U.S. History, Government, and Citizenship · 8 min read
Colonial North America and Slavery
This chapter covers outline topic I.A.2: the Spanish, French, Dutch and English colonies, the interactions of Europeans, Africans and Native Americans, and the development of slavery. Test items often ask you to compare colonial powers, match a colonial region with its economy, or explain the causes and effects of a conflict or labor system.
The Columbian Exchange
After Columbus reached the Caribbean at the end of the fifteenth century, plants, animals, people, ideas and diseases moved between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. This transfer is called the Columbian Exchange.
Examples of the Columbian Exchange
| From the Americas to Europe, Africa and Asia | From Europe, Africa and Asia to the Americas |
|---|---|
| Maize (corn), potatoes, tomatoes, cacao | Wheat, rice, sugarcane, coffee, bananas |
| Peanuts, squash, beans, chili peppers | Horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens |
| Tobacco, rubber, quinine source (cinchona) | Smallpox, measles, influenza, malaria |
The most devastating effect was disease. Native peoples had no immunity to smallpox, measles and influenza, and epidemics killed a large majority of the Native population in many areas, often before Europeans even arrived in person. American crops, especially maize and potatoes, later supported population growth in Europe, Africa and Asia. European livestock, especially the horse, changed Native life on the Plains.
Spanish, French and Dutch Colonies
Spain built the first and largest European empire in the Americas. Conquistadors such as Hernán Cortés (who toppled the Aztec Empire) and Francisco Pizarro (who conquered the Inca) sought gold, land and glory and spread Catholicism. Spain founded St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest continuously occupied European-founded city in the present United States, and Santa Fe in New Mexico. Spanish rule relied on several institutions:
In the Pueblo Revolt of the late seventeenth century, Pueblo peoples in New Mexico, led by Popé (Po'pay), united against Spanish rule, religious persecution and forced labor. They drove the Spanish out of Santa Fe for about twelve years, one of the most successful Native uprisings against colonization.
France claimed New France along the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley. Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec early in the seventeenth century. French colonies had few settlers and depended on the fur trade, so the French needed Native trading partners and allies such as the Huron (Wendat) and many Algonquian nations. French traders often lived among Native peoples, learned their languages and married into Native communities, and Jesuit missionaries worked among them. Later, French explorers claimed the Mississippi Valley and named it Louisiana; New Orleans became its port.
The Dutch founded New Netherland in the Hudson River valley, with New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island as its center. The Dutch West India Company focused on the fur trade, and the colony was known for religious and ethnic diversity. England seized the colony in the mid-seventeenth century and renamed it New York.
The English Colonies
England's first permanent settlement was Jamestown, Virginia, founded early in the seventeenth century by the Virginia Company, a joint-stock company seeking profit. Early years brought disease, hunger (the "starving time") and conflict with the Powhatan Confederacy. John Rolfe's introduction of a sweeter tobacco gave the colony a profitable cash crop. Virginia's House of Burgesses was the first elected representative assembly in English America, and in the same year the first recorded Africans arrived in Virginia.
The Pilgrims, Separatists who wanted to break from the Church of England, founded Plymouth. Before landing, the men aboard the Mayflower signed the Mayflower Compact, agreeing to form a "civil body politic" and to make and obey just and equal laws for the general good. It is an early example of self-government based on consent. The Wampanoag leader Massasoit made an alliance with the colonists, and Tisquantum (Squanto) helped them learn to grow corn. The Puritans then founded the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony to build a model Christian community, a "city upon a hill." Dissenters such as Roger Williams (Rhode Island, religious toleration and separation of church and state) and Anne Hutchinson were banished. William Penn founded Pennsylvania as a Quaker colony with religious freedom and fair dealings with the Lenape. Maryland began as a refuge for Catholics, and Georgia was founded later as a buffer against Spanish Florida and a fresh start for debtors.
