albion ascendant: colonization and settlement (1585-1763)
TRANSCRIPT
Life in 17th Century Chesapeake
• High mortality rate for much of the century• Plantation-based economy with tobacco as
cash crop• Indentured servitude system increasingly
unpopular• Widespread importation of slaves following
Bacon’s Rebellion (1676)
Early New England Life
• More immigration by entire family units than seen in Chesapeake
• Settlers generally of at least modest means• Much less indentured servitude and slavery
than in Chesapeake• No heavy reliance on cash crops• Puritanism allowed for economic prosperity as
long as spiritual life was sound
Puritan “Family Values”
• Children being “broken in” through such practices as kneeling on sharpened sticks and being tied up and rolled in a ball
• “Bundling” as courtship ritual• Bachelors being forced to move in with
families• Death penalty for sons 16+ who disobeyed
parents
Iroquois “Mourning” War
• Combat designed primarily to replenish population and grieve for lost loved ones
• Consequently a reliance on small unit hit-and-run raids
• Some prisoners ritually tortured and executed• Unable to maintain practice as European wars
came to dominate the continent
Colonial Social Hierarchy
• Gentry/Commoners/Slaves• Vertically Integrated Society• Rituals and symbols built into day-to-day life
to reinforce the pecking order• Gentry had responsibilities of spending and
loaning money to support local economy• No single path guaranteed access to gentry
class
Great Awakening Supporters
• Included “New Light” Congregationalists (Puritans), “New Side” Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists
• Believed in “born again” experience• Concerned that religious life was more about form
and ritual than substance• Spread a dire message, but informal style of delivery
encouraged notion that all souls mattered equally to God
• George Whitefield as first intercolonial hero
Great Awakening Opponents
• Included “Old Light” Congregationalists (Puritans), “Old Side Presbyterians, Anglicans, Quakers, and Catholics
• Concerned with itinerant preachers often uneducated and not ordained
• Research has found some correlation between opponents and loyalism while supporters of Awakening tended towards patriots
Useful Primary Sources
• “A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia” by Thomas Hariot (1588)
• Mayflower Compact (1620)• “City Upon a Hill” sermon by John Winthrop
(1630)• Nathaniel Bacon’s Declaration in the Name of
the People (1676)• “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermon
by Johnathan Edwards (1741)