Colonial America Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  List of Figures

  List of Maps

  List of Documents

  Preface to the Fourth Edition

  Acknowledgments

  Part I: Old and New Worlds Meet

  Chapter 1: The Peoples of Eastern North America: Societies in Transition

  1 America Before Columbus and the Problem of History

  2 The Americas in Ancient Times

  3 The Eastern Woodlands, 1000–1300

  4 Eastern Woodlands Societies in Transition, 1300–1500

  5 Earliest Contacts with Europeans

  Chapter 2: The Age of European Exploration

  1 Western Europe, 1300–1450

  2 The Portuguese in Africa

  3 Spain Encounters the New World

  4 Sixteenth-Century European Competitors

  5 England: The Elizabethan Prelude

  Part II: The Seventeenth-Century Settlements

  Chapter 3: The English Conquer Virginia, 1607–1660

  1 Virginia Before the English

  2 The Virginia Company: Early Settlement

  3 The Charter of Liberties

  4 The Massacre of 1622 and Fall of the Company

  5 Growth and Consolidation, 1625–1660

  Chapter 4: The Conquest Continues: New England, 1620–1660

  1 New England Before the English

  2 The Pilgrims

  3 Massachusetts: A City on the Hill

  4 Establishing and Defending Order

  5 Challenges from England

  6 Stable Societies

  Chapter 5: Diverse Colonies: New France, New Netherland, Maryland, and the West Indies

