U.S. History 101 Colonial Beginnings, 1492-1690

The Renaissance (meaning rebirth) was a rediscovery of the works of classical antiquity following the Middle Ages. This rediscovery renewed a focus on scientific inquiry and the arts and literature.

Inventions such as the printing press, compass, and gunpowder spurred exploration.

Constantinople served as the trade gateway between Europe and Asia. Following its conquest by the Turks in 1453, Europeans had to find alternative trade routes to gain access to Asian goods, promoting exploration.

The Portuguese were primarily interested in trade with Asia, and during the early 1400s, Prince Henry the Navigator funded exploration expeditions primarily to access these markets.

In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and in 1498, Vasco da Gama reached India.

Granada

Granada was the last Moorish outpost in Spain, and its conquest unified the country under one monarchy. Its conquest allowed the Spanish monarchy to focus on other military adventures, such as the conquest of North America.

Spain

Founded in 1565, close to the location where Ponce de León first discovered Florida as he sought the Fountain of Youth, St. Augustine was the oldest continually occupied city in North America.

Columbus was convinced that a western route to India existed and wanted to find it. Although he’d stumbled upon the New World, Columbus died in 1506 believing he had succeeded, and that the peoples he’d named “Indians” really were inhabitants of Asia.

Contrary to legend, few in Europe believed the Earth was flat.

Spain focused primarily on conquest and expeditions under conquistadors (conquerers) who were sent from Spain to the New World.

In 1521, Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztecs in modern-day Mexico, and in 1534, Francisco Pizarro completed the conquest of the Incas of Peru.

Indians had no resistance to European diseases, and roughly 90% of the Indian population died from diseases like smallpox. Many of the remaining Indians were enslaved to work Spanish farms and mines under the Encomienda System.

The chain of disease was not one-sided; from the New World Spanish explorers brought syphilis back to Europe.

Columbian Exchange

Before European contact, there were no crowd-spread diseases, nor domesticated animals in the New World. Hearty American crops such as corn, potatoes, and cassava were brought back to Europe, helping to alleviate food shortages there.

Though Europeans didn’t understand pollination, they enjoyed honey and brought European honeybees to the New World.

Under the Encomienda System, the Spanish government provided grants of land and Indians to individual Spaniards who were supposed to care for the Indians and convert them to Catholicism. The system resulted in virtual slavery for the Indians consigned to Spanish care and most died from brutal treatment or disease.

To replace Indian labor, Spain arranged for the importation of slaves from Africa, under the Asiento System.

As the Indians died from disease and overwork, the Spanish turned to the Asiento System to make up for the labor shortage. Under the Asiento System, African slaves were carried to the Americas and a tax was paid to the Spanish crown for each slave imported.

The Asiento System was a forerunner of the Triangular Trade System, and resulted in hundreds of thousands of slaves being brought to the New World.

In 1493, the Pope divided the world between Portugal and Spain by drawing a line down a map of the known world, giving Spain everything west of the Papal Line of Demarcation, and Portugal everything to the east.

In the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), the Portuguese and Spaniards moved the line slightly to the west, an action which was ratified by the Pope in 1506. Since the Tordesillas line went through a portion of Brazil, the Portuguese would later claim the region.

The Spanish also colonized Texas, New Mexico, Florida, and California.

In California, the Spanish founded San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and under Father Junipero Serra planted religious missions along the California coast.

The Spanish mission at San Juan Capistrano, in Orange County, California, was founded by Father Serra on July 4, 1776.

In 1680 a group of Pueblo Indians in modern-day New Mexico, led by Popé, a Pueblo religious leader, revolted against Spain, driving the Spanish from the colony of Santa Fe de Nuevo México.

Popé and his followers revolted because of Spanish attempts to ban Indian religious ceremonies. The Spanish returned in 1692, and a subsequent revolt failed.

A nation-state (such as France or Spain) is a geographical unit, under one form of government, in which the populace shares a common ethnic and cultural background.

During the 15th and 16th centuries, trade was an important source of funding for nation-states, leading to an increased emphasis on commerce and exploration.

The French colonial efforts focused on the area around the St. Lawrence River, where they founded the colony of Quebec in 1608. French exploration was dominated by the fur trade.

The French efforts were driven by fashion. Beaver skin proved easy to make into hats, and beaver skin hats were a staple of the fashionable French gentleman for two centuries.

Relatively few French settlers arrived in the New World and their primary focus was on trade, mainly trading manufactured goods and weapons for furs. As such most contact between the Indians and the French was peaceful.