Three Regions of the English Colonies
| Feature | New England | Middle Colonies | Southern Colonies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Geography | Rocky soil, long winters, harbors | Fertile soil, moderate climate, rivers | Long growing season, rich soil |
| Economy | Fishing, shipbuilding, lumber, trade | Wheat and grain ("breadbasket"), trade | Tobacco, rice, indigo on plantations |
| Society | Puritan towns, town meetings | Diverse groups, religious tolerance | Large plantations, enslaved labor |
| Examples | Massachusetts, Connecticut | New York, Pennsylvania | Virginia, South Carolina |
England's policy of mercantilism held that colonies existed to enrich the home country by supplying raw materials and buying finished goods. The Navigation Acts required colonial trade to pass through English ships and ports. For long periods, however, Britain enforced these rules loosely, a policy later called salutary neglect, and colonists grew used to running their own affairs through elected assemblies.
Labor, Slavery and the Atlantic World
Southern cash crops required many workers. At first, planters relied heavily on indentured servants, people who agreed to work for a set number of years (often four to seven) in exchange for passage to America. The headright system gave land to those who paid for a servant's passage. Over the seventeenth century, planters turned more and more to enslaved Africans. Reasons included a falling supply of English servants, the fact that enslaved people could be held for life and their children enslaved, and planters' fear of landless former servants after Bacon's Rebellion, a Virginia uprising in which frontier settlers and servants burned Jamestown. Colonial slave codes made slavery a hereditary, race-based status.
The Atlantic slave trade forcibly carried about 12 million Africans to the Americas over several centuries, most to the Caribbean and Brazil and a smaller share to mainland North America. The voyage across the Atlantic, the Middle Passage, was marked by crowding, disease, abuse and high death rates. Trade routes are often described as a triangular trade: manufactured goods and rum to West Africa, enslaved Africans to the Americas, and sugar, molasses, tobacco and other products to Europe and New England.
Enslaved Africans resisted in many ways: slowing work, breaking tools, running away, preserving language, music, food and religious traditions, and occasionally armed revolt, such as the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina in the eighteenth century. Their knowledge also shaped colonial economies; for example, West African expertise in growing rice made South Carolina's rice plantations possible.
Common Trap: Slavery existed in all thirteen colonies, not only in the South. It was far more central to the Southern plantation economy, but Northern merchants, shippers and distillers profited from the slave trade, and enslaved people lived and worked in Northern cities.
Conflict and Cooperation
Relations among Europeans and Native peoples included both cooperation (trade, alliances, shared knowledge) and violent conflict, usually over land.
King Philip's War: Metacom (called King Philip by the English), a Wampanoag leader, led an alliance against New England colonists after decades of land loss and pressure to follow English law. It was one of the deadliest wars for its population size in American history and broke Native power in southern New England.
The French and Indian War (part of the worldwide Seven Years' War) began in the Ohio River valley, where Britain and France both claimed land. A young George Washington fought in its early battles. Most Native nations allied with France. Britain won and, by the Treaty of Paris, took Canada and the French lands east of the Mississippi. The war left Britain deeply in debt, which led to new colonial taxes, and Native resistance to British expansion, known as Pontiac's War, led to the Proclamation line, topics continued in Chapter 1.3.
Teaching the Topic
Children can map the Columbian Exchange by tracing foods in a school lunch back to their hemisphere of origin. Use carefully selected, age-appropriate primary sources to teach about slavery honestly; avoid simulations or role-plays that ask children to act out enslavement. Compare colonial regions with a three-column chart and ask students to explain how geography shaped each economy.
Key Takeaways
The Columbian Exchange moved crops, animals and diseases between hemispheres; disease devastated Native populations.
Spain used encomienda, missions and presidios; France relied on the fur trade and Native alliances; the Dutch built a trading colony that became New York.
Know the three English colonial regions and their economies, plus Jamestown, Plymouth, the Mayflower Compact and the House of Burgesses.
Planters shifted from indentured servants to enslaved Africans; the Middle Passage was the brutal Atlantic crossing.
The French and Indian War gave Britain eastern North America but left a war debt that led to colonial taxation.
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