U1 Ch.3 Pg.

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Chapter 3 Notes
PUTTING DOWN ROOTS: FAMILIES IN AN ATLANTIC EMPIRE
General Characteristics of Colonial Life
Dominance of English Culture
Majority are English in origin, language and tradition
Diversity came through Africans and Europeans
Religious Toleration
All colonies permitted the practice of different religions but with different
degrees of freedom
Massachusetts least tolerant, excluded non-Christians and Catholics
Social Mobility
With major exception of African Americans
Everyone had the opportunity for social mobility
New England Colonies of the 17th Century
Traditional English social order
Majority of immigrants are English in origins language and tradition
Different Experience than other English colonies
Explanation - Puritan families
Town life is very structured
Town laid out in an orderly fashion: a town square (a common or village
green) surrounded by homes, shops, and the church
Education
Had first tax-supported schools, 1647 (Massachusetts law)
Towns of 50+ built primary schools
Towns of 100+ built secondary schools
Harvard (1636) 1st college, motivation to train young men for ministry
Virginias first college William and Mary (1693)
Immigrant Families and New Social Order
God ordained the family
Family is the key to maintain social order
Men
Did the work, landowning was primarily reserved to men
Also dominate politics
English law gave men unlimited power including the right to beat their wife
Women
Not legally equal with men, a widow did not inherit her husbands land or
money she was expected to remarry
Average wife bore 8 children
Tasks: cooking, cleaning, clothes-making and medical care
Also responsible for education and most work alongside husband's
Accommodated themselves to roles they believed God ordained
Marriage
Most married neighbors with parental approval
Churches began to focus on families and their needs rather than the larger
population
New Social Order
Because of thin/rocky soil very little agriculture and it was small scale when
present
Work sun up to sundown, from dusk till dawn
Fishing is a major industry, New England founded on God and cod
Better climate/environment = greater longevity
Said New Englanders invented grandparents
The Chesapeake Colonies
Immigrant ratio
More men than women
Ratio was 6:1 men:women (1650)
high death rate
scattered population
Family Life in a Perilous Environment
Virginia Family Life

U1 Ch.3 Pg. 2
mostly young male indentured servants
most immigrants soon died
in marriages, one spouse often died within a decade
Serial Marriages
Marrying into extended family is common
Orphaned children raised by strangers
Women in Chesapeake Bay
marriage
Scarcity gives some women bargaining power in marriage market
Women without family protection vulnerable to sexual exploitation
Life Expectancy
Childbearing extremely dangerous
Chesapeake women died 20 years earlier than women in New England
Rank and Status in Plantation Society: The Gentry
Tobacco - wealth
It is the basis for wealth
Great planters few but dominant
Class system is based on economics
Wealthy landowners were at the top
Craftspeople and small farmers made up majority of the common people
Most arrive with capital to invest in workers (more workers = more profit)
Have money and so gain huge tracts of land
Gentry see servants as possessions
Early gentry become stable ruling elite by 1700
Also remain the elite
Rank and Status in Plantation Society: The Freemen
largest class
in the chesapeake
Most freed at the end of indenture, live on the edge of poverty
Rank and Status in Plantation Society: Indentured Servants
Servitude a temporary status
Conditions
Harsh conditions, didnt always have nice clothes/good food or have the
opportunity to learn trade skills
Servants regard their bondage as slavery
Planters fear rebellion
Indentured servants of America were the paupers and the criminals sent to
the New World.
Some of them were actually unfortunate victims of Britains unfair laws and
did become respectable citizens.

This group was dwindling though by the 1700s, thanks to Bacons Rebellion
and the move away from indentured servant labor and toward slavery.
Rank and Status in Plantation Society: Post-1680s Stability
Gentry ranks
Open to people with capital before 1680
Adding to gentry
Ownership of slaves
Consolidates planter wealth and position
Freemen find advancement more difficult
Rank and Status in Plantation Society: A Dispersed Population
Large-scale tobacco cultivation
Chesapeake was ideal for cultivation of tobacco
Great landholdings
Ready access to water borne commerce
Result: population dispersed
Along the tidal rivers
Virginia a rural society devoid of towns
Race and Freedom in British America
Indians decimated by disease
European indentured servant-pool wanes after 1660

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Enslaved Africans fill demand for labor
Roots of Slavery
First Africans to Virginia in 1619
Status
Of the first Africans is unclear for the first 50 years
Indentured servant or slave?
Some of the early African slaves to America gained their freedom like an
indentured servant
Rising black population in Virginia after 1672
Prompt stricter slave laws
Africans are now defined as slaves for life
Their slave status is passed on to their children
White masters possess total control of slave life and labor
Mixing of races is not tolerated
Greater importance than mercantilism
Numbers grew rapidly from a few thousand in 1670 to tens of 1000s by early
18th century
1750 of Virginia and 2/3 of South Carolina were slaves
Increased Demand
Factors were
1. Reduced migration (b/c increased wages in Eng reduce supply of
immigrants)
2. Dependable Workforce indentured servants/small farmers would make
political demands and had caused disorders (like Bacons Rebellion) slaves were more
reliable and controllable
3. Cheap Labor tobacco prices will fall, rice and indigo go up in profitability.
Both require a large labor force
Wages in England went up, so fewer young men came to America.
Americans were fearful of another Bacon-like revolt.
In the mid-1680s, black slaves coming to America outnumbered white
immigrants for the first time.
Simply put, in the 1680s, the African slave trade quickened
considerably.
Constructing African American Identities: Geographys Influence
Slave experience
Different from place to place
Some colonies made it a crime to teach slaves to read (for fear of an
organized revolt or of reading liberating ideas).
Conversion to Christianity didnt qualify a slave for freedom either.
Southern Colonies
Majority of South Carolinas population is black\
Life for a slave in the Deep South was harsh. Health conditions and labor
drained life.
Rice and indigo plantations, such as in South Carolina, were even more brutal
than tobacco
Chesapeake Colonies
Nearly half of Virginias population is black
New England Colonies
Have a lot less slaves than other colonies (less of a need)
Constructing African-American Identities: African Initiatives
New Arrivals v. Old Population
Older black population tended to look down on the recent arrivals
Because they speak English
African-American culture
All Africans participated in creating an African American population
Required an imaginative reshaping of African and European customs
By 1720 African population, culture self-sustaining
Blacks evolved their languages, for example Gullah (a variation of Angola).
Certain words joined English: goober (peanut), gumbo (okra), and voodoo (witchcraft).

U1 Ch.3 Pg. 4
Music was unique too with rhythmic beats, the banjo, and bongo drums. These
were the ancestors of jazz.
African-American Identities: Slave Resistance
Stono Rebellion of 1739
Widespread resentment for their lowered status
Armed resistance like the Stono Rebellion was a threat
Desiring freedom, blacks rose in revolt on occasion.
In New York City, 1712, a slave revolt killed a dozen whites. 21 blacks were
executed.
In 1739, along the Stono River in South Carolina, 50 blacks rose up and tried
to escape slavery by walking to Spanish Florida. But, they were intercepted by the
militia.
Overall, these revolts were rather small, scattered, and controlled. They were
certainly smaller than Bacons Rebellion with 1,000 men.
Runaways
Common
Commercial Blueprint for Empire
Salutary Neglect
English leaders are ignoring the colonies until the 1650s
A lot of the colonies were created for profit but the crown really didnt help
Charles II - value of colonial trade
Restored monarchy recognizes the value
Navigation Acts
Passed to regulate, protect and gain revenue from commerce
Way that England implemented mercantilist policy, through series of
Navigation Acts (1650-1673) there were 3 rules:
1. Trade to and from only English ships
2. All good imported to the colonies much 1st go through English Ports
3. Enumerated Goods could only be exported to England (originally
tobacco and slowly incorporated all of them)
Response to Economic Competition
Mercantilism
Coined by Adam Smith an advocate of free trade
Term for English commercial regulation
System adopted by most European Kingdoms in 17th Century
Considered trade, colonies and wealth/money as basis for a countrys military
and political strength
Govt should regulate trade for it to be productive
Colonies should be provided raw materials to the parent country to help their
industry and grow profit
Varieties of motivation
Crown wants money
English merchants exclude the Dutch
Parliament wants stronger Navy encourage domestic shipbuilding industry
Everyone wants a better balance of trade
An Empire of Trade: The Navigation Act of 1660
Ships engage in English colonial trade
Must be made in England (or America)
Must carry a crew that is 75% English
Enumerated goods only to English ports
1660 a list includes tobacco, sugar, cotton, indigo, dyes, and ginger
Enumerated couldnt be sold to foreigners until it first landed at an English
port
1704-5: molasses, rice and naval stores(turpentine, pine tar, and pitch used
to build/repair a ship) are also included
An Empire of Trade: The Navigation Act of 1663
Goods shipped to English colonies must pass through England
In England, the goods would be unloaded, inspected, paid duties, and
reloaded
Increased price paid by colonial consumers

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Staple Act
Furthermore, imports of 'enumerated commodities' (such as sugar, rice, and
tobacco) had to be landed and pay tax before going on to other countries
An Empire of Trade: Implementing the Acts
Anglo-Dutch trade wars
Sparked by the Navigation Acts
They had tried to eliminate the Dutch
New England merchants skirt laws
Sail anyways
Colonists protest the laws
Loopholes
Sail from 1 colonial port to another and then set sail for Holland/France
English will revise laws to tighten on loopholes
1696--Board of Trade created
Impact of the Navigation Acts
Positives
1. NE shipbuilding prospered
2. Chesapeake tobacco had a monopoly in England
3. English military protected them from attacks by French and Spanish
Negatives
1. Colonial manufacturing was limited
2. Chesapeake farmers received low prices for their crops
3. Colonists had to pay high prices for English manufactured goods
The acts were unnecessary since England was already a primary trading
partner
Enforcement of the Acts
Very lax on enforcement
Faced smuggling (brought in French, Dutch, and other prohibited goods)
Civil War in Virginia: Bacon's Rebellion
Nathaniel Bacon leads rebellion, 1676
By the late 17th century (1600s), the Chesapeake had grown a generation of
angry young men.
These men were young, white, landless, jobless, womanless and frustrated.
Essentially, their goal was to get land and get married.
Nathaniel Bacon typified these men in what came to be called Bacons
Rebellion.
In 1676, Bacon led about 1,000 men in a revolt.
Many of these men had settled on the frontier where Indian attacks were
frequent.
Their ambition was to get Gov. William Berkeley to crack down on the
Indians rather than continue his Indian-friendly fur trading. The poor men wanted land
from the Indians.
After some riotous success, Bacon suddenly died of disease. With the leader
gone, Berkeley struck back and crushed the rebellion.
Bacons legacy was to leave a lingering fear of revolt and lawlessness in the
minds of the upper class.
Governor William Berkeley regains control
Rebellion collapses after Bacons death
Gentry recover positions, unite over next decades to oppose royal governors