Beginning in the early 1500s, the Protestant Reformation was a revolt against the authority of the Pope and established new versions of Christianity.

To escape persecution, many of these new Christian sects would seek refuge in the New World.

Both Protestants and Catholics viewed religious conversion of Indians as a primary justification for exploration and conquest; each group sought to convert the Indians to their version of Christianity.

The Northwest Passage was a purported sea route north and west of North America that provided a direct sailing route to Asia from Europe.

The search for an easy sea lane around the New World by French explorers such as John Cabot and Giovanni Verrazzano, and Dutch explorers such as Henry Hudson, spurred exploration of North America.

Today, melting sea ice above Canada threatens to make the Northwest Passage a reality.

During much of the 16th century, England’s attention was focused on suppressing rebellions as well as a war with France. In addition, King Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church over the issue of divorce, founding the Anglican Church.

In 1585, England and Spain went to war, and England began to focus on the New World for the purpose of raiding Spanish ships. Following the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, English colonization of the New World began in earnest.

In a joint-stock company, funds are contributed into a common pool by investors who share in the company’s profits and losses.

Joint-stock companies proved an effective way to meet the large upfront costs of trading missions and colonial settlements.

A royal charter was a grant from the King of England giving special privileges, such as self-government, to a colony.

Jamestown, Virginia, established in 1607, was England’s first permanent colony in the New World. The Virginia Company, a joint-stock company, received a charter from King James I.

A previous colony at Roanoke mysteriously disappeared, but the Jamestown colony survived despite disease and poor planning.

Jamestown's problems included:

• disease: the colony was built in a low-lying, marshy area

• food shortages: many settlers wanted to search for gold instead of growing crops or hunting

• labor shortages: many former merchant settlers were unused to physical labor

Under John Smith's policy of "no work, no food" Jamestown's conditions improved for a while, but then deteriorated during the "starving time."

John Rolfe introduced tobacco to Virginia, which created a virtual boom economy in the Chesapeake region. The labor-intensive cultivation of tobacco led to the growth of slavery in the Chesapeake colonies.

A tobacco blend developed by John Rolfe and his wife, Pocahontas, proved particularly popular in England.

The Virginia House of Burgesses was the first lawmaking body in the New World.

Twelve years after the founding of the Jamestown Colony, the Virginia Company sought to encourage colonization in Virginia by establishing a lawmaking body, which allowed the populace to govern itself.

The current lower house of Virginia's General Assembly is a direct descendant of the original House of Burgesses.

The Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies were founded by Puritan Separatists. The English allowed the troublemaking Puritan Separatists to settle in the New World as an easy means of getting them out of the way.

William Bradford

Bradford led the Plymouth Bay Colony as its governor for a period of almost thirty years. Bradford composed a history of the colony, Of Plymouth Plantation.

The Puritans sought to "purify" Christian religious practices, and constituted a threat to the Church of England. A subset of these Puritans, known as Separatists, sought to leave the Church of England entirely.

The Church of England had been founded by English monarch Henry VIII, so that he could divorce his wife, free from papal interference. As the religious embodiment of the King, any threat to the Church of England was a threat to the King himself.

Aboard the Mayflower, the Puritan Separatists signed the Mayflower Compact (1620), which established majority rule and self-government for the Plymouth Colony.

Historians typically refer to these Puritan Separatists as "Pilgrims," because their trip was religiously motivated, and thus was a pilgrimage.

The Great Migration was the first large-scale influx of settlers to the New World. Fleeing a civil war in England, Puritans under John Winthrop established numerous settlements in Massachusetts, including Boston.

The influx of new settlers led to an expanded government for what was now the colony of Massachusetts.

Winthrop viewed the new community "city upon a hill," watched by the world and blessed by God for living in godly manner.

Winthrop's sermon gave rise to the widespread belief that the United States of America is God's country, an early example of American exceptionalism.

After the Great Migration, how did democracy function in Massachusetts?

Initially, the English settlers and Indians coexisted peacefully. The Indians taught the English farming methods and introduced them to new crops, and the English traded tools and weapons with the Indians for furs.

However, as the English sought more land, they began to view the Indians as primitive. Many believed that God had destined them to take territory from the Indians.

Royal colonies were governed directly by the King of England.

New Hampshire was a royal colony. Virginia too became a royal colony after the Virginia Company (a joint-stock company) declared bankruptcy.

Corporate colonies were colonies operated by joint-stock companies under a charter from the King of England.

Prior to the bankruptcy of its joint-stock company, Jamestown was a corporate colony.

Proprietary colonies were privately administered by individuals who received a charter from the King.

Maryland was a proprietary colony of Lord Baltimore, who received a charter from King James I. Pennsylvania was William Penn's proprietary colony.

Under the headright system, Virginia provided 50 acres of land to any landowner who paid an immigrant's passage, or to any immigrants who paid their own passage.

The headright system was designed to offset a severe labor shortage in colonial Virginia, but was not entirely successful. Many Virginia farmers turned to slavery to provide the needed labor.

After Virginia's governor, William Berkeley, failed to respond to Indian attacks on the frontier, impoverished farmer Nathaniel Bacon led a group of former indentured servants and blacks in an attack on Jamestown in 1676, burning it to the ground.

Bacon and his followers were aggrieved that political power in the colonial government was in the hands of a few wealthy landowners. The rebellion collapsed when Bacon died of dysentery.

Initially few blacks were imported into Virginia, and by 1650 there were only 400 slaves in the colony. Over the next few decades, however, Virginia landowners began growing rice and indigo in large quantities, which required large amounts of unskilled labor, and slavery increased.

Maryland, a proprietary colony received by Lord Baltimore from King James I.

Although Lord Baltimore designated Maryland a safe haven for Catholics, the number of Protestants quickly outnumbered the colony's few Catholics. Baltimore convinced Maryland's representative assembly to establish an Act of Toleration, which granted religious freedom to all Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant.

The Act of Toleration was the first legislative endorsement of religious freedom in the New World, although it did call for anyone who denied Christ's divinity to be put to death.

Under indentured servitude, a person's passage to the New World was paid in advance and in exchange for several years of labor.

Colonists, primarily in Maryland and Virginia, used indentured servants to fill labor shortages. Most indentured servants died before obtaining freedom.

Connecticut was founded as a corporate colony by Puritans from Boston.

Connecticut was the result of the 1665 merger of two colonies; Hartford, founded by Thomas Hooker in 1636, and New Haven, founded by John Davenport in 1637.

The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut governed the Puritan colony at Hartford. Written in 1639, the Fundamental Orders represented the first written constitution in the New World, and provided a legislative body elected by popular vote on a secret ballot, which would in turn elect Hartford's governor.

Many of the principles of the Fundamental Orders were contained in Connecticut's Royal Charter, granted by King Charles II. For safekeeping, the Royal Charter was kept in a Hartford tavern.

Pennsylvania was a proprietary colony, granted from King Charles II to William Penn, a prominent Quaker, in 1681. Although designed as a refuge for Quakers, Penn established religious freedom in Pennsylvania.

Delaware was part of Penn's charter, but was governed by a separate legislature.

As part of the Quaker ethos, William Penn insisted that women in the Pennsylvania colony be given equal rights with men.

In addition, Penn provided Pennsylvania a written constitution which limited the power of government, provided a humane penal code, and guaranteed many fundamental liberties.

Roger Williams dissented from Puritan preaching and advocated a separation of church and state. Asked to leave Massachusetts, Williams established Providence in 1636, granting his fellow colonists complete religious freedom.

Hutchinson preached that she had received revelations from God, which ran contrary to Puritan teaching. Banned from Massachusetts in 1638, Hutchinson founded Portsmouth.

A few years later, Hutchinson's colony of Portsmouth and Roger Williams's colony of Providence were united under Williams's control and named Rhode Island.

Rhode Island's full name, which it bears to this day, is Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, the longest name of any state.

King Charles II wanted to increase the royal presence in the colonies and established New Hampshire by separating it from Massachusetts in 1679, and declaring it a royal colony. It was the last colony established in New England.

The Dutch placed their colonies along the Hudson River (named for Dutch explorer Henry Hudson, who discovered it). The primary Dutch colony was New Amsterdam, modern-day New York, and Albany, farther up the Hudson.

The Dutch also lay claim to much of what is today New Jersey.

King Charles II gave his brother James, Duke of York (later King James II), control over the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam if he could conquer it. The colony was captured by the English in 1664.

The colony, renamed New York, was governed as a royal colony once James II became king. Later, New York and New Jersey would be separately created out of the conquered territory.

Originally one colony, the Carolinas were a proprietary colony, with a charter granted to eight nobles who'd helped King Charles II regain the throne in 1663.