  1 New France

  2 New Netherland and Delaware: The Dutch and Swedish Beginnings

  3 Maryland: A Catholic Proprietary

  4 English Colonies in the West Indies

  Chapter 6: The Restoration Era

  1 The Return of Charles II

  2 Mercantilism: The Navigation Laws

  3 New York Becomes an English Colony

  4 The Carolinas: Early Settlement

  Chapter 7: The Later Years of Charles II

  1 Virginia: Bacon's Rebellion and Its Aftermath

  2 Massachusetts: The Struggle to Remain Self-Governing

  3 New Jersey and Pennsylvania: The Beginnings

  Chapter 8: James II and the Glorious Revolution

  1 The Dominion of New England

  2 Massachusetts Reclaims Control

  3 New York: Leisler's Rebellion

  4 Maryland

  5 Aftermath

  Chapter 9: The Eras of William and Mary, and Queen Anne

  1 William and Mary's Colonial Policy

  2 The Salem Witchcraft Trials

  3 War on the Northern Frontier, 1689–1713

  4 War and Political Change in the Carolinas

  5 Proprietary Problems in Pennsylvania and New Jersey

  Part III: The Eighteenth-Century Provinces in a Changing Continent

  Chapter 10: The Economy and Labor System in British North America

  1 The British Atlantic Economy

  2 The Southern Plantation System

  3 Northern Farming and Commerce

  4 The Mercantilist System

  5 Money and Taxation

  6 The Standard of Living: Poverty and Prosperity

  Chapter 11: Settler Families and Society

  1 New World Families

  2 Children

  3 Patriarchal Authority

  4 Social Structure: Rank and Class

  Chapter 12: White Women and Gender

  1 Gender and the Settler Experience in the Seventeenth Century

  2 Regional Variations

  3 Gender in a Commercializing Culture: The Eighteenth-Century Refined Lady

  4 Gender in a Commercializing Culture: Middling and Working White Women

  Chapter 13: British North American Religion, Education, and Culture, 1689–1760

  1 Religion

  2 Education

  3 The Anglicization of Taste

  4 Libraries, Literature, and the Press

  5 Science and the Arts

  6 Popular Culture

  Chapter 14: Slavery and the African American Experience, 1689–1760

  1 Slavery: An Evolving Institution

  2 Slaves' Experiences

  3 The African American Family

  4 African American Culture

  5 Free African Americans

  6 Resistance to Slavery

  Chapter 15: Expanding Spanish and French Empires in North America

  1 Florida

  2 New Mexico

  3 The Growth of New France

  4 The French Upper Country, or Pays d'en Haut

  5 Louisiana

  6 Texas

  7 Significance for the British Colonies

  Chapter 16: Native American Societies and Cultures, 1689–1760

  1 Native American Societies in the Eighteenth Century

  2 The Nations of the Northern Frontier

  3 The Nations of the Southern Frontier

  4 Adaptation or Decline?

  Chapter 17: Immigration and Expansion in British North America, 1714–1750

  1 The Germans and Scots-Irish

  2 The Founding of Georgia

  3 The Urban Frontier

  Chapter 18: British North American Institutions of Government

  1 The Royal Framework

  2 Local Government: Town Meeting and County Court

  3 The Provincial Assembly: Crown versus People

  4 Parties and Factions in the Age of Walpole

  5 Toward a Republican Ideology

  Chapter 19: Britain, France, and Spain: The Imperial Contest, 1739–1763

  1 The War of Jenkins' Ear

  2 The Struggle for the Ohio

  3 The Conquest of Canada

  4 The War's Consequences

  Selected Bibliography

  Index

  This fourth edition first published 2011

  © 2011 Richard Middleton and Anne Lombard

  Edition history: Blackwell Publishing (1e, 1992; 2e, 2001; 3e, 2002)

  Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell's publishing program has been merged with Wiley's global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Middleton, Richard, 1941–

  Colonial America: a history to 1763 / Richard Middleton and Anne Lombard. – 4th ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-4051-9004-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  1. United States–History–Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775. I. Lombard, Anne S. II. Title.

  E188.M52 2012

  973.2–dc22

  2010047220

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDFs [ISBN 9781444396270]; ePub [ISBN 9781444396287]

  Figures

  1 Cahokia mounds, circa 1150

  2 The Indian town of Secotan, by John White

  3 Indian hunter, by John White

  4 Indians fishing, by John White

  5 Indian man and woman preparing a meal, by John White

  6 The Algonquian Indian village of Pomeiock

  7 Roanoke and its vicinity, 1585, by John White

  8 English colonists landing on the Potomac River in Virginia, 1634

  9 An artist's impression of Jamestown, Virginia, 1607

  10 Pocahontas in London

  11 Portrait of John Winthrop

  12 “Underhill's Diagram of the Pequot Fight”

  13 First Maryland State House, 1634–1694

  14 The Stadthuys of New York in 1679

  15 William Penn's Treaty with the Indians

  16 Portrait of King James II

  17 The Salem witch trial (artist's reconstruction)

  18 West Indian slaves processing indigo

  19 Typical eighteenth-century kitchen hearth

  20 Thomas Hancock House, Boston

  21 Portrait of Mrs James Smith (Elizabeth Murray), 1769, by J. S. Copley

  22 “A Westerly View of the Colledges . . . ” (Harvard College)

  23 College of New Jersey (later Princeton University)

  24 Portrait of Benjamin Franklin at the age of 54

  25 Plan of slave ship The Brookes

  26 Advertisement for a sale of slaves, 1769

  27 “View of Mulberry, House and Street, 1805”

  28 Advertisement for the return of a runaway slave, 1765

  29 Portrait of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés

  30 Portrait of Sagayenkwaraton

  31 A draught of the Creek nation, 1757

  32 View of Savannah, March 29, 1734

  33 A Northeast View of Boston

  34 Southeast Prospect of the City of Philadelphia

  35 Portrait of Major General Robert Hunter

  36 French map of North America, 1756

  37 A view of Québec

  38 The Death of General Wolfe, by Benjamin West

  Maps

  1 Eastern Woodlands coastal peoples, circa 1530–1608

  2 The age of exploration

  3 The Powhatan Confederacy in 1607

  4 Seventeenth-century New England and New York

  5 Major Indian peoples and European settlements in eastern North America, circa 1640

  6 The English West Indies, 1660

  7 The early Carolinas

  8 Mid-seventeenth-century Maryland and Virginia

  9 The middle colonies in the later seventeenth century

  10 Eastern North America, 1715–1760

  11 The provincial economy, 1700–1760

  12 Africa as known to Europeans in the mid eighteenth century

  13 Major British North American slaveholding regions

  14 Stono Rebellion, South Carolina

  15 Missions in Spanish Florida, circa 1674–1675

  16 Spanish, French, and Indian settlements in the Gulf of Mexico in the mid eighteenth century

  17 French claims in North America, circa 1700

  18 The lower Mississippi Valley in the 1730s

  19 Locations of major Indian peoples in eastern North America, circa 1750

  20 Major Native American powers of the northern frontier, circa 1725

  21 Major Native American powers of the southern frontier, circa 1725

  22 Immigration and expansion, 1700–1760

  23 The manors of New York

  24 French-claimed, British-claimed, and disputed territory, 1755

  25 The British offensive to secure the backcountry, 1755

  26 The struggle for Canada, 1756–1760

  Documents

  1 The upbringing of children, Father Gabriel Sagard, 1632

  2 The Indian method of warfare, Thomas Harriot, 1588

  3 A first meeting with Europeans

  4 License granted by Henry VII to John Cabot

  5 John Rolfe's request for permission from Governor Sir Thomas Dale to marry Pocahontas, 1614

  6 Formal constitution for a council and assembly in Virginia, July 24, 1621

  7 The Mayflower Compact, November 1620

  8 The examination of Mrs Hutchinson, November 1637

  9 A call for Indian unity by Chief Miantonomo, 1642

  10 An Act Concerning Religion

  11 The Duke's Laws, April 2, 1664

  12 Declaration of Nathaniel Bacon in the name of the people of Virginia, July 30, 1676

  13 The Bill of Rights, 1689

  14 Recantation of the women of Andover and Confession of Sarah Carrier, aged seven, 1692

  15 Benjamin Franklin on the Protestant ethic: the advice of Poor Richard

  16 Benjamin Franklin, “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c.” (1751, published 1755)

  17 An Act to Enable Femes Coverts to Convey Their Estates, Georgia, 1760

  18 Benjamin Franklin on George Whitefield

  19 On training to be a lawyer: the early career of John Adams, 1758

  20 A slave market, circa 1755

  21 “Afro-Floridians to the Spanish King, 1738”

  22 A suspected African rising prevented, 1680

  23 The Iroquois reject English missionaries, circa 1710

  24 The Micmacs ridicule the French, 1677

  25 An attempt to cheat Indians of their lands, New Jersey, 1716

  26 Gottlieb Mittelberger on the perils of crossing the Atlantic, 1750

  27 Lord Cornbury instructed to obtain a permanent salary, 1703

  28 The Albany plan of union, 1754

  Preface to the Fourth Edition

  This book tells the story of the British North American colonies, from the initial encounters between Europeans and the Native Americans who lived here in the sixteenth century to the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, when Great Britain won political control over most of the territory in North America east of the Mississippi and north of the Gulf of Mexico.

  Since the first edition of this book appeared in 1992, historical scholarship about this story has been substantially revised. History is always a work in progress, and the need to understand America's origins has been a compelling one for each generation of scholars. Not long ago the main objective of historians studying the colonial period was to understand the political and economic institutions created by British North Americans and their place in the development of democratic capitalist societies. Historians' focus, therefore, was mostly upon the Englishmen who settled in North America between 1607 and 1776 and the societies that they created.

  Over time the scope of historians' questions about early British American history broadened.
Scholars began to look not only at the roots of political democracy and social mobility but also at the origins of institutions such as slavery and indentured servitude. Assumptions about the impact of individuals on the historical process began to be questioned as historians realized that historical change is often shaped more by the unintentional consequences of interactions between many actors than by the intentional actions of a few. Rather than implicitly assuming that the only European colonists to influence North American history were men, researchers began to focus upon the impacts of European women on colonial development. Scholars became increasingly interested in the millions of Africans who were transported to the Americas during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, asking how their presence and their actions shaped the societies of which they became a part. Perhaps the most fruitful new questions concerned the millions of indigenous Americans who were killed, displaced, or assimilated into European-American societies as the colonies developed.

  But these have not been the only changes. Since the ending of the Cold War in the early 1990s, scholarship on British colonial North America has experienced something of a paradigm shift as historians began to consider their findings in the light of globalization. Rather than focusing on the internal dynamics of particular societies, scholars have increasingly begun to consider the ways in which cross-border interactions have shaped the historical process. New questions have been raised about the contest between the English colonizers and indigenous American peoples for control of the land. More attention has also been paid to the efforts of competing European powers to gain ascendancy in North America. How did British competition with the Spanish, French, and Dutch for control of the population, territory, trade, commodity production, and naval dominance shape the growth of the English-speaking colonies? Another result of this paradigm shift has been the greater scrutiny of the transoceanic flow of commodities, pathogens, crops, livestock, and migrants. What were their impact on the economies, societies, and political institutions of communities on both sides of the Atlantic?

  These changing trends in historical scholarship have inevitably been reflected in the evolution of this book. The first edition explained the political and institutional development of the early American colonies while also describing the lives of European-American women and families, African-Americans, and indigenous North American peoples during the colonial period. The second edition, in 1996, added newer scholarship about the history of indigenous peoples before the colonies began. The third edition, in 2002, provided more background on the transnational competition of England, France, and Spain for control over North America in the eighteenth century.