The Invasion and Settlement of
North America, 1550-1770
Class 2
New Spain: Colonization and
Conversion
• Spanish adventurers were the first Europeans to
explore the southern and western United States
• By the 1560’s their main goal was to prevent
other Europeans from establishing settlements
• In 1565, Spain established St. Augustine, the first
permanent settlement in America, most of
Spain’s other military outposts were destroyed by
Indian attacks
New Spain: Colonization and
Conversion
• In response to the Indian attacks, the Spanish
adopted the Comprehensive Orders For New
Discoveries (1573) and employed missionaries
• Act prevented unlicensed parties from
entering new lands and removed language
such as “conquest” when describing
pacification of the area
New Spain: Colonization and
Conversion cont
• For Franciscans, religious conversions and
assimilation went hand and hand, but Spanish
rule was not benevolent
• Most Native Americans tolerated the
Franciscans but when Christian prayers failed
to prevent disease, drought & Apache raids,
many returned to their ancestral religions and
blamed the Spanish for their ills
New Spain: Colonization and
Conversion cont
• Santa Fe was established in 1610 by the Spanish,
who reestablished the system of missions and
forced labor after an Indian revolt in 1598
• The revolt led by and Indian Shaman Pope led
two dozen Pueblo peoples in an attack that killed
over 400 Spaniards
• Eventually exhausted by a generation of warfare
the Pueblos joined with the Spanish to protect
their lands from other nomadic Indians
New Spain: Colonization and
Conversion cont
• Spain maintained its northern empire but did
not achieve religious conversion or cultural
assimilation of the Native Americans
• The cost of expansion delayed the Spanish
settlement of California
New France: Furs and Souls
• Quebec (1608) was the first permanent
French settlement. New France became a vast
fur trading empire
• The Hurons, in exchange for protection from
the Iroquois, allowed French traders into their
territory
• French traders set in motion a series of
devastating Indian wars over the fur market &
they brought disease to Indians
New France: Furs and Souls cont
• Beginning in the 1640’s, the New York Iroquois
seized control of the fur trade and forced the
Hurons to migrate to the north and west
• While French traders amassed furs, French
priests sought converts; unlike the Spanish,
French missionaries did not use Indians for
forced labor, and they won religious converts
by addressing the needs of Indians
New France c. 1643
New Netherland: Commerce
• The Dutch emphasized commerce over
religious conversion
• In 1621, the West India Co. had a trade
monopoly with West Africa & America
• The company founded the town of New
Amsterdam on Manhattan Island as the
capital of New Netherland
New Netherland: Commerce
• To encourage migration, the co. granted huge
estates along the Hudson River to wealthy
Dutchmen
• New Netherland failed as a settler colony but
flourished briefly in fur trading
• When the Dutch seized prime farming land
from the Algonquians and took over their
trading network, the Algonquians responded
with force
New Netherland: Commerce cont.
• The West India Co. largely ignored the
floundering Dutch settlement and concentrated
on the profitable importation of African slaves to
their sugar plantations in Brazil
• The Dutch ruled New Amsterdam short sightedly,
rejecting requests for representative government,
and after a lightly resisted 1664 English invasion,
New Amsterdam happily accepted English rule
English Virginia: Settlers and a Staple
Crop
• English merchants replaced the landed gentry as
the leaders of English expansion
• In 1606 King James I granted a group of London
merchants the right to exploit from present day
North Carolina to southern New York: this region
was named Virginia
• 1607-Virginia Co. landed at Jamestown, VA. Their
goal was trade, not settlement
• Jamestown experienced high death rates, there
was no gold & little food
English Virginia: Settlers and a Staple
Crop cont
• Tobacco farming became the basis for the
economic life and an impetus for permanent
settlement in Jamestown
English Virginia: Settlers and a Staple
Crop cont
• To encourage English settlement, the Virginia Co.
granted land to freemen, established a headright
system and a local court system of representative
government under the House of Burgesses
• Native American hostility was another major
threat to settlement survival. Ex. Chief Powhatan
threatened war
• The result influx of settlers sparked war with
Indians but did not slow expansion; by 1630
English settlement in the Chesapeake Bay was
well established
Settling the Tobacco Colonies
• Shocked by the Indian uprisings, James I
accused the Virginia Co. of mismanagement
and, in 1624, made Virginia a royal colony
• The Church of England was established in
Virginia & property owners paid taxes to the
clergy
• The model for royal colonies in America
consisted of a royal governor, an elected
assembly, and an established Anglican Church
Settling the Tobacco Colonies
• King Charles I conveyed most of the territory
bordering the Chesapeake Bay to Lord
Baltimore, a Catholic aristocrat
• Baltimore wanted Maryland to become a
refuge from persecution for English Catholics,
settlement of MD in 1634
• Baltimore granted the assembly the right to
initiate legislation
Virginia 1630
Settling the Tobacco Colonies cont
• A Toleration Act (1649) granting religious
freedom to all Christians
• Demand for tobacco started an economic
boom in the Chesapeake and attracted minigrants, but diseases, especially malaria, kept
population low & life expectancy short
Masters, Slaves & Servants
• Majority of migrants to VA & MD were
indentured servants; most masters ruled with
beatings and withheld permission to marry
• Most indentured servants did not achieve the
escape from poverty they had sought
• About 25% acquired property/respectability
• First African workers, fared far worse & their
numbers remained small
Masters, Slaves & Servants cont
• At first, Africans were not legally enslaved
although many served their masters for life
• By becoming Christian and a planter, an
enterprising African could sometimes aspire to
near equality with English settlers
• In the 1660’s, Chesapeake legislatures began
enacting laws that lowered the status of
Africans; being a slave was a permanent and
hereditary condition
The Seeds of Social Revolt
• By the 1660’s tobacco market had collapsed &
long–standing conflicts between rich planters
& men with small farms or no property flared
up in political turmoil
• In an effort to exclude Dutch & other
merchants, Parliament passed an Act of Trade
and Navigation (1651), permitting only English
or colonial owned ships into American ports
The Seeds of Social Revolt
• The number of tobacco planters increased, but
profit margins were growing thin, the Chesapeake
ceased to offer upward social mobility to whites
or blacks
• The Chesapeake colonies came to be dominated
by elite planter-merchants
• Social tensions reached a breaking point in VA
during Governor William Berkeley’s regime;
Berkeley gave tax-free land grants to members of
his council
The Seeds of Social Revolt cont
• The corrupt House of Burgesses changed the
voting system to exclude landless freeman,
but distressed property-holding yeoman were
no longer willing to support the rule of the
power hungry gentry
Bacon’s Rebellion
Bacon’s Rebellion
• Poor freeholder’s and aspiring tenants wanted
the Indians removed from treaty-guaranteed
lands along the frontier
• Wealthy planters were opposed to Indian
removal, they wanted to maintain the labor
supply & continue trading furs with them
• Poor freeholders formed a militia and began
killing Indians, the Indians retaliated by killing
whites
Bacon’s Rebellion
• Not wanting the fur trade disrupted Governor
Berkeley proposed building frontier forts
• Settlers saw Berkeley’s strategy as a plot to take
impose high taxes & take control of the tobacco
trade
• (1676)Nathaniel Bacon, a member of the
governor’s council, led a protest against this
strategy
• Bacon & his men killed a number of peaceful
Indians & were arrested by Berkeley
Bacon’s Rebellion cont
• When Bacon’s militant supporters threatened
to free him by force, Berkeley agreed to
political reforms & restored voting rights to
landless freemen
• Not satisfied, Bacon’s men burned Jamestown
& issued a “Manifesto and Declaration of the
People” demanding removal of all Indians &
and end to rule by wealthy “parasites”
Bacon’s Rebellion cont
• Although Bacon died in 1676, his rebellion
prompted tax cuts, a reduction of corruption,
opening of public offices to Yeoman &
expansion into Indian lands
• To forestall another rebellion among former
indentured servants, Chesapeake planters
turned away from indentured servitude and
explicitly legalized slavery in 1705
Bacon’s Castle Surry, VA
Bacon's Castle Exterior
Bacon's Epitaph
Puritan New England
• NE Different from other European settlements
because it was settled by men, women &
children
• The pilgrims, Puritans who were “Separatists”
from England’s Anglican Church on the
Mayflower in 1620
• Mayflower Compact-a covenant for religious &
political autonomy, it was the first constitution
in North America