practice,  

burning native idols and masks, and other  sacred objects and banishing traditional  

spiritual practices. In 1680, the  Puebloan religious leader Popé,  

who had been arrested and whipped for “sorcery”  five years earlier, led various Puebloan groups  

in rebellion. Several thousand Puebloan warriors  razed the Spanish countryside and besieged Santa  

Fe. They killed four hundred, including twenty-one  Franciscan priests, and allowed two thousand other  

Spaniards and Christian Puebloans to flee. It was  perhaps the greatest act of Indigenous resistance  

in North American history and signaled the  decline of Spanish power on the continent.

As the Spanish empire began to lose its  grip on the New World, England seized it.  

Increased immigration and booming land  speculation on the western edge of the  

colonies ceaselessly increased  white demand for Indian lands.  

Coercive and fraudulent methods of  negotiation became increasingly prominent;  

the infamous Walking Purchase of 1737 was  emblematic of both colonists’ desire for cheap  

land and the unbalanced relationship between  white colonists and their Native neighbors.  

The fourteen-month King Philip's War (1675)  between the Wampanoag people - led by Metacom -  

and Massachusetts settlers was the first  formal conflict between the Old and the  

New World on the North American continent, and  it introduced flintlock muskets by both sides,  

foreshadowing future conflicts and bloodshed  between natives and English settlers.

After Bacon’s Rebellion, the transplanted wealthy  and political elites of the American colonies  

understood they needed to control their free,  white, politically unrepresented workers,  

but lacked the infrastructure and systems to do  so (and did not desire to cede any power). Still  

more African slaves purchased from the Caribbean  sugar colonies, many soon realized, could  

fill their need for manual labor on the  mainland and pose less risk to the order  

and hierarchy of colonization.

Though English colonists certainly shared  values with and remained connected to their  

brothers in England, American colonies in  the 17th century had grown accustomed to  

limited expressions of self-government,  often without Parliamentary oversight.  

Social mobility became a marker of American  life. The class system of England failed to  

entrench itself in the colonies, and white people  found real economic opportunity in the colonies,  

though often at the expense of others.  When England later began to tighten its  

grip on the people of the colonies, an  imperial identity crisis threatened.