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War of Spanish Succession

(1701-1713) war over the successor of Charles II "the sufferer"; Charles had selected Philip V Bourbon, his grand-nephew and Louis XIV's grandson to succeed him, going against a previous agreement that he would be succeeded by an Austrian; an alliance of European powers with troops led by Eugene, Prince of Savoy, and John Churchill fought against French and Spanish troops; the war ended with the Peace of Utrecht Queen Anne's War was known as the War of Spanish Succession in Europe. It raged from 1702 to 1713. During the war, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and several German states fought against France and Spain. Just as with King William's War before it, border raids and fighting occurred between the French and English in North America. This would not be the last of the fighting between the these two colonial powers.

Stuarts

(Stuart Dynasty)- the family that ruled England after Queen Elizabeth 1 (Tutor) died with no heir, started with James I of Scotland (always feuded with Parliament over debts and money)

King Philip's War

1675 - A series of battles in New Hampshire between the colonists and the Wompanoags, led by Metacom, a chief also known as King Philip. The war was started when the Massachusetts government tried to assert court jurisdiction over the local Indians. The colonists won with the help of the Mohawks, and this victory opened up additional Indian lands for expansion. Following the execution of John Sassamon's alleged murderers in June 1675, rumors of war again swept through the countryside. In an eleventh-hour attempt to avert hostilities, John Easton, Rhode Island's deputy governor, arranged a meeting with Metacom. Asserting that his people "had dun no rong" but that "the English ronged them," the Wampanoag leader supplied a litany of grievances that recalled past quarrels and stressed intractable problems involving sovereignty, land, and animals. He accused colonists of plying Indians with alcohol to cheat them out of land. When the Indians later protested that they had not intended to sell so much territory, colonists insisted that written deeds were more accurate than native memories. If one sachem refused to sell property, the English would "make a nother king that wold give or seellthem there land." Incessant quarrels over animal trespass provided an equally powerful justification for war. Because "the English Catell and horses still incresed" and roamed at large, when Indians "removed 30 mill [miles! from wher English had anithing to do, they Could not kepe ther coren from being spoyled." Easton, Metacom assumed, was fully aware that the The attack in June 1675, which began with Indians "plundering and destroying cattle," may not actually have been intended as a declaration of war so much as another act of sabotage similar to those that had plagued the countryside in recent years. Even contempo- raries suspected that Metacom had not ordered it, but that some of his followers had taken matters into their own hands. The colonists' decision to flee to garrisons for safety and request military support, however, helped to transform a plundering raid into the opening act of an astonishingly bloody war. 59 Within months, the Narragansetts joined in the fighting against the colonists, entering the kind of pan-Indian alliance that their former sachem, Miantonomi, had once advocated. 60 But instead of sparing livestock until deer populations rebounded, as Miantonomi had suggested, this new generation of Indians made English animals special targets of their wrath. During a raid near Brookfield, native warriors "made great spoyle of the cattel belonging to the inhabitants." They "drove away many cattell & h[or]ses" from Rehoboth, "killd neer an hundred cattell" at Providence, and took away "at the least a thousand horses & it is like two thousan Cattell And many Sheep" from Narragansett country. 61 Despite their best efforts, English forces failed to prevent Metacom's escape from Mount Hope in late July and only managed to capture "six, eight, or ten young Pigs" from the sachem's herds. 62 Indians took a much larger toll on English animals. By November 1675, Connecticut magistrates worried so much about livestock losses that they advised inhabitants to "kill and salt up what of their cattell were fitt to kill" lest Indians take them first. 63 It also became clear that colonists who tried to keep their animals safe exposed themselves to peril. Early in the war, Indians 234 Contending with Animals A Prophecy Fulfilled assaulted five Rhode Islanders rounding up their cattle on Pocasset Neck. Colonists fled with their animals to garrison houses with palisaded yards only to discover that fodder supplies often dwindled before danger disappeared. Metacom and his men, quite familiar with livestock appetites and the seasonal rhythms of the colonists' animal husbandry, knew they only had to wait. In March 1676 near Groton, Indians "laid an Ambush for two Carts, which went from the Garison to fetch in some Hay." Two Concord men on a similar errand were caught in an attack that left one of them dead. The growth of new spring pastures brought no relief. When Hatfield residents let livestock out to graze in May 1676, 70 cattle and horses fell victim to Indians who had anticipated the move. 64 English families were not the only ones to watch their animal property disappear. Christian Indians, whose possession of cattle testified to their cultural transformation as much as their Puritan faith and woolen garments did, suffered devastating losses at the hands both of warring Indians and angry colonists who questioned the converts' allegiance to the English cause. Informing colonial authorities that his family and congregation had been driven to desperation, Joseph Tuckapawillin, Hassanamesit's Indian minis- ter, described how "the English have taken away some of my estate, my corn, cattle, my plough, cart, chain, and other goods," and "enemy Indians have also taken a part of what I had." Protective measures, however, likewise forced Christian Indians into poverty. An August 1675 order confining them to their homes prevented them from hunting, harvesting, or caring for livestock. Two months later, Massachusetts's decision to intern Natick Indians in squalid conditions on Deer Island in Boston Harbor only made a bad situation worse. 65 Those who raided Christian Indians' livestock attacked symbols as well as living beasts. To native combatants who rejected the colonists' call for cultural transformation, the animals signified the converts' contemptible eagerness to mimic the despised English in hopes of gaining influence with them. Colonists, driven by fear and prejudice to suspect all Christian Indians of treachery, now regarded livestock as misplaced emblems of civility that did not belong with savage owners. The symbolic connection between livestock and Englishness only intensified as warfare tore New England apart. A surprising testimonial to its power to reassure colonists whose world had turned upside down appeared in Mary Rowlandson's account of her three-month-long captivity with enemy Indians in 1676. Enduring a forced 234 march through the northern Massachusetts woods in late winter, she recalled, "I saw a place where English cattle had been: that was comfort to me." Only in a profoundly disordered world would a glimpse of trampled earth or perhaps just heaps of manure provide such solace to a woman who until then had taken cattle for granted all of her life. 66 The creatures that reminded Rowlandson of her English identity aroused intense hatred in many Indians because of that very association. Native combatants accompanied physical attacks with verbal taunts impugning English claims that possession of animal property helped to assure cultural dominance. When a party of Narragansetts seized Joshua Tift and took him captive in Rhode Island, they slaughtered five of his cattle "before his face" and then mocked the terrified colonist by asking, "[WJhat will Cattell now doe you good?" The same insulting message was delivered in a hastily scrawled note stuck in the cleft of a bridge post outside of Medfield just after a devastating raid in February 1676. The crumpled note announced, Know by this paper, that the Indians that thou hast provoked to wrath and anger, will war this twenty one years if you will; there are many Indians yet, we come three hundred at this time. You must consider the Indians lost nothing but their life; you must lose your fair houses and cattle. This defiant challenge to love of property may have disconcerted unusually perceptive colonists with its echo of scriptural warnings about the dangers of covetousness. 67 When Indians mutilated livestock rather than killing the animals directly, they terrorized colonists at the same time that they deprived them of valuable property. One observer reported that "what cattle they took they seldom killed outright: or if they did, would eat but little of the flesh, but rather cut their bellies, and letting them go several days, trailing their guts after them, putting out their eyes, or cutting off one leg." Increase Mather related an incident when Indians near Chelmsford "took a Cow, knocked off one of her horns, cut out her tongue, and so left the poor creature in great misery." They also put a horse and ox in a "hovil" that they then set ablaze. Convinced that such displays were intended "only to shew how they are delighted in exercising cruelty," colonists misunderstood the episodes' full significance. The choice of cattle and to a lesser extent horses — not the pigs that Indians may have hated but often owned — for mutilation took aim at the most "English" of livestock species. By 236 Contending with Animals A Prophec y Fulfille inflicting tortures similar to those used on human victims, Indians identified the animals as enemies in their own right whose destructive behavior and contribution to English expansion had earned them such treatment. 68 As the war dragged on, making it virtually impossible to plant crops or to hunt, Indians relied more and more on captured livestock for food. Benjamin Church and a company of English soldiers, happening upon an Indian encampment near an orchard, found the apples gone and puddles of blood on the ground left from "the flesh of swine, which they had killed that day." Church later heard that Indians were raiding colonial farms specifically to "kill cattle and horses for provisions." Alerted in one instance by the sound of Indians shooting at livestock, colonial troops found a camp with "some of the English Beef boiling in their Kettles." These native raids could make significant inroads on the colonists' own food supply. On a retaliatory plundering expedition that occurred toward the end of the war, English soldiers seized "about a thousand Weight of dried Beef, with other Things" from Indian adversaries. 69 Livestock raids, however, could not sustain the Indians all the way to victory. Shortages of food and weapons, outbreaks of disease, and attacks by Mohawk enemies during the winter of 1675-76 sapped the strength of Metacom's forces. The following August, English soldiers with native allies overwhelmed the straggling band of Indian fighters who had returned to Mount Hope. Metacom's death at the hands of a Christian Indian effectively ended a war that may have cost up to 3,000 English and 7,000 Indian lives. Damage to property was also extensive, including as many as 1,200 houses destroyed and "8000 head of cattle, great and small, killed" by Indians whose own losses were immeasurable.

Animal husbandry

A branch of agriculture concerned with the production and care of domestic animals animal husbandry inculcated a set of behaviors, all directed toward the efficient exercise of human dominion over lesser creatures, that manifested—at least in their own eyes—the colonists' cultural superiority. Assumptions about animal husbandry insinuated themselves into England's imperial ideology in subtle ways and influenced much more than agricultural practice itself. Expressing an opinion based on their English experience, colonists asserted that farming with animals was one important hallmark of a civilized society. They claimed that using domestic animals to improve the land helped to legitimize English rights to New World territory. By bringing livestock across the Atlantic, colonists believed that they provided the means to realize America's potential, pursuing a goal that Indians who lacked domestic animals had failed to accomplish. English settlers employed assumptions about the cultural advantages associated with animal hus- bandry to construct a standard against which to measure the deficiencies they detected in native societies and to prescribe a remedy for their amelioration.

Glorious Revolution

A reference to the political events of 1688-1689, when James II abdicated his throne and was replaced by his daughter Mary and her husband, Prince William of Orange. The English Bill of Rights followed the 1688 Glorious Revolution when King James II was replaced by King William III and Mary. The provisions of this important English Bill incorporated the Declaration of Rights and consisted of: A list of the misdeeds of King James II Thirteen Articles confirming the rights of Parliament and the people and defining the limitations of the Crown Confirmation of the accession of William and Mary to the throne of England The 1689 English Bill of Rights is one of the two great historic documents which regulate the relations between the Crown and the people, the other document being the 1215 Magna Carta of England. The Magna Carta started the process of establishing the democratic basis of the English Monarchy by: Limiting the powers of the king Laying the basis for due process of law that should be known and orderly (which led to Trial by Jury) Prohibiting the king from taking property or taxes without consent of the Great Council 1215 Magna Carta Text and Words The 1689 English Bill of Rights enhanced the democratic process by: Guaranteeing free elections and frequent meetings of Parliament Giving English people the right to complain to the king or queen in Parliament (Free Speech) Forbidding excessive fines and cruel punishment Establishing representative government with laws made by a group that acts for the people The English Bill of Rights established a constitutional monarchy in Great Britain. A constitutional monarchy is one in which the King or Queen has a largely ceremonial position. It is a form of government in which a monarch acts as head of state but their powers are defined and limited by law. Constitutional monarchies employ a parliamentary system with a Prime Minister as head of the government. The English Bill denounced King James II for abusing his power and the bill was passed as British law in December 1688. The English Bill of Rights clearly established that the monarchy could not rule without consent of Parliament. The English Bill put in place a constitutional form of government in which the rights and liberties of the individual were protected under English law. The English Bill of Rights had a great influence on the colonies in North America and the Constitution of the United States. American colonists expected to have the same rights granted in England by the Magna Carta and the 1689 English Bill of Rights. When the American colonists were denied these rights tensions grew in the colonies and led to the American Revolutionary War. Many of the themes and principles contained in the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights are continued in the American Declaration of Independence of 1776, the First State Constitutions, the Articles of Confederation, the 1791 US Bill of Rights and in the U.S. Constitution.

Opechancanough

After Powhatan (chieftain) died in 1618, his more militant brother Opechancanough ordered an attack on the Jamestown colonists on March 22, 1622. This began Second Anglo-Powhatan war began. Because of this attack, the English decided to try and exterminate the Indians. Opechancanough fought back on April 18th, 1644, killing 400 and taking prisoners. The Third Anglo-Powhatan war ended when the Indians were completely defeated in 1646. Opechancanough's attacks were responsible for increasing the tension between the settlers and the Native Americans, leading to the two larger of the Anglo-Powhatan wars. For two years following the establishment of Jamestown in April 1607, colonists interacted warily but peacefully with Powhatan and the various groups under his authority. But good relations broke down under pressure from unceasing English demands for corn and the Powhatans' growing dissatisfaction with the colonists' approach to trade. The result was a war that lasted from 1609 to 1614. 5 With the outbreak of conflict, Indians first began targeting livestock for destruction. One colonist alleged that Powhatan "and his people destroyed our Hogs, (to the number of about six hundred)." That toll was surely exaggerated, reflecting the reporter's fear of starvation as much as his sense of indignation. Yet Powhatan, keenly aware that the colonists had trouble feeding themselves, doubtless intended to aggravate such worries. Upset at having their corn confiscated by the colonists, he and his men deliberately turned against a food source precious to the English. Thus depredations against livestock came to be seen by both sides as acts of war, and their cessation a condition of peace. When colonists formed an alliance with the Chickahominies at the conflict's end, they made the Indians agree "neither to kill nor detaine any of our men, nor cattell, but bring them home." 6 Military stalemate brought an uneasy peace that lasted eight years. During this period, English settlement expanded rapidly, fueled by constant immigration and the beginnings of tobacco cultivation. Twenty-three planta- tions lined the James River in 1619; by 1622 the number had doubled. Colonists also spread for the first time to the Eastern Shore. For every acre cleared for corn or tobacco, another five or ten (or more) in the surrounding area became the domain of free-ranging cattle and hogs. Just when the Powhatans found it more difficult than ever to avoid colonists and their animals, their own numbers may have begun to diminish due to the appearance of European diseases against which they had no immunity. 7 178 Contending with Animals Forgiving Trespasses 179 Once again, tensions erupted into violence. Outraged at the colonists' murder of the military and spiritual leader Nemattanew and more generally frustrated by English expansion, the Powhatans launched a preemptive attack on their adversaries. Led by Opechancanough, Powhatan's kinsman and successor as chief, the Indians struck plantations along the James River on the morning of 22 March 1622. Over 300 colonists—perhaps a quarter of the English population—perished. Untold quantities of livestock were also killed in the assault. The Indians "fell uppon the Poultry, Hoggs, Cowes, Goats and Horses whereof they killed great nombers," one witness reported. Even the Chickahominies, erstwhile English allies, slaughtered English animals. When frantic colonists sought refuge within Jamestown's fort, they aban- doned many other creatures to their fate, some of which escaped to the woods and went feral. 8 Ten years of sporadic but brutal fighting ensued. Despite enormous losses, colonial forces rallied to descend on dozens of native villages. Many Virginians believed that "now we have just cause to destroy them by all meanes possible" and acted accordingly. As the second anniversary of the initial attack approached, Virginia legislators coolly ordered inhabitants to prepare to "fall upon their adjoyning salvages as we did last yeare." Though planters scarcely needed encouragement to seek revenge, Governor Francis Wyatt reminded them that the extirpation of the Indians would not only protect colonists but also make Virginia safe for beleaguered livestock. With victory the colonists would "gain the free range of the country for increase of Cattle, swine, etc." Only Capt. John Martin, a noted troublemaker, dared publicly to suggest otherwise. Observing that Indians "have ever kept down the woods and slayne the wolves, beares, and other beasts," he argued that "we shalbe more opressed in short tyme by their absence, then in their liveing by us both for our owne securitie as allso for our Cattle." Martin's comments fell on deaf ears, but if he and Wyatt disagreed about the effects of the Indians' disappearance they began with a similar premise. Both men assumed that the fates of planters and their livestock were closely intertwined. 9 Because the Accomacks' killing of hogs occurred during this cycle of violence, the colonists must have been relieved to negotiate a peaceful resolution so that fighting did not spread to the Eastern Shore. Elsewhere native raids against the English and their animals continued until 1632, when the two sides agreed to a peace that established English dominance over much of the eastern Tidewater. In 1644, an aging Opechancanough organized one final, desperate assault during which native warriors slew nearly 500 colonists and many livestock, but the English had grown numerous enough by then to absorb this blow without the survival of the colony being seriously endangered. Colonists captured and killed Opechancanough, and in 1646 imposed a peace treaty that effectively crushed the Powhatan chiefdom as a political entity. 10 From this point on, the Indians of the eastern Chesapeake interacted with colonists from a position of weakness, though hardly one of complete submission. Their relations would involve, as they had from the start, negotiations over the place of English animals in the New World. The colonists' relative strength guaranteed that livestock would proliferate in the region, but could not determine how Indians would respond to the animals' growing presence. Attacks on livestock in wartime indicated that Indians knew how much the colonists relied on their animals but they were not necessarily meant to express native peoples' enmity towards the creatures in their own right.

Bacon's Rebellion

Date: 1676 Description/Significance: Nathaniel Bacon led landless frontiersmen to rebellion when Berkley refused to fight back against Indian attacks on frontier settlements. Bacon and his followers murdered the Indians and burn the capital. However, it ended when Bacon suddenly died and Berkley crushed the uprising and hung more than 20 rebels. However, this event triggered the smoldering resentments of landless former servants. conflict erupted in Virginia within weeks of the outbreak of King Philip's War, some people feared that a universal Indian uprising was in progress. The escalation of hostilities in the Chesapeake, however, owed more to Virginians' aggression than Indian actions. Militia units followed up on the earlier skirmish with the Doeg Indians by indiscriminately attacking Susquehannocks and then slaughtering several of their leaders during a fake peace parley. Before long, a vicious cycle of warfare tore through the countryside as Susquehannocks sought revenge on frontier plantations and colonial volunteers led by the recently arrived Nathaniel Bacon attacked any and all Indians they could find. 71 Bacon drew his followers from the ranks of Virginia's young, propertyless men who coveted Indian lands and despised their own leaders, whom they 237 238 regarded as a self-aggrandizing elite intent on denying the multitude any chance for economic independence. Prominent among their complaints against the government were high taxes levied to help build defensive forts along the frontier. Upset at seeing a line drawn between English and Indian territory in this way, discontented young men wanted instead to be given a free hand in exterminating Indians and appropriating their lands. Bacon championed their cause, less out of sympathy for their plight than to redress personal grievances against Governor William Berkeley. Under their intem- perate leader's guidance, armed colonists descended not only on Susque- hannocks but also on subject Indian peoples like the Pamunkeys and Occaneechees whose lands lay conveniently near existing plantations. When Berkeley declared Bacon and his followers to be rebels, the Indian war was absorbed into an internecine conflict of even larger proportions. As confusing as it was violent, the rebellion disintegrated quickly after Bacon died of dysentery in October 1676. 72 Disentangling the Indian war from the rebellion itself remained difficult even after a measure of calm returned to Virginia. Unlike New Englanders, who rushed into print with numerous self-justifying histories of King Philip's War, Virginians preferred to forget the recent past rather than analyze it. 73 The Indians' side of the story is even more elusive, especially since no leader comparable to Metacom emerged to explain longstanding grievances against the colonists. Yet in its basic outlines, the story was familiar enough, and at least where fighting between colonists and Indians was concerned, it bore a striking resemblance to New England's experience. Once again, a burgeoning English population coveted Indian land, in this case to make room for tobacco as well as free-range livestock. Economic distress, including bad harvests and low tobacco prices, heightened the colonists' anxiety about their futures at an inopportune moment. On exposed frontier plantations, where sporadic Indian attacks on people and animals most often occurred, English settlers complained about lack of adequate protection. Other colonists, particularly those who wanted to move to the same areas, took up the cause without acknowledging any connection between native depredations and English entry onto their lands. 74 No Indian leader in Virginia announced, as Metacom did in New England, that trespassing livestock contributed to the outbreak of hostilities. It was Bacon who implied that recurrent Indian depredations against livestock and other property justified English aggression. For years, Bacon charged, Contending with Animals A Prophecy Fulfilled Indians had acted as "Robbers and Theeves and Invaders" of colonial estates, a blanket accusation that included what had in fact been retaliatory acts of sabotage for damages suffered. 75 Those attacks only intensified after the war began, signaling the Indians' identification of livestock as enemies as deserving of destruction as their owners. At first wary Susquehannocks traveled in small parties and killed only "a very few Cattle and Swine" in outlying plantations. When the opportunity presented itself, they seized troopers' horses for food. Soon, however, native raids increased in severity. By August 1675, Doegs and Susquehannocks reportedly ambushed frontier farmers at will and "distroyed severall stocks of cattle in the said upper parts of Stafford County," terrifying inhabitants with surprise assaults. As English attacks spread to the Pamunkeys and other former Indian allies, they too responded with plundering raids on colonists' livestock and other property. 76 When the chaos of war and rebellion finally subsided, weary colonists counted the "great Destruction of the Stocks" among their many losses. Rappahannock county residents reported that their region lay "a bleeding," with murdered planters and ravaged estates testifying to the Indians' savagery. As late as 1680, magistrates attributed a shortage of provisions in large part to the Indians' wartime destruction of cattle. Even as they complained of Indian depredations, magistrates allowed colonists to keep any goods—doubtless including hogs as well as other property—plundered from the Indians as legitimate spoils of war. 77 Assigning blame for both of these catastrophes consumed colonists' energies even as they tried to put their lives back together. On the very day that Metacom died, William Harris of Rhode Island complained in a letter to England that some people accused colonists of bringing the disaster on themselves, oppressing Indians by "defrauding them of theyr land" and "trespasing in theyr corne by theyr cattell." Only self-interested scoundrels intent on flattering Indians to induce them to sell land or engage in trade, Harris sneered, would make such a preposterous charge when the Indians were clearly the aggressors. Edward Randolph, sent from England to investigate New England affairs, heard the same rumors but he believed the fault lay with colonists who willingly sold arms to Indians. Whenever the issue of animal trespass came up, New Englanders denied its impor- tance. Defending Plymouth's behavior to the King himself, Nathaniel Morton insisted that "When an English plantation was near a body of Indians the English frequently fenced their fields for them that the cattle 239 t^-<*-«-^t^ •«-*/-£ •«-•»- «»*^f-^ £•'£-«' -^-M*-**.-/^ speedily granted." Morton's selective memory might have been improved by a careful reading of Plymouth's own records. In the end, New Englanders preferred to explain the war as a divine chastisement inflicted on them for their impiety. The colonists decided that their many sins included everything from failing to keep the Sabbath to cursing to wearing unseemly apparel, but had nothing to do with their trespassing livestock or their treatment of Indians. 78 In Virginia, Governor Berkeley and those who had remained loyal to him were too busy wreaking vengeance on the rebels, 23 of whom were hanged, to delve into the causes of the Indian war. Yet Frances Moryson, one of the royal commissioners charged with investigating the rebellion, had little doubt that the fault lay with colonists who could not curb their lust for Indian land. The treaty that reestablished peace between Virginians and the Pamunkeys, Nottoways, and other subject Indians admitted as much. Article 4 claimed that the "Violent Intrusions of divers English" onto native lands had forced Indians "by way of Revenge, to kill the Cattel and Hogs of the English, " helping to spark "the late unhappy Rebellion." The treaty stipulated that from then on, no English plantation ought to be established within three miles of an Indian village. Neither the admission of guilt nor the proposed solution was new. The treaty language repeated almost verbatim the preamble of a 1662 statute that had similarly discouraged colonists from settling in close proximity to Indians. If the statute had not resolved the problem, why should a treaty be any more effectiv

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Indentured servitude or indentured labor is any system of unfree labor under which an employee (indenturee) is bound by a contract (indenture) to work for a particular employer, for a fixed period of time. The employer is often permitted to assign the labor of an indenturee to a third party. Indenturees usually enter into an indenture for a specific payment or other benefit, or to meet a legal obligation, such as debt bondage. In many countries, systems of indentured labor have been outlawed. Until the late 18th century, indentured servitude was very common in British North America. It was often a way for poor Europeans to emigrate to the American colonies: they signed an indenture in return for a passage. After their indenture expired, the immigrants were free to work for themselves or another employer. In some cases, the indenture was made with a ship's master, who on-sold the indenture to an employer in the colonies. Most indentured servants worked as farm laborers or domestic servants, although some were apprenticed to craftsmen. The terms of an indenture were not always enforced by American courts, although runaways were usually sought out and returned to their employer. Between one-half and two-thirds of white immigrants to the American colonies between the 1630s and American Revolution had come under indentures.[1] However, while almost half the European immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies were indentured servants, at any one time they were outnumbered by workers who had never been indentured, or whose indenture had expired, and thus free wage labor was the more prevalent for Europeans in the colonies.[2] Indentured people were numerically important mostly in the region from Virginia north to New Jersey. Other colonies saw far fewer of them. The total number of European immigrants to all 13 colonies before 1775 was about 500,000; of these 55,000 were involuntary prisoners. Another 300,000 were African victims of the Atlantic slave trade. Of the 450,000 or so European arrivals who came voluntarily, Tomlins estimates that 48% were indentured.[3] About 75% of these were under the age of 25. The age of adulthood for men was 24 years (not 21); those over 24 generally came on contracts lasting about 3 years.[4] Regarding the children who came, Gary Nash reports that "many of the servants were actually nephews, nieces, cousins and children of friends of emigrating Englishmen, who paid their passage in return for their labor once in America."[5] ndentured servants could not marry without the permission of their master, were subject to physical punishment (like many young ordinary servants), and saw their obligation to labor enforced by the courts. To ensure uninterrupted work by the female servants, the law lengthened the term of their indenture if they became pregnant. But unlike slaves, servants were guaranteed to be eventually released from bondage. At the end of their term they received a payment known as "freedom dues" and became free members of society.[10] One could buy and sell indentured servants' contracts, and the right to their labor would change hands, but not the person as a piece of property.

Popes day

Each year in England, November 5th is celebrated as Guy Fawkes' Day, commemorating the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot to overthrow King James I in 1605. In Boston, during colonial times, the annual commemoration becameknown as Pope's Day, and had quickly evolved into an anti-Catholic celebration. Effigies of the Devil, Pope, and people like Tax Collector were fought over by rival mobs and eventually burned in a huge bon fire at Copp's Hill. Pope's Day was later superseded by Boston Massacre processions after 1770, and eventually by July 4th celebrations starting in 1785. In the mid-1700s, the 5th of November was one of Boston's most popular holidays. On that day, apprentices and young men paraded through town with giant effigies of the Devil, the Pope, and current political scapegoats, demanding coins from householders and passersby. At nightfall, Boston's North End and South End gangs met in the middle of town and brawled. The winners hauled away the other side's paraphernalia and burned all the effigies in a festive bonfire. In 1764 the event became so violent that a young boy was killed, his head crushed by a wagon wheel. In the decade that followed, the 5th of November processions became closely linked to the town's protests against Parliamentary taxes. That political conflict led to the American Revolution. Ironically, the Revolutionary War ended up doing away with the 5th of November holiday in America.

English Civil war

English Civil Wars, also called Great Rebellion, (1642-51), fighting that took place in the British Isles between supporters of the monarchy of Charles I (and his son and successor, Charles II) and opposing groups in each of Charles's kingdoms, including Parliamentarians in England, Covenanters in Scotland, and Confederates in Ireland. The civil wars are traditionally considered to have begun in England in August 1642, when Charles I raised an army against the wishes of Parliament, ostensibly to deal with a rebellion in Ireland. But the period of conflict actually began earlier in Scotland, with the Bishops' Wars of 1639-40, and in Ireland, with the Ulster rebellion of 1641. Throughout the 1640s, war between king and Parliament ravaged England, but it also struck all of the kingdoms held by the house of Stuart—and, in addition to war between the various British and Irish dominions, there was civil war within each of the Stuart states. For this reason the English Civil Wars might more properly be called the British Civil Wars or the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The wars finally ended in 1651 with the flight of Charles II to France and, with him, the hopes of the British monarchy.

George Whitefeild

George Whitefield (/ˈdʒɔːdʒ ˈwɪtfiːld/; 27 December [O.S. 16 December] 1714 - 30 September 1770), also spelled George Whitfield, was an English Anglican cleric who was one of the founders of Methodism and the evangelical movement.[1] Born in Gloucester, he matriculated at the University of Oxford in 1732. There he joined the "Holy Club" and was introduced to the Wesley brothers, John and Charles, who he would work closely with in his later ministry. Whitefield was ordained after receiving his BA. He immediately began preaching, but he did not settle as the minister of any parish. Rather he became an itinerant preacher and evangelist. In 1740, Whitefield traveled to America, where he preached a series of revivals that came to be known as the "Great Awakening". His methods were controversial and he engaged in numerous debates and disputes with other clergymen. Whitefield was probably the most famous religious figure of the 18th century. He preached at least 18,000 times to perhaps 10 million listeners in Great Britain and the American colonies. Whitefield could enthrall large audiences through a potent combination of drama, religious rhetoric, and imperial pride.

"universal monarchy"

Imperial system where one king/family controlled all of the land in Europe In the 16th and 17th centuries, English foreign policy strove to prevent a creation of a single universal monarchy in Europe, which many believed France or Spain might attempt to create. To maintain the balance of power, the English made alliances with other states—including Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, and the Netherlands—to counter the perceived threat. These Grand Alliances reached their height in the wars against Louis XIV and Louis XV of France. They often involved the English (later the British) paying large subsidies to European allies to finance large armies. In the 18th century, this led to the stately quadrille, with a number of major European powers—such as Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, and France—changing alliances multiple times to prevent the hegemony of one nation or alliance. A number of wars stemmed, at least in part, from the desire to maintain the balance of power, including the War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War, the War of the Bavarian Succession and the Napoleonic Wars. Following Britain's success in the Seven Years' War, many of the other powers began to see Great Britain as a greater threat than France. Several states entered the American War of Independence in the hope of overturning Britain's growing strength by securing the independence of the Thirteen colonies of British America.

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John Eliot (c. 1604 - May 21, 1690) was a Puritan missionary to the American Indians whom some called "the apostle to the Indians. An important part of Eliot's ministry focused on the conversion of Massachusett Indians. Accordingly, Eliot translated the Bible into the Massachusett language and published it in 1663 as Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God.[18] It was the first complete bible printed in the Western hemisphere; Stephen Daye printed 1000 copies on the first printing press in the American colonies.[19] In 1666, Eliot published "The Indian Grammar Begun", again concerning the Massachusett language. As a missionary, Eliot strove to consolidate Native Americans in planned towns, thereby encouraging them to recreate a Christian society. At one point, there were 14 towns of so-called "Praying Indians", the best documented being at Natick, Massachusetts. Other praying Indian towns included: Littleton (Nashoba), Lowell (Wamesit, initially incorporated as part of Chelmsford), Grafton (Hassanamessit), Marlborough (Okommakamesit), a portion of Hopkinton that is now in the Town of Ashland (Makunkokoag), Canton (Punkapoag), and Mendon-Uxbridge (Wacentug). In 1662, Eliot witnessed the signing of the deed for Mendon with Nipmuck Indians for "Squinshepauk Plantation". Eliot's better intentions can be seen in his involvement in the legal case, The Town of Dedham v. The Indians of Natick, which concerned a boundary dispute. Besides answering Dedham's complaint point by point, Eliot stated that the colony's purpose was to benefit the native people.[20] Praying Indian towns were also established by other missionaries, including the Presbyterian Samson Occom, himself of Mohegan descent. All praying Indian towns suffered disruption during King Philip's War (1675), and for the most part lost their special status as Indian self-governing communities in the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, in some cases being paid to move to Wisconsin and other areas further West.[21] Eliot also wrote The Christian Commonwealth: or, The Civil Policy Of The Rising Kingdom of Jesus Christ, considered the first book on politics written by an American, as well as the first book to be banned by a North American governmental unit. Written in the late 1640s, and published in England in 1659, it proposed a new model of civil government based on the system Eliot instituted among the converted Indians, which was based in turn on the government Moses instituted among the Israelites in the wilderness (Exodus 18). Eliot asserted that "Christ is the only right Heir of the Crown of England," and called for an elected theocracy in England and throughout the world. The accession to the throne of Charles II of England made the book an embarrassment to the Massachusetts colony. In 1661 the General Court forced Eliot to issue a public retraction and apology, banned the book and ordered all copies destroyed. In 1709 a special edition of the Algonquin Bible was co-authored by Experience Mayhew and Thomas Prince with the Indian words in one column and the English words in the opposite column. The 1709 Algonquin Bible text book is also referred to as The Massachuset psalter. This 1709 edition is based on the Geneva Bible, like Eliot's Indian Bible

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John Winthrop (12 January 1587/88[1] - 26 March 1649) was an English Puritan lawyer and one of the leading figures in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the first major settlement in what is now New England after Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led the first large wave of immigrants from England in 1630, and served as governor for 12 of the colony's first 20 years of existence. His writings and vision of the colony as a Puritan "city upon a hill" dominated New England colonial development, influencing the governments and religions of neighboring colonies. Born into a wealthy landowning and merchant family, Winthrop was trained in the law, and became Lord of the Manor at Groton in Suffolk. Although he was not involved in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1628, he became involved in 1629 when the anti-Puritan King Charles I began a crackdown on Nonconformist religious thought. In October 1629 he was elected governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and in April 1630 he led a group of colonists to the New World, founding a number of communities on the shores of Massachusetts Bay and the Charles River. Between 1629 and his death in 1649, he served 19 annual terms as governor or lieutenant-governor, and was a force of comparative moderation in the religiously conservative colony, clashing with the more conservative Thomas Dudley and the more liberal Roger Williams and Henry Vane. Although Winthrop was a respected political figure, his attitude toward governance was somewhat authoritarian: he resisted attempts to widen voting and other civil rights beyond a narrow class of religiously approved individuals, opposed attempts to codify a body of laws that the colonial magistrates would be bound by, and also opposed unconstrained democracy, calling it "the meanest and worst of all forms of government".[2] The authoritarian and religiously conservative nature of Massachusetts rule was influential in the formation of neighboring colonies, which were in some instances formed by individuals and groups opposed to the rule of the Massachusetts elders. Winthrop's son, John, was one of the founders of the Connecticut Colony, and Winthrop himself wrote one of the leading historical accounts of the early colonial period. His long list of descendants includes famous Americans, and his writings continue to influence politicians today. In the mid to late 1620s, the religious atmosphere in England began to look bleak for Puritans and other groups whose adherents believed the English Reformation was in danger. King Charles I had ascended the throne in 1625, and he had married a Roman Catholic. Charles was opposed to all manner of recusants, and supported the Church of England in its efforts against religious groups like the Puritans that did not adhere fully to its teachings and practices.[38] This atmosphere of intolerance to their views led Puritan religious and business leaders to consider emigration to the New World as a viable means to escape persecution.[39] John Endecott preceded Winthrop as governor in Massachusetts The first successful religious colonization of the New World occurred in 1620 with the establishment of the Plymouth Colony on the shores of Cape Cod Bay.[40] An effort in 1624 orchestrated by pastor John White led to a short-lived colony at Cape Ann, also on the Massachusetts coast.[41] In 1628 some of the investors in that effort joined with new investors to acquire a land grant for the territory roughly between the Charles and Merrimack Rivers. First styled the New England Company, it was renamed the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629 after it acquired a royal charter, granting it permission to govern the territory.[42] Shortly after acquiring the land grant in 1628, it sent a small group of settlers led by John Endecott to prepare the way for further migration.[43] John Winthrop was apparently not involved in any of these early activities, which involved primarily individuals from Lincolnshire; however, by early 1629 he was probably aware of the company's activities and plans. The exact connection by which he became involved with the company is uncertain, because there were many indirect connections between Winthrop and individuals directly associated with the company.[44] Winthrop was also aware of attempts to colonize other places—his son Henry became involved in efforts to settle Barbados in 1626, which Winthrop financially supported for a time.[45] In March 1629 King Charles dissolved Parliament, beginning eleven years of rule without Parliament.[38] This action apparently raised new concerns among the company's principals; in the company's July meeting, Governor Matthew Cradock proposed that the company reorganize itself and transport its charter and governance to the colony.[46] It also worried Winthrop, who lost his position in the Court of Wards and Liveries in the crackdown on Puritans that followed the dissolution of Parliament. He wrote, "If the Lord seeth it wilbe good for us, he will provide a shelter & a hidinge place for us and others".[38] During the following months, Winthrop became more involved with the company, meeting with others in Lincolnshire. By early August he had emerged as a significant proponent of emigration, and on 12 August he circulated a paper providing eight separate reasons in favor of emigration.[47] His name appears in formal connection with the company on the Cambridge Agreement, signed 26 August; this document provided means for emigrating shareholders to buy out non-emigrating shareholders of the company.[48] The company shareholders met on 20 October to enact the changes agreed to in August. Since Governor Cradock was not emigrating, a new governor needed to be chosen. Winthrop was seen as the most dedicated of the three candidates proposed to replace Cradock, and won the election. The other two, Richard Saltonstall and John Humphrey, had many other interests, and their dedication to the cause of settling in Massachusetts was viewed as uncertain.[49] Humphrey was chosen as deputy governor, a post he relinquished the following year when he decided to delay his emigration.[50] Winthrop, along with other company officials, then began the process of arranging a transport fleet and supplies for the migration. He also worked to recruit individuals with special skills the new colony would require, including pastors to see to the colony's spiritual needs.[51] It was unclear to Winthrop when his wife would come over; she was pregnant and due to give birth in April 1630, near the fleet's departure time. They consequently decided that she would not come over until a later time; it would not be until 1631 that the couple was reunited in the New World.[52] To maintain some connection with his wife during their separation, the couple agreed to think of each other between the hours of 5 and 6 in the evening each Monday and Friday.[53] Winthrop also worked to convince his grown children to join the migration; John, Jr. and Henry both decided to do so, but only Henry sailed in the 1630 fleet.[54] By April 1630 Winthrop had put most of his affairs in order. Groton Manor had not yet been sold, because of a long-running title dispute. The legal dispute was only resolved after his departure, and the property's sale was finalized by Margaret before she and John Jr. left for the colony. Arrival On 8 April 1630, four ships left the Isle of Wight, carrying Winthrop and other leaders of the colony. Winthrop sailed on the Arbella, accompanied by his two young sons, Samuel and Stephen.[57] The ships were part of a larger fleet, totalling 11 ships, that would carry about 700 migrants to the colony.[58] Winthrop's son Henry Winthrop missed the Arbella's sailing, and ended up on the Talbot, which also sailed from Wight.[20][21] Winthrop wrote a sermon entitled A Modell of Christian Charity, which was delivered either before or during the crossing.[59] It described the ideas and plans to keep the Puritan society strong in faith as well as comparing the struggles that they would have to overcome in the New World to the story of Exodus. In it he used the now famous phrase "City upon a Hill" to describe the ideals to which the colonists should strive, and that consequently "the eyes of all people are upon us."[60] Winthrop also said, "in all times some must be rich some poore, some highe and eminent in power and dignitie; others meane and in subjection", and in short meant that there were those who were rich and successful and others who were poor and subservient to others. But Winthrop also said that although these two groups were different both were equally important to the colony because both groups were members to the same community.[9] Engraving showing Winthrop's arrival at Salem Upon the fleet's arrival at Salem in June, the new colonists were welcomed by John Endecott. Winthrop and his deputy, Thomas Dudley, found the Salem area inadequate for creating a settlement suitable for all of the arriving colonists, and embarked on surveying expeditions of the area. They first decided to base the colony at Charlestown, but a lack of good water there prompted them to instead move to the Shawmut Peninsula, where they founded what is now the city of Boston.[61] Because the season was relatively late, the colonists decided to establish dispersed settlements along the coast and the banks of the Charles River in order to avoid presenting a single point that hostile forces might attack. The colony struggled with disease in its early months, losing as many as 200 people, including Winthrop's son Henry, in 1630, to a variety of causes and about 80 others who returned to England in the spring due to these conditions.[9][33] Winthrop set an example to the other colonists in joining servants and laborers in the work of the colony. According to one report, he "fell to work with his own hands, and thereby so encouraged the rest that there was not an idle person to be found in the whole plantation."[62] Winthrop built his house in Boston, where he also had a relatively spacious plot of arable land.[63] In 1631 he was granted a larger parcel of land on the banks of the Mystic River that he called Ten Hills Farm.[64] On the other side of the Mystic was the shipyard owned in absentia by Matthew Cradock, where one of the colony's first boats, Winthrop's Blessing of the Bay, was built. Winthrop operated her as a trading and packet ship up and down the coast of New England.[65] The issue of where to locate the colony's capital caused the first in a series of rifts between Winthrop and Dudley. Dudley had constructed his home at Newtown (present-day Harvard Square, Cambridge) after the council had agreed the capital would be established there. However, Winthrop decided instead to build his home in Boston when asked by its residents to stay there. This upset Dudley, and their relationship worsened when Winthrop criticized Dudley for what he perceived as excessive decorative woodwork in his house.[66] However, they seemed to reconcile after their children were married. Winthrop recounts the two of them, each having been granted land near Concord, going to stake their claims. At the boundary between their lands, a pair of boulders were named the Two Brothers "in remembrance that they were brothers by their children's marriage".[67] Dudley's lands became Bedford, and Winthrop's Billerica.[68] Colonial governance Engraving depicting Winthrop being carried across the Mystic River The colony's charter called for a governor, deputy governor, and 18 assistant magistrates (who served as a precursor to the idea of a Governor's Council), who were all to be elected annually by the freemen of the colony.[69] The first meeting of the General Court consisted of exactly eight men. They decided that the governor and deputy should be elected by the assistants, in violation of the charter; under these rules Winthrop was elected governor three times. The general court admitted a significant number of settlers, but also established a rule requiring all freemen to be local church members.[70] In 1633 and 1634, following the appointment of the strongly anti-Puritan William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury, the colony saw a large influx of immigrants.[71] When the 1634 election was set to take place, delegations of freemen sent by the towns insisted on seeing the charter, from which they learned that the colony's lawmaking authority and that the election of governor and deputy rested with the freemen, not the assistants. Winthrop acceded on the point of the elections, which were thereafter conducted by secret ballot by the freemen, but he also observed that lawmaking would be unwieldy if conducted by the now relatively large number of freemen. A compromise was reached in which each town would select two delegates to send to the general court as representatives of its interests.[72] In an ironic twist, Thomas Dudley, an opponent of popular election, won the 1634 election for governor, with Roger Ludlow as deputy.[73] Winthrop, as he had after previous elections, graciously invited his fellow magistrates to dinner.[74] In the late 1630s the seeming arbitrariness of judicial decisions led to calls for the creation of a body of laws that would bind the opinions of magistrates. Winthrop opposed these moves, and used his power to repeatedly stall and obstruct efforts to enact them.[75] His opposition was rooted in a strong belief in the common law tradition and the desire, as a magistrate, to have flexibility in deciding cases on their unique circumstances. He also pointed out that adoption of written laws "repugnant to the laws of England" was not allowed in the charter, and that some of the laws to be adopted likely opposed English law.[76] The Massachusetts Body of Liberties was formally adopted during Richard Bellingham's governorship in 1641.[75] Some of the laws enacted in Massachusetts were cited as reasons for vacating the colonial charter in 1684.[77] In the 1640s constitutional issues concerning the power of the magistrates and assistants arose. In a case involving an escaped pig, the assistants ruled in favor of a merchant who had allegedly taken a widow's errant animal. She appealed to the general court, which ruled in her favor. The assistants then asserted their right to veto the general court's decision, sparking the controversy. Winthrop argued that the assistants, as experienced magistrates, must be able to check the democratic institution of the general court, because "a democracy is, amongst most civil nations, accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government."[2] Winthrop became the focus of allegations about the arbitrary rule of the magistrates in 1645, when he was formally charged with interfering with local decisions in a case involving the Hingham militia.[78] The case centered around the disputed appointment of a new commander, and a panel of magistrates headed by Winthrop had had several parties on both sides of the dispute imprisoned pending a meeting of the court of assistants. Peter Hobart, the minister in Hingham and one of several Hobarts on one side of the dispute, vociferously questioned the authority of the magistrates and railed against Winthrop specifically for what he characterized as arbitrary and tyrannical actions. Winthrop defused the matter by stepping down from the bench to appear before it as a defendant. Winthrop successfully defended himself, pointing out that not only had he not acted alone, but that judges are not usually criminally culpable for errors they make on the bench, and that the dispute in Hingham was serious enough that it required the intervention of the magistrates.[79] Winthrop was acquitted and the complainants were fined.[80] One major issue that Winthrop was involved in occurred in 1647, when a petition was submitted to the general court concerning the limitation of voting rights to freemen who had been formally admitted to a local church. Winthrop and the other magistrates rejected the appeal that "civil liberty and freedom be forthwith granted to all truly English", and even fined and imprisoned the principal signers of the petition.[81] William Vassal and Robert Child, two of the signatories, pursued complaints against the Massachusetts government in England over this and other issues.[82] Religious controversies Further information: Calvinism Depiction of Anne Hutchinson's trial, c. 1901 In 1634 and 1635 Winthrop served as an assistant, while the influx of migrants brought first John Haynes and then Henry Vane to the governorship. These two men, along with Anne Hutchinson and pastors Thomas Hooker and John Wheelwright, espoused religious or political views that were at odds with those of the earlier arrivals, including Winthrop.[83] Hutchinson and Wheelwright subscribed to the Antinomian view that following religious laws was not required for salvation, while Winthrop and others believed in a more Legalist view. This religious rift, commonly called the Antinomian Controversy, significantly divided the colony, and Winthrop saw the other side's beliefs as a particularly unpleasant and dangerous heresy.[84] By December 1636 the dispute reached into colonial politics, and Winthrop, in a bid to bridge the divide between the two factions, penned an account of his religious awakening and theological position papers designed to facilitate a harmonization of the opposing views. How widely these documents circulated is not known (and not all of them have survived), but the Legalist pastor Thomas Shepard reacted in a way that biographer Francis Bremer describes as "horrified", and containing "a color of Arminianism, which I believe your [Winthrop's] soul abhors."[85] In the 1637 election, Vane was turned out of all offices, and Dudley was elected governor.[86] His election did not immediately quell the controversy. First John Wheelwright and later Anne Hutchinson were put on trial, and both were banished from the colony.[87] (Hutchinson founded Portsmouth, Rhode Island and Wheelwright founded first Exeter, New Hampshire and then Wells, Maine in order to be free of Massachusetts rule.)[88][89] Winthrop was active in arguing against their supporters, but Shepard criticized him for being too moderate, claiming Winthrop should "make their wickedness and guile manifest to all men that they may go no farther and then will sink of themselves."[87] Hooker and Haynes had left Massachusetts in 1636 and 1637 for new settlements on the Connecticut River (the nucleus of the Connecticut Colony),[90] and Vane left for England after the 1637 election, suggesting he might seek to acquire a commission as a governor general to overturn the colonial government.[91] (Vane never returned to the colony, and became an important figure in Parliament before and during the English Civil Wars; he was beheaded after the Restoration.)[92] In the aftermath of the 1637 election, the general court passed new rules on residency in the colony, forbidding anyone from housing newcomers for more than 3 weeks without approval from the magistrates. Winthrop vigorously defended this rule against protests, arguing that Massachusetts was within its rights to "refuse to receive such whose dispositions suit not with ours".[93] Ironically, some of those who protested the policy had been in favor of the banishment in 1635 of Roger Williams.[93] Winthrop, who was then out of office, actually had a good relationship with the controversial Baptist. When the magistrates ordered Williams' arrest, Winthrop warned him, making possible his flight that resulted in the establishment of Providence, Rhode Island.[94] Winthrop and Williams also later had an epistolary relationship in which they discussed their religious differences.[95] Indian policy Winthrop's attitudes toward the local Native American populations was generally one of civility and diplomacy. He described an early meeting with one local chief: "Chickatabot came with his [chiefs] and squaws, and presented the governor with a hogshead of Indian corn. After they had all dined, and had each a small cup of sack and beer, and the men tobacco, he sent away all his men and women (though the governor would have stayed them in regard of the rain and thunder.) Himself and one squaw and one [chief] stayed all night; and being in English clothes, the governor set him at his own table, where he behaved himself as soberly ... as an Englishman. The next day after dinner he returned home, the governor giving him cheese, and pease, and a mug, and other small things."[96] Although the colonists generally sought to acquire title to the lands they occupied in the early years,[97] they also practiced a policy that historian Alfred Cave calls vacuum domicilium: if land is not under some sort of active use, it is free for the taking. This meant that lands that were only used seasonally by the natives (e.g. for fishing or hunting), which otherwise appeared to be empty, could be claimed. Winthrop claimed that the rights of "more advanced" peoples superseded the rights of the hunter-gatherers.[98] However, cultural differences and trade issues between the colonists and the natives meant that clashes were inevitable, and the Pequot War was the first major conflict the colony engaged in. Winthrop sat on the council that decided to send an expedition under John Endecott to raid native villages on Block Island in the war's first major action,[99] but his communication with Williams encouraged the latter to convince the Narragansetts to side with the English against the Pequots, their traditional enemies.[100] The war ended in 1637 with the destruction of the Pequots as a tribe, whose survivors were scattered into other tribes, or shipped to the West Indies.[101]

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Metacomet (1638-1676), also known as Metacom and by his adopted English name King Philip,[2] was a Wampanoag and the second son of the sachem Massasoit. He became a chief of his people in 1662 when his brother Wamsutta (or King Alexander) died shortly after their father Massasoit. Wamsutta's widow Weetamoo (d. 1676), sunksqua of the Pocasset, was Metacomet's ally and friend for the rest of her life. Metacomet married Weetamoo's younger sister Wootonekanuske. No one knows how many children they had or what happened to them all. Wootonekanuske and one of their sons were sold to slavery in the West Indies following the defeat of the Native Americans in what became known as King Philip's War. At the beginning Metacom sought to live in harmony with the colonists. As a sachem, he took the lead in much of his tribes' trade with the colonies. He adopted the European name of Philip, and bought his clothes in Boston, Massachusetts. But the colonies continued to expand. To the west, the Iroquois Confederation also was fighting against neighboring tribes in the Beaver Wars, pushing them from the west and encroaching on his territory. Finally, in 1671 the colonial leaders of the Plymouth Colony forced major concessions from him. Metacomet surrendered much of his tribe's armament and ammunition, and agreed that they were subject to English law. The encroachment continued until hostilities broke out in 1675. Metacomet led the opponents of the English, with the goal of stopping Puritan expansion. Metacomet used tribal alliances to coordinate efforts to push European colonists out of New England. Many of the native tribes in the region wanted to push out the colonists following conflicts over land use, diminished game as a consequence of expanding European settlement, and other tensions. As the colonists brought their growing numbers to bear, King Philip and some of his followers took refuge in the great Assowamset Swamp in southern Massachusetts. He held out for a time, with his family and remaining followers. Hunted by a group of rangers led by Captain Benjamin Church, he was fatally shot by a praying Indian named John Alderman, on August 12, 1676, in the Miery Swamp near Mount Hope in Bristol, Rhode Island. After his death, his wife and nine-year-old son were captured and sold as slaves in Bermuda. Philip's head was mounted on a pike at the entrance to Fort Plymouth, where it remained for more than two decades. His body was cut into quarters and hung in trees.[4] Alderman was given Metacomet's right hand as a reward.

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Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 - 3 September 1658)[a] was an English military and political leader and later Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Cromwell was born into the middle gentry, albeit to a family descended from the sister of King Henry VIII's minister Thomas Cromwell. He was relatively obscure for the first 40 years of his life. He became an Independent Puritan after undergoing a religious conversion in the 1630s, taking a generally tolerant view towards the many Protestant sects of his period.[1] He was an intensely religious man, a self-styled Puritan Moses, and he fervently believed that God was guiding his victories. He was elected Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1628 and for Cambridge in the Short (1640) and Long (1640-49) Parliaments. He entered the English Civil War on the side of the "Roundheads" or Parliamentarians. Nicknamed "Old Ironsides", he was quickly promoted from leading a single cavalry troop to being one of the principal commanders of the New Model Army, playing an important role in the defeat of the royalist forces. Cromwell was one of the signatories of King Charles I's death warrant in 1649, and he dominated the short-lived Commonwealth of England as a member of the Rump Parliament (1649-53). He was selected to take command of the English campaign in Ireland in 1649-50. Cromwell's forces defeated the Confederate and Royalist coalition in Ireland and occupied the country, bringing to an end the Irish Confederate Wars. During this period, a series of Penal Laws were passed against Roman Catholics (a significant minority in England and Scotland but the vast majority in Ireland), and a substantial amount of their land was confiscated. Cromwell also led a campaign against the Scottish army between 1650 and 1651. On 20 April 1653, he dismissed the Rump Parliament by force, setting up a short-lived nominated assembly known as Barebone's Parliament, before being invited by his fellow leaders to rule as Lord Protector of England (which included Wales at the time), Scotland and Ireland from 16 December 1653.[2] As a ruler, he executed an aggressive and effective foreign policy. He died from natural causes in 1658 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The Royalists returned to power in 1660, and they had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded. Cromwell is one of the most controversial figures in the history of the British Isles, considered a regicidal dictator by historians such as David Sharp,[3] a military dictator by Winston Churchill,[4] but a hero of liberty by John Milton, Thomas Carlyle, and Samuel Rawson Gardiner, and a class revolutionary by Leon Trotsky.[5] In a 2002 BBC poll in Britain, Cromwell was selected as one of the ten greatest Britons of all time.[6] However, his measures against Catholics in Scotland and Ireland have been characterised as genocidal or near-genocidal,[7] and in Ireland his record is harshly criticised.[8] The English empire up to the Civil Wars was at best an ad-hoc conglomeration of settlements that all owed various forms of allegiance to the king, depending on the Charter. Virginia was a royal colony: the king appointed the Governor and Council (a curious institution, they were simultaneously a court, the upper house of the legislature, and performed the executive functions of a cabinet). Maryland was a proprietary colony: Cecil, Lord Baltimore, named the Governor, the Council, most justices, sheriffs, could veto any and all laws, collected the taxes, rents on all property held in the province, waged war, negotiated peace, and was essentially a king in all but name, owing the King of England the annual payment of two Indian arrows, and agreed to not allow any laws that went against those of England. New England were corporate colonies, (vastly simplified). E.g., Massachusetts Bay's original Charter gave them the right to self-select the Governor and Council, and they were quite independent from Day one. Barbados was like Virginia, a royal colony. How each colony / region reacted to the events in England varied. Barbados and Virginia were usually associated with the Royalist forces "Cavaliers" and New England, being made of self-exiled Puritans "Roundheads" were for Parliament. But this ignores the fact that Puritans in Barbados and Virginia were vocal advocates of Parliament, and there were pro-king men in New England. Tiny little Maryland numbered about 400 people in 1645, and tried its darndest to just stay out of everyone's notice... and failed miserably. in 1644 an overzealous Catholic arrested a Roundhead Puritan merchant from England by the name of Ingle for the crime of declaring that the King (Charles I) "was no King." A councilor named Capt. James Neale arranged to have the man released immediately... ok, technically he broke him out of jail, but still.... This did not work, Ingle returned and launched a massive, violent raid on Marylanders, seizing and destroying the Colony's records, and driving about 3/4 of the population away. But, by 1648 Leonard Calvert (younger brother of Cecil) had returned to the colony, and restored Calvert rule. He was replaced by an Anglican named William Stone. We'll have to come back to him... New England enthusiastically supported the Roundhead cause (well, half of them, only half of NE population was Puritan) and thousands actually packed up and returned back to England. For the most part they were pro-Parliament and pro-protectorate, and Cromwell did not ahve to worry about them. With the Regicide, however, the Empire had a real crisis. Technically the only link to England was through the king, who was now dead and the crown extinguished. NEw England never worried about this, and embraced the new order w/o too much complaint. Barbados and Virginia on the other hand... both benefited from the Civil Wars as the Dutch entered the market for sugar and tobacco, paying slightly higher prices, or charging lower freight (Dutch ships were more technologically advanced). Barbados actually more or less declared independence with the execution of Charles. Virginia's (former Cavalier Officer) Governor, Sir William Berkeley promptly declared Charles II (in exile in France) as king- not technically independence, but as the child would not be able to do anything, and VA would not obey the Commonwealth... yeah, it was. Cromwell did not take kindly to this- one he was at war with the Dutch (It doesn't make sense, I know- just know that the Dutch and the English were economic rivals), two, sugar and tobacco duties were huge sources of government income, critical in times of war, and three, Barbados and VA were ENGLISH. So, he sent a fleet to Barbados, who promptly agreed they were too hasty, and recognized the Commonwealth and her laws. From there the fleet sailed into Virginia and deposed Berkeley, and put in place a pro-commonwealth government. Now, back to Stone. For reasons which I won't get into here, the Parliamentary Commissioners sent by Cromwell were authorized to exercise power in the Chesapeake, not just rebellious Virginia. But, Baltimore had recognized the Commonwealth, and his government was considered loyal. When Stone refused to issue writs in the name of Parliament instead of in the name of the Proprietor as the Charter (i.e., constitution) REQUIRED, the commissioners deposed him as a traitor. When letters from Cromwell arrived in Maryland addressed to Stone as Governor, Stone used this as confirmation of his right to power, collected a force of Calvert Loyalists and marched north to the Puritan settlement of Providence (today's Annapolis) where the Parliamentary Commission had erected it's government. The Puritans were supported by a heavily armed merchant ship, and Stone's men were defeated. Lots of lobbying in England later, Cromwell recognized Calvert's claim to MD, and gave it back (1658).

...

Praying towns were developed by the Puritans of New England from 1646 to 1675 in an effort to convert the local Native American tribes to Christianity.[1] The Natives who moved into these towns were known as Praying Indians. Before 1674 the villages were the most ambitious Christianization experiment in English colonial America.[1] John Eliot first preached to the Natives in their own tongue in 1646 at Nonantum, meaning "Place of Rejoicing," which is now present day Newton, MA. This sermon led to a friendship with Waban, who became the first Native American in Massachusetts to convert to Christianity.[ The idea behind the praying towns was that Natives would convert to Christianity and give up their old way of life. This included their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, their clothing, rituals, and anything else that was seen as savagery. By 1660, Eliot had established seven praying towns. The Massachusetts General Court recognized the work of Eliot and helped add to the numbers of towns. Fourteen praying towns Between 1651 and 1675, the court created fourteen praying towns but only Natick and Punkapog had full status with independent congregations.[3] Some prominent praying towns in the Massachusett area were Gay Head, Christiantown (Okokammeh), Nantucket, Natick, Mashpee, Hassanamisco (Grafton), Herring Pond (Plymouth) and Nukkehkummees (Dartmouth).[4] Three towns were created in Connecticut as well: Maanexit (Nipmuc word meaning "where we gather") is believed to be in present day Fabyan, Quinnatisset (meaning "little long river") was located six miles south of Maanexit, and Wabaquasset (meaning "mats for covering the house") is present day Woodstock, CT .[1] These three towns held between 100 and 150 Nipmuc tribal members. After King Philip's War in 1677 the General Court disbanded 10 of the original 14 towns and placed the rest under English supervision,[3] but many communities did survive and retained their religious and education systems.[4]

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Sir William Berkeley, (born 1606, Somerset, Eng.—died July 9, 1677, Twickenham, Middlesex) British colonial governor of Virginia during Bacon's Rebellion, an armed uprising (1676) against his moderate Indian policy. Sir William Berkeley, detail of an oil painting attributed to Sir Peter Lely, c. 1644; in a private ... Courtesy of Maurice duPont Lee Berkeley was the youngest son of Sir Maurice Berkeley and the brother of John Berkeley, lst Baron Berkeley of Stratton, one of the Carolina and New Jersey proprietors. Soon after his graduation from the University of Oxford (B.A., 1624; M.A., 1629), he was given a seat in the privy chamber and served in the colonial office as a commissioner of Canadian affairs. He wrote a play, The Lost Lady, for the London stage in 1638, was knighted by Charles I in 1639, and was appointed governor of Virginia in 1641. Berkeley's governorship of Virginia was almost continuous from this date until his death, except during much of the period of the English Commonwealth (1652-59). His first years as governor were very successful. Berkeley experimented with crop diversification, encouraged manufacturing, promoted expansion, and coped successfully with both Indian and Dutch hostilities. His loyalty to the crown during the English Civil Wars led him to declare Virginia an asylum for Charles II and his friends. This loyalty also resulted in his forced retirement from 1652 to 1659, when he remained on his Virginia plantation. Berkeley's second period as governor after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 was marred by Indian attacks on the frontier, economic depression, crop failures, and high taxes. It was also marred by the ambitions of his cousin by marriage, Nathaniel Bacon. Berkeley wanted to foster trade with the Indians; Bacon was for their removal from the colony and in 1676 led an expedition against the Indians. Berkeley called it rebellion, and the forces of the two men clashed. Berkeley fought the rebels with great ferocity and bloodshed. (During the rebellion, Bacon died of natural causes.) Berkeley was recalled by Charles II to explain his behaviour but died before he had a chance to report to the king.

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Wampum are traditional shell beads of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of the indigenous people of North America. Wampum include the white shell beads fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell; and the white and purple beads made from the quahog, or Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clam. Wampum were used by the northeastern Native Americans as a form of gift exchange. Early historians and colonists mistook[1] wampum as a form of money.[2] The colonists then adopted wampum as their own currency; however, the Europeans' more efficient production of wampum caused inflation and ultimately the obsolescence of wampum as currency. Wampum was often kept on strings like Chinese cash. Before European contact, strings of wampum were used for storytelling, ceremonial gifts, and the recording of important treaties and historical events,[1] such as the Two Row Wampum Treaty. The use of wampum beads has been much debated throughout the years with many claiming that Aboriginal people used the beads as currency. For the Haudenosaunee, wampum held a more sacred use. Wampum served as a person's credentials or a certificate of authority. It was used for official purposes and religious ceremonies and in the case of the joining of the League of Nations was used as a way to bind peace. Every Chief of the Confederacy and every Clan Mother has a certain string or strings of Wampum that serves as their certificate of office. When they pass on or are removed from their station the string will then pass on to the new leader. Runners carrying messages would not be taken seriously without first presenting the wampum showing that they had the authority to carry the message.[12] As a method of recording and an aid in narrating, Haudenosaunee warriors with exceptional skills were provided training in interpreting the wampum belts. As the Keepers of the Central Fire the Onondaga Nation was also trusted with the task of keeping all wampum records. To this day wampum is still used in the ceremony of raising up a new chief and in the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving ceremonies. True wampum is scarce today and only wampum strings are used. Many belts have been lost or are in museums to this day.[13] When Europeans came to the Americas, they adopted wampum as money to trade with the native peoples of New England and New York. Wampum was legal tender in New England from 1637-1661. Meanwhile, it continued as currency in New York at the rate of eight white or four black wampum equalling one stuiver—meaning the white had the same value as the copper duit coin—until 1673. The colonial government issued a proclamation setting the rate at six white or three black to one penny. This proclamation also applied in New Jersey and Delaware.[14] The black shells were rarer than the white shells, and so were worth more, which led people to dye the latter, and diluted the value of black shells.[15] Writing about tribes in Virginia in 1705, Robert Beverley, Jr. of Virginia Colony describes peak as referring to the white shell bead, valued at 9 pence a yard, and wampom peak as denoting specifically the more expensive dark purple shell bead, at the rate of 1 shilling and 6 pence (18 pence) per yard. He says that these polished shells with drilled holes are made from the cunk (conch), while another currency of lesser value, called roenoke was fashioned from the cockleshell.[16] With stone tools, the process to make wampum was labor-intensive. Only the coastal nations had sufficient access to the basic shells to make wampum. These factors increased its scarcity and consequent value among the European traders. Dutch colonists began to manufacture wampum and eventually the primary source of wampum was that manufactured by colonists, a market the Dutch glutted. Wampum briefly became legal tender in North Carolina in 1710, but their use as common currency died out in New York by the early 18th century.

Jamestown

The Jamestown[1] settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. William Kelso writes that Jamestown "is where the British Empire began ... this was the first colony in the British Empire."[2] Jamestown was established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 4, 1607 (O.S., May 14, 1607 N.S.),[3] and was considered permanent after brief abandonment in 1610. It followed several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Jamestown served as the capital of the colony for 83 years, from 1616 until 1699. The settlement was located within the country of Tsenacommacah, which was administered by the Powhatan Confederacy, and specifically in that of the Paspahegh tribe. The natives initially welcomed and provided crucial provisions and support for the colonists, who were not agriculturally inclined. Relations with the newcomers soured fairly early on, leading to the total annihilation of the Paspahegh in warfare within 3 years. Mortality at Jamestown itself was very high due to disease and starvation, with over 80% of the colonists perishing in 1609-1610 in what became known as the "Starving Time".[4] The Virginia Company brought eight Polish[citation needed] and German colonists in 1608, in the Second Supply, some of whom built a small glass factory—although the Germans and a few others soon defected to the Powhatans with weapons and supplies from the settlement.[5][6][7][8] The Second Supply also brought the first two European women to the settlement.[5][6] In 1619, the first documented Africans came to Jamestown—about 50 men, women, and children—aboard a Portuguese slave ship that had been captured in the West Indies and brought to the Jamestown region. They most likely worked in the tobacco fields as indentured servants initially.[9] The modern conception of slavery in the future United States was formalized in 1640 (the John Punch hearing) and was fully entrenched in Virginia by 1660.[10]

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The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628-1691) was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century in and around the broad opening of Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost predecessor colony of the several colonies later reorganized as the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The lands of the settlement were located in central New England in what is now Massachusetts, with initial settlements situated on two natural harbors and surrounding land, about 15.2 miles (24.5 km) apart[1]—the areas around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The territory nominally administered by the colony included much of present-day central New England, including portions of the U.S. states of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Territory claimed but never administered by the colonial government extended as far west as the Pacific Ocean. The earlier Dutch colony of New Netherlands disputed many of these claims, arguing that they held rights to lands beyond Rhode Island up to the western side of Cape Cod and the Plymouth Bay Colony. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded by the owners of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which included investors in the failed Dorchester Company which had established a short-lived settlement on Cape Ann in 1623. The Massachusetts Bay Colony began in 1628 and was the company's second attempt at colonization. The colony was successful, with about 20,000 people migrating to New England in the 1630s. The population was strongly Puritan, and its governance was dominated by a small group of leaders who were strongly influenced by Puritan religious leaders. Its governors were elected, and the electorate were limited to freemen who had been examined for their religious views and formally admitted to the local church. As a consequence, the colonial leadership exhibited intolerance to other religious views, including Anglican, Quaker, and Baptist theologies. The colonists initially had decent relationships with the local Indian populations, but frictions arose over cultural differences which were further exacerbated by Dutch colonial expansion. These led first to the Pequot War (1636-38) and then to King Philip's War (1675-78), after which most of the Indians in southern New England made peace treaties with the colonists (apart from the Pequot tribe, whose survivors largely merged with the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes after the Pequot War). The colony was economically successful, engaging in trade with England and the West Indies. A shortage of hard currency in the colony prompted it to establish a mint in 1652. Political differences with England after the English Restoration led to the revocation of the colonial charter in 1684. King James II established the Dominion of New England in 1686 to bring all of the New England colonies under firmer crown control. The dominion collapsed after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 deposed James, and the colony reverted to rule under the revoked charter until the charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay was issued in 1691, which combined the Massachusetts Bay territories with those of the Plymouth Colony and proprietary holdings on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Sir William Phips arrived in 1692 bearing the charter and formally took charge of the new province. The political and economic dominance of New England by the modern state of Massachusetts was made possible in part by the early dominance in these spheres by the Massachusetts Bay colonists. Prior to the arrival of Europeans on the eastern shore of New England, the area around Massachusetts Bay was the territory of several Algonquian-speaking tribes, including the Massachusett, Nauset, and Wampanoag. The Pennacooks occupied the Merrimack River valley to the north, and the Nipmuc, Pocumtuc, and Mahican occupied the western lands of present-day Massachusetts, although some of those tribes were under tribute to the Mohawks, who were expanding aggressively from present-day upstate New York.[2] The total Indian population in 1620 has been estimated to be 7,000[3] with the population of New England at 15-18,000.[4] This number was significantly larger as late as 1616; in later years, contemporary chroniclers interviewed Indians who described a major pestilence that killed between one and two thirds of the population. The land-use patterns of the natives included plots cleared for agricultural purposes, and woodland territories for the hunting of game. Land divisions between the tribes were well understood.[3] During the early 17th century, several European explorers charted the area, including Samuel de Champlain and John Smith.[5] Plans began in 1606 for the first permanent British settlements on the east coast of North America. On April 10, 1606, King James I of England (James VI of Scotland) granted a charter forming two joint stock companies. Neither of these corporations was given a name by this charter, but the territories were named as the "first Colony" (fourth paragraph of charter) and "second Colony" (fifth paragraph of charter), over which they were respectively authorized to settle and to govern. Under this charter, the "first Colony" and the "second Colony" were to be ruled by a "Council" composed of 13 individuals in each colony. The charter provided for an additional council of 13 persons to have overarching responsibility for the combined enterprise. No name was given to either the company or council governing the respective colonies; the council governing the whole was named "Council of Virginia."[6] The "first Colony" ranged from the 34th to 41st degree latitude north; the "second Colony" ranged from the 38th to 45th degree latitude. (Note that the "first Colony" and the "second Colony" overlapped. The 1629 charter of Charles I asserted that the second Colony ranged from 40th to 48th degrees north latitude, which reduces the overlap.) The investors appointed to govern over any settlements in the "first Colony" were from London; the investors appointed to govern over any settlements in the "second Colony" were from the "Town of Plimouth in the County of Devon."[citation needed] The London Company proceeded to establish Jamestown.[7] The Plymouth Company under the guidance of Sir Ferdinando Gorges covered the more northern area, including present-day New England, and established the Sagadahoc Colony in 1607 in present-day Maine.[8] The experience proved exceptionally difficult for the 120 settlers, however, and the surviving colonists abandoned the colony after only one year.[9] Gorges noted that "there was no more speech of settling plantations in those parts" for a number of years.[10] English ships continued to come to the New England area for fishing and trade with the Indians.[11] Plymouth Colony In December 1620, a group of Pilgrims established Plymouth Colony just to the south of Massachusetts Bay, seeking to preserve their cultural identity and attain religious independence.[12] Plymouth's colonists faced great hardships and earned few profits for their investors, who sold their interests to the settlers in 1627.[13] Edward Winslow and William Bradford, two of its leaders, were likely authors of a work published in England in 1622 called Mourt's Relation. This book in some ways resembles a promotional tract intended to encourage further migration.[14] There were other short-lived colonial settlements in 1623 and 1624 at present-day Weymouth, Massachusetts; the Wessagusset Colony of Thomas Weston and an effort by Robert Gorges to establish an overarching colonial structure both failed.[15][16] Cape Ann settlement In 1623, the Plymouth Council for New England (successor to the Plymouth Company) established a small fishing village at Cape Ann under the supervision of the Dorchester Company, with Thomas Gardner as its overseer. This company was originally organized through the efforts of Puritan minister John White (1575-1648) of Dorchester, in the English county of Dorset. White has been called "the father of the Massachusetts Colony" because of his influence in establishing this settlement and despite the fact that he never emigrated.[17] The Cape Ann settlement was not profitable, and the financial backers of the Dorchester Company terminated their support by the end of 1625. Their settlement was abandoned at present-day Gloucester, but a few settlers remained in the area, including Roger Conant, establishing a settlement a little further south, near the village of the Naumkeag tribe.[18] Legal formation of the colony Archbishop William Laud was a favorite advisor of King Charles I and a dedicated Anglican, and he sought to suppress the religious practices of Puritans and other nonconforming beliefs in England. The persecution of many Puritans in the 1620s led them to believe that religious reform would not be possible while Charles was king, and many decided to seek a new life in the New World.[19] John White continued to seek funding for a colony. On 19 March 1627/8,[20] the Council for New England issued a land grant to a new group of investors that included a few holdovers from the Dorchester Company. The land grant was for territory between the Charles and Merrimack Rivers, including a three-mile (4.8 km) buffer to the north of the Merrimack and to the south of the Charles, that extended from "the Atlantick and westerne sea and ocean on the east parte, to the South sea on the west parte."[21] The company to whom the grant was sold was styled "The New England Company for a Plantation in Massachusetts Bay".[22] The company elected Matthew Cradock as its first governor, and immediately began organizing provisions and recruiting settlers. The company sent approximately 100 new settlers with provisions to join Conant in 1628, led by Governor's Assistant John Endecott, one of the grantees.[23] The next year, Naumkeag was renamed Salem and fortified by another 300 settlers, led by Rev. Francis Higginson, one of the first ministers of the settlement.[24] The first winters were difficult, with colonists struggling against disease and starvation, resulting in a significant number of deaths.[25][26] The company leaders sought a Royal Charter for the colony because they were concerned about the legality of conflicting land claims given to several companies (including the New England Company) for the little-known territories of the New World, and because of the increasing number of Puritans who wanted to join the company. Charles granted the new charter on 4 March 1628/9,[27] superseding the land grant and establishing a legal basis for the new English colony at Massachusetts. It was not apparent whether Charles knew that the Company was meant to support the Puritan emigration, and he was likely left to assume that it was purely for business purposes, as was the custom. The charter omitted a significant clause: the location for the annual stockholders' meeting. Charles dissolved Parliament in 1629, whereupon the company's directors met to consider the possibility of moving the company's seat of governance to the colony. This was followed by the Cambridge Agreement later that year, in which a group of investors agreed to emigrate and work to buy out others who would not emigrate. The Massachusetts Bay Colony became the first English chartered colony whose board of governors did not reside in England. This independence helped the settlers to maintain their Puritan religious practices with very little oversight by the king, Archbishop Laud, and the Anglican Church. The charter remained in force for 55 years; Charles II revoked it in 1684 as a result of colonial insubordination with trade, tariff, and navigation laws.[28] Colonial history A flotilla of ships sailed from England beginning in April 1630, sometimes known as the Winthrop Fleet. The fleet began arriving at Salem in June and carried more than 700 colonists, Governor John Winthrop, and the colonial charter.[29] Winthrop is reputed to have delivered his famous "City upon a Hill" sermon either before or during the voyage.[30] Detail of sounding board, Old Ship Church (1681), Hingham, Massachusetts, oldest Puritan meetinghouse in Massachusetts. For the next ten years, there was a steady exodus of Puritans from England, with about 10,000 people emigrating to Massachusetts and the neighbouring colonies, a phenomenon now called the Great Migration.[31] Many ministers reacted to the repressive religious policies of England, making the trip with their flocks. John Cotton, Roger Williams, Thomas Hooker, and others became leaders of Puritan congregations. Religious divisions and the need for additional land prompted a number of migrations that resulted in the establishment of the Connecticut Colony (by Hooker) and the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (by Williams and Anne Hutchinson). Minister John Wheelwright was banished in the wake of the Antinomian Controversy (like Anne Hutchinson), and he moved north to found Exeter, New Hampshire. The advent of the English Civil War in the early 1640s brought a halt to major migration, and a significant number of men returned to England to fight in the war. Massachusetts authorities were sympathetic to the Parliamentary cause, and had generally positive relationships with the governments of the English Commonwealth and The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. The colony's economy began to diversify in the 1640s, as the fur trading, lumber, and fishing industries found markets in Europe and the West Indies, and the colony's shipbuilding industry developed. The growth of a generation of people who were born in the colony and the rise of a merchant class began to slowly change the political and cultural landscape of the colony, even though its governance continued to be dominated by relatively conservative Puritans. Colonial support for the Commonwealth presented problems upon the restoration to the throne of Charles II in 1660. Charles sought to extend royal influence over the colonies, which Massachusetts resisted more than the other colonies. For example, the colonial government repeatedly refused requests by Charles and his agents to allow the Church of England to become established, and it resisted adherence to the Navigation Acts, laws that constrained colonial trade. All of the New England colonies were ravaged by King Philip's War (1675-1676), when the Indians of southern New England rose up against the colonists and were decisively defeated, although at great cost in life to the colonies. The Massachusetts frontier was particularly hard hit, with several communities being abandoned in the Connecticut and Swift River valleys. By the end of the war, most of the Indian population of southern New England made peace treaties with the colonists. Revocation of charter Following the English Restoration in 1660, matters of colonial administration drew the king's attention. Massachusetts in particular was reluctant to agree that the king had any sort of authority to control its governance.[32] This led to crises in the 1660s and late 1670s in which steps were first planned, and then executed in England to vacate the colonial charter. The Lords of Trade had decided for a variety of reasons to consolidate the New England colonies; they issued quo warranto writs in 1681 for the charters of several North American colonies, including Massachusetts.[33] The Massachusetts writ was never served for technical reasons, and the charter was not formally vacated until the chancery court issued a scire facias writ formally annulling the charter on June 18, 1684.[34] The proceedings were arranged so that the time had expired for the colonial authorities to defend the charter, before they even learned of the event.[35] Unifications and restoration From 1686, the colony's territory was administratively unified by James II of England with the other New England colonies in the Dominion of New England. The dominion was governed by Sir Edmund Andros without any local representation beyond hand-picked councillors, and was extremely unpopular in New England. Massachusetts authorities conspired to have Andros arrested in April 1689 after the 1688 Glorious Revolution in England, and they reestablished government under the forms of the vacated charter. However, dissenters from the Puritan rule argued that the government lacked a proper constitutional foundation, and some of its actions were resisted on that basis. The years from 1689 to 1692 were also difficult ones, since the colony was at the forefront of King William's War, and its frontier communities were ravaged by attacks organized in New France and conducted by French and Indian raiding parties. King William III issued a charter in 1691, despite efforts by Massachusetts agents to revive the old colonial charter. It was chiefly negotiated by Increase Mather in his role as the colony's ambassador-extraordinary,[36] unifying Massachusetts Bay with Plymouth Colony, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and territories that roughly encompass present-day Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia to form the Province of Massachusetts Bay. This new charter additionally extended voting rights to non-Puritans, an outcome that Mather had tried to avoid.[37] Life Life could be quite difficult in the early years of the colony. Many colonists lived in fairly crude structures, including dugouts, wigwams, and dirt-floor huts made using wattle and daub construction. Construction improved in later years, and houses began to be sheathed in clapboard, with thatch or plank roofs and wooden chimneys.[38] Wealthier individuals would extend their house by adding a leanto on the back, which allowed a larger kitchen (possibly with a brick or stone chimney including an oven), additional rooms, and a sleeping loft. These houses were the precursors to what is now called the saltbox style of architecture.[39] Interiors became more elaborate in later years, with plaster walls, wainscoting, and potentially expensive turned woodwork in the most expensive homes.[40] Colonists arriving after the first wave found that the early towns did not have room for them. Seeking land of their own, groups of families would petition the government for land on which to establish a new town; the government would typically allow the group's leaders to select the land. These grants were typically about 40 square miles (10,000 ha), and were located sufficiently near other towns to facilitate defense and social support. The group leaders would also be responsible for acquiring native title to the lands that they selected.[41] By this means, the colony expanded into the interior, spawning settlements in adjacent territories as well.[42] The land within a town would be divided by communal agreement, usually allocating by methods that originated in England. Outside a town center, land would be allocated for farming, some of which might be held communally. Farmers with large plots of land might build a house near their properties on the outskirts of the town.[43] A town center that was well laid out would be fairly compact, with a tavern, school, possibly some small shops, and a meeting house that was used for civic and religious functions.[40] The meeting house would be the center of the town's political and religious life. Church services might be held for several hours on Wednesday and all day Sunday. Puritans did not observe annual holidays, especially Christmas, which they said had pagan roots. Annual town meetings would be held at the meeting house, generally in May, to elect the town's representatives to the general court and to transact other community business. Towns often had a village green, used for outdoor celebrations and activities such as military exercises of the town's trainband or militia. Marriage and family life Many of the early colonists who migrated from England came with some or all of their family.[44] It was expected that individuals would marry fairly young and begin producing offspring. Infant mortality rates were comparatively low, as were instances of childhood death.[45] Men who lost their wives often remarried fairly quickly, especially if they had children needing care. Older widows would also sometimes marry for financial security. It was also normal for older widowed parents to live with one of their children. Due to the Puritan perception of marriage as a civil union, divorce did sometimes occur and could be pursued by both genders.[46] Sexual activity was expected to be confined to marriage. Sex outside of marriage was considered fornication if neither partner was married, and adultery if one or both were married to someone else. Fornication was generally punished by fines and pressure to marry; a woman who gave birth to an illegitimate child could also be fined. Adultery and rape were more serious crimes, and both were punishable by death. Rape, however, required more than one witness, and was therefore rarely prosecuted. Sexual activity between men was called sodomy, and was also punishable by death.[47] Within the marriage, the husband was typically responsible for supplying the family's financial needs, although it was not uncommon for women to work in the fields and to perform some sort of home labor (for example, spinning thread or weaving cloth) to supplement the family income. Women were almost exclusively responsible for seeing to the welfare of the children. Children were baptized at the local meeting house within a week of being born. The mother was usually not present because she was still recovering from the birth, and the child's name was usually chosen by the father. Names were propagated within the family, and names would be reused when infants died. If an adult died without issue, his (or her) name could be carried on when the siblings of the deceased named children in his memory. Most children received some form of schooling, something which the colony's founders believed to be important for forming a proper relationship with God. Towns were obligated to provide education for their children, which was usually satisfied by hiring a teacher of some sort. The quality of these instructors varied, from minimally educated local people to Harvard-educated ministers. Government The structure of the colonial government changed over the lifetime of the charter. The colonial charter was designed for the management of a corporation, and the needs of the colonial government did not always fit well into this model. The result was that the government began with a corporate organization that included a governor and deputy governor, a general court of its shareholders (known as "freemen"), and a council of assistants similar to a board of directors.[48] It ended with a governor and deputy governor, a bicameral legislature that included a representative lower house, and a body of freemen, a subset of the colony's adult inhabitants who were authorized to vote in elections. The council of assistants sat as the upper house of the legislature and served as the judicial court of last appeal. Massachusetts Bay Colony, 300th Anniversary Issue of 1930 The charter granted the general court the authority to elect officers and to make laws for the colony. Its first meeting in America was held in October 1630, but it was attended by only eight freemen.[48] They formed the first council of assistants, and voted (contrary to the terms of the charter) that the governor and deputy should be elected by them, from their number.[49] This was modified in the next session of the general court, in which the governor and deputy were to be elected by the general court.[50] An additional 116 settlers were admitted to the general court as freemen in 1631, but most of the governing power, as well as the judicial power, remained with the council of assistants.[51] They also enacted a law specifying that only those men who "are members of some of the churches" in the colony were eligible to become freemen and gain the vote.[49] This restriction on the franchise was not liberalized until after the English Restoration.[50] The process by which individuals became members of one of the colony's churches involved a detailed questioning by the church elders of their beliefs and religious experiences; as a result, only individuals whose religious views accorded with those of the church leadership were likely to become members and gain the ability to vote in the colony.[52] After a protest over the imposition of taxes by a meeting of the council of assistants, the general court ordered each town to send two representatives, known as deputies, to meet with the court to discuss matters of taxation.[53] Questions of governance and representation arose again in 1634, when several deputies demanded to see the charter, which the assistants had kept hidden from public view. The deputies learned of the provisions that the general court should make all laws, and that all freemen should be members of the general court. They then demanded that the charter be enforced to the letter, which Governor Winthrop pointed out was impractical given the growing number of freemen. The parties reached a compromise, and agreed that the general court would be made up of two deputies elected by each town.[53] The 1634 election resulted in the election of Dudley as governor, and the general court proceeded to reserve for itself a large number of powers, including those of taxation, distribution of land, and the admission of freemen.[54] The transformation was complete: a trading company had become a (somewhat) representative democracy. A legal case in 1642 brought about the separation of the council of assistants into an upper house of the general court. The case involved a widow's lost pig and had been overturned by the general court; but the assistants had sat in judicial decision on the case and voted as a body to veto the general court's act.[55] The consequence of the ensuing debate was that the general court voted in 1644 that the council of assistants would sit and deliberate separately from the general court (they had sat together until then), the concurrence of both bodies being required for the passage of legislation. Judicial appeals were to be decided by a joint session, since otherwise the assistants would be in the position to veto attempts to overturn their own decisions.[56] A group of emigrants had bought all the Massachusetts Bay Company's stock and brought the Charter to America in 1630; neither the English king nor Parliament nor an English company exerted any influence in Massachusetts Bay Colony.[57] So it was in effect a self-ruling republic for some decades, also practicing separation of powers. Laws and judiciary In 1641, the colony formally adopted its first code of laws, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties[58] written or compiled by Nathaniel Ward.[59] This document consisted of 100 civil and criminal laws based upon the social sanctions recorded in the Bible.[60] These laws formed the nucleus of colonial legislation until independence, and contained some provisions that were fairly advanced for the time. Among these provisions were the ideas of equal protection and double jeopardy that were later enshrined in the United States Constitution.[59] Many things were frowned upon culturally which modern readers might consider relatively trivial actions, and some led to criminal prosecution. These included smoking tobacco, abusing one's mother-in-law, profane dancing, pulling hair, sleeping during church services, riding behind two men (a woman named Lydia was convicted of this), playing cards, and engaging in any number of activities on the Sabbath.[61] The colony's council of assistants sat as the final court of appeal, and as the principal court for criminal issues of "life, limb, or banishment" and civil issues where the damages exceeded £100.[60] Lesser offenses were heard in county courts or by commissioners appointed for hearing minor disputes. The lower courts were also responsible for issuing licenses and for matters such as probate. Juries were authorized to decide questions of both fact and law, although the court was able to decide in the event that a jury failed to reach a decision.[62] Sentences for offenses included fines and corporal punishments such as whipping and sitting in the stocks, with the punishments of banishment from the colony and death by hanging being reserved for the most serious offenses.[63] Evidence was sometimes based on hearsay and superstition; for example, the "ordeal of touch" was used in 1646 (in which someone accused of murder is forced to touch the dead body; if blood appears, the accused is deemed guilty) to convict and execute a woman accused of murdering her newborn child.[64] Bodies of individuals hanged for piracy were sometimes gibbeted (publicly displayed) on harbor islands visible to seagoing vessels. (Nixes Mate was one such site where pirate William Fly's body was displayed, now little more than a granite outcrop.)[65] Notable criminal prosecutions Quaker Mary Dyer led to execution on Boston Common, June 1, 1660, by an unknown 19th century artist One of the first people to be executed in the colony was Dorothy Talbye, who was apparently delusional. She was hanged in 1638 for murdering her daughter, as the common law of Massachusetts made no distinction at the time between insanity (or mental illness) and criminal behavior.[66] Midwife Margaret Jones was convicted of being a witch and hanged in 1648 after the condition of patients allegedly worsened in her care.[67] The colonial leadership was the most active in New England in the persecution of Quakers. In 1660, one of the most notable instances was English Quaker Mary Dyer who was hanged in Boston for repeatedly defying a law banning Quakers from the colony.[68] Dyer was one of the four executed Quakers known as the Boston martyrs. Executions ceased in 1661 when King Charles II explicitly forbade Massachusetts from executing anyone for professing Quakerism.[69] New England Confederation In 1643, Massachusetts Bay joined Plymouth Colony, Connecticut Colony, and New Haven Colony in the New England Confederation, a loose coalition organized primarily to coordinate military and administrative matters among the Puritan colonies.[70] It was most active in the 1670s during King Philip's War.[71] (New Hampshire had not yet been organized as a separate province, and both it and Rhode Island were excluded because they were not Puritan.)[72] Economy and trade In the early years, the colony was highly dependent on the import of staples from England and was supported by the investments of a number of wealthy immigrants. Certain businesses were quick to thrive, notably shipbuilding, fisheries, and the fur and lumber trades. As early as 1632, ships built in the colony began trading with other colonies, England, and foreign ports in Europe. By 1660, the colony's merchant fleet was estimated at 200 ships and, by the end of the century, its shipyards were estimated to turn out several hundred ships annually.[73] In the early years, the fleet principally carried fish to destinations from the West Indies to Europe.[74] It was common for a merchant to ship dried fish to Portugal or Spain, pick up wine and oil for transport to England, and then carry finished goods from England or elsewhere back to the colony.[75] This and other patterns of trade became illegal following the introduction of the Navigation Acts in 1651, turning colonial merchants who continued these trading patterns into de facto smugglers. Many colonial authorities were merchants or were politically dependent on them, and they opposed being required by the crown to collect duties imposed by those acts.[76] The fur trade only played a modest role in the colony's economy because its rivers did not connect its centers well with the Indians who engaged in fur trapping. Timber began to take on an increasingly important role in the economy, especially for naval purposes, after conflicts between England and the Dutch depleted England's supplies of ship masts.[77] The colony's economy depended on the success of its trade, in part because its land was not as suitable for agriculture as that of other colonies such as Virginia, where large plantations could be established. The fishery was important enough that those involved in it were exempted from taxation and military service.[78] Larger communities supported craftsmen skilled in providing many of the necessities of 17th century life. Some income-producing activities took place in the home, such as carding, spinning, and weaving of wool and other fibers.[79] Goods were transported to local markets over roads that were sometimes little more than widened Indian trails.[80] Towns were required to maintain their roads, on penalty of fines, and the colony required special town commissions to lay out roads in a more sensible manner in 1639. Bridges were fairly uncommon, since they were expensive to maintain, and fines were imposed on their owners for the loss of life or goods if they failed. Consequently, most river crossings were made by ferry. Notable exceptions were a bridge across the Mystic River constructed in 1638, and another over the Saugus River, whose upkeep costs were subsidized by the colony.[81] The colonial government attempted to regulate the economy in a number of ways. On several occasions, it passed laws regulating wages and prices of economically important goods and services, but most of these initiatives did not last very long.[82] The trades of shoe-making and coopering (barrel-making) were authorized to form guilds, making it possible to set price, quality, and expertise levels for their work. The colony set standards governing the use of weights and measures. For example, mill operators were required to weigh grain before and after milling, to ensure that the customer received back what he delivered (minus the miller's percentage).[83] The Puritan dislike of ostentation led the colony to also regulate expenditures on what it perceived as luxury items. Items of personal adornment were frowned upon, such as lace and costly silk outerwear in particular. Attempts to ban these items failed, and the colony resorted to laws restricting their display to those who could demonstrate £200 in assets.[84] Demographics Most of the people who arrived during the first 12 years emigrated from two regions of England. Many of the colonists came from the county of Lincolnshire and East Anglia, northeast of London, and a large group also came from Devon, Somerset, and Dorset in the southwest of England. These areas provided the bulk of the migration, although colonists also came from other regions of England.[85] The pattern of migration often centered around specific Nonconformist clergy who sought to leave England under threat from Archbishop Laud, who encouraged their flock to accompany them.[86] One characteristic unique to the New England colonies (as distinguished from some of the other English colonies) was that most of the immigrants were emigrating for religious and political reasons, rather than economic ones.[87] The preponderance of the immigrants were well-to-do gentry and skilled craftsmen. They brought with them apprentices and servants, the latter of whom were sometimes in indentured servitude.[88] Few titled nobility emigrated, even though some supported the emigration politically and financially and also acquired land holdings in Massachusetts and other colonies.[89] Merchants also represented a significant proportion of the migrants, often the children of the gentry, and they played an important role in establishing the economy of the colony.[88] With the start of the English Civil War in 1642, emigration came to a comparative standstill, and some colonists even returned to England to fight for the Parliamentary cause. In the following years, most of the immigrants came for economic reasons; they were merchants, seamen, and skilled craftsmen. Following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the colony also saw in an influx of French Protestant Huguenots. During the period of the charter colony, small numbers of Scots immigrated, but these were assimilated into the colony.[90] The population of Massachusetts remained largely English in character until the 1840s.[91] Slavery existed but was not widespread within the colony. Some Indians captured in the Pequot War were enslaved, with those posing the greatest threat being transported to the West Indies and exchanged for goods and slaves.[92] Governor John Winthrop owned a few Indian slaves,[93] and Governor Simon Bradstreet owned two black slaves.[94] The Body of Liberties enacted in 1641 included rules governing the treatment and handling of slaves.[95] Bradstreet reported in 1680 that the colony had 100 to 120 slaves, but historian Hugh Thomas documents evidence suggesting that there may have been a somewhat larger number

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The Massachusetts Bay Company was a joint stock trading company chartered by the English crown in 1629 to colonize a vast area in New England extending from 3 mi (4.8 km) miles north of the Merrimack River to 3 mi miles south of the Charles River. It was quickly taken over by a group of Puritans, under the leadership of John Winthrop, who wished to establish a religious community in the New World. The first colonists sailed from England in 1630 and established the Massachusetts Bay Colony, with its center at Boston. They were soon joined by other settlers, almost all Puritans; by 1640, 20,000 of them had settled in Boston and neighboring towns, and the colony was a thriving success. The Puritan leaders had carried the company's charter with them to New England; this action enabled them to govern themselves and meant that they would not be controlled by governors and stockholders in England. Bending the charter to their own purposes, the Puritans transformed the company into a religious commonwealth. Their ambition had been to establish an ideal Christian community — a "city on a hill," as Winthrop called it — with the eyes of England and the entire world on it. Winthrop was reelected governor, and a theocracy was in fact established. In May 1631 the Puritan leaders agreed to recognize only church members as freemen (those entitled to vote and hold office). The company's officers became the colony's magistrates. The ministers of the church defined orthodoxy, and the colony's magistrates enforced it. Dissenters were suppressed or banished. Early challenges to the charter were averted by the outbreak of the English Civil War in the 1640s; for about 50 years, with little interference from England, the Massachusetts Bay Colony developed into a Puritan commonwealth. In 1684, however, the government of Charles II revoked the company's charter. The colony was merged briefly into the extensive but short-lived (1686-88) Dominion of New England, which included New Hampshire and New Jersey and the colonies lying between them. With Plymouth and Maine, the colony became part of a unified royal colony of Massachusetts in 1691; the religious laws instituted by the Massachusetts Bay Company were largely repealed.

Asiento system

The Native American population began to decline because of the Europeans brutality and diseases. The Spanish began to bring slaves from West Africa under the asiento system. This required the Spanish to pay a tax to their king on each slave they imported to the Americas.

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The North American fur trade began as early as the 1500s[16] and was a central part of the early history of contact between Europeans and the native peoples of what is now the United States and Canada. In 1578 there were 350 European fishing vessels at Newfoundland. Sailors began to trade metal implements (particularly knives) for the natives' well-worn pelts. The first pelts in demand were beaver and sea otter, as well as occasionally deer, bear, ermine and skunk.[17] Fur robes were blankets of sewn-together, native-tanned, beaver pelts. The pelts were called castor gras in French and "coat beaver" in English, and were soon recognized by the newly developed felt-hat making industry as particularly useful for felting. Some historians, seeking to explain the term castor gras, have assumed that coat beaver was rich in human oils from having been worn so long (much of the top-hair was worn away through usage, exposing the valuable under-wool), and that this is what made it attractive to the hatters. This seems unlikely, since grease interferes with the felting of wool, rather than enhancing it.[18] By the 1580s, beaver "wool" was the major starting material of the French felt-hatters. Hat makers began to use it in England soon after, particularly after Huguenot refugees brought their skills and tastes with them from France. Early organization General map of the "Beaver Hunting Grounds" described in "Deed from the Five Nations to the King, of their Beaver Hunting Ground," also known as the Nanfan Treaty of 1701 Captain Chauvin made the first organized attempt to control the fur trade in New France. In 1599 he acquired a monopoly from Henry IV and tried to establish a colony near the mouth of the Saguenay River at Tadoussac. French explorers, voyageurs and Coureur des bois such as Étienne Brûlé, Samuel de Champlain, Radisson, La Salle, and Le Saeur, while seeking routes through the continent, established relationships with Amerindians and continued to expand the trade of fur pelts for items considered 'common' by the Europeans. Mammal winter pelts were prized for warmth, particularly animal pelts for beaver wool felt hats, which were an expensive status symbol in Europe. The demand for beaver wool felt hats was such that the beaver in Europe and European Russia had largely disappeared through exploitation. In 1613 Dallas Carite and Adriaen Block headed expeditions to establish fur trade relationships with the Mohawk and Mohican. By 1614 the Dutch were sending vessels to secure large economic returns from fur trading. The fur trade of New Netherland, through the port of New Amsterdam, depended largely on the trading depot at Fort Orange (now Albany) on the upper Hudson River. Much of the fur is believed to have originated in Canada, smuggled south by entrepreneurs who wished to avoid the colony's government-imposed monopoly there. England was slower to enter the American fur trade than France and the Dutch Republic, but as soon as English colonies were established, development companies learned that furs provided the best way for the colonists to remit value back to the mother country. Furs were being dispatched from Virginia soon after 1610, and the Plymouth Colony was sending substantial amounts of beaver to its London agents through the 1620s and 1630s. London merchants tried to take over France's fur trade in the St Lawrence River valley. Taking advantage of one of England's brief wars with France, Sir David Kirke captured Quebec in 1629 and brought the year's produce of furs back to London. Other English merchants also traded for furs around the Saint Lawrence River region in the 1630s, but these were officially discouraged. Such efforts ceased as France strengthened its presence in Canada. Meanwhile, the New England fur trade expanded, not only inland, but northward along the coast into the Bay of Fundy region. London's access to high-quality furs was greatly increased with the takeover of New Amsterdam, whereupon the fur trade of that colony (now called New York) fell into English hands with the 1667 Treaty of Breda. Fur traders in Canada, trading with Native Americans, 1777 In 1668 the English fur trade entered a new phase. Two French citizens, Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers, had traded with great success west of Lake Superior in 1659-60, but upon their return to Canada, most of their furs were seized by the authorities. Their trading voyage had convinced them that the best fur country was far to the north and west, and could best be reached by ships sailing into Hudson Bay. Their treatment in Canada suggested that they would not find support from France for their scheme. The pair went to New England, where they found local financial support for at least two attempts to reach Hudson Bay, both unsuccessful. Their ideas had reached the ears of English authorities, however, and in 1665 Radisson and Groseilliers were persuaded to go to London. After some setbacks, a number of English investors were found to back another attempt for Hudson Bay. Two ships were sent out in 1668. One, with Radisson aboard, had to turn back, but the other, the Nonsuch, with Groseilliers, did penetrate the bay. There she was able to trade with the indigenes, collecting a fine cargo of beaver skins before the expedition returned to London in October 1669. The delighted investors sought a royal charter, which they obtained the next year. This charter established the Hudson's Bay Company and granted it a monopoly to trade into all the rivers that emptied into Hudson Bay. From 1670 onwards, the Hudson's Bay Company sent two or three trading ships into the bay every year. They brought back furs (mainly beaver) and sold them, sometimes by private treaty but usually by public auction. The beaver was bought mainly for the English hat-making trade, while the fine furs went to the Netherlands and Germany. Meanwhile, in the English southern colonies, a deerskin trade was established around 1670, based at the export hub of Charleston, South Carolina. Word spread among Native hunters that the Europeans would exchange pelts for the European-manufactured goods that were highly desired in native communities. English traders stocked axe heads, knives, awls, fish hooks, cloth of various type and color, woolen blankets, linen shirts, kettles, jewelry, glass beads, muskets, ammunition and powder to exchange on a 'per pelt' basis. Colonial trading posts in the southern colonies also introduced many types of alcohol (especially brandy and rum) for trade.[19] European traders flocked to the North American continent and made huge profits from the exchange. A metal axe head, for example, was exchanged for one beaver pelt (also called a 'beaver blanket'). The same pelt could fetch enough to buy dozens of axe heads in England, making the fur trade extremely profitable for the Europeans. The Natives used the iron axe heads to replace stone axe heads which they had made by hand in a labor-intensive process, so they derived substantial benefits from the trade as well. The British began to see the ill effects of alcohol on Natives, and the chiefs objected to its sale and trade. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 prohibited sale by European settlers of alcohol to the Indians in Canada, following the British takeover of the territory after it defeated France in the Seven Years' War (known as the French and Indian War in North America).

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The Portuguese were the first Europeans to discover the island. Portuguese navigator Pedro a Campos named it Los Barbados (meaning "bearded ones").[2] Frequent slave-raiding missions by the Spanish Empire in the early 16th century led to a massive decline in the Amerindian population, so that by 1541 a Spanish writer could claim they were uninhabited. The Amerindians were either captured for use as slaves by the Spanish or fled to other, more easily defensible mountainous islands nearby.[3] James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle, made Lord Proprietor of Barbadoes by King Charles I on 2 July 1627. From about 1600 the English, French and Dutch began to found colonies in the North American mainland and the smaller islands of the West Indies. Although Spanish and Portuguese sailors had visited Barbados, the first English ship touched the island on 14 May 1625, and England was the first European nation to establish a lasting settlement there from 1627. England is commonly said to have made its initial claim to Barbados in 1625, although reportedly an earlier claim may have been made in 1620. Nonetheless, Barbados was claimed from 1625 in the name of King James I of England. There were earlier English settlements in The Americas (1607: Jamestown, 1609: Bermuda, and 1620: Plymouth Colony), and several islands in the Leeward Islands were claimed by the English at about the same time as Barbados (1623: St Kitts, 1628: Nevis, 1632: Montserrat, 1632: Antigua). Nevertheless, Barbados quickly grew to become the third major English settlement in the Americas due to its prime eastern location. Early English settlement The settlement was established as a proprietary colony and funded by Sir William Courten, a City of London merchant who acquired the title to Barbados and several other islands. So the first colonists were actually tenants and much of the profits of their labour returned to Courten and his company.[4] The first English ship, which had arrived on 14 May 1625, was captained by John Powell. The first settlement began on 17 February 1627, near what is now Holetown (formerly Jamestown),[5] by a group led by John Powell's younger brother, Henry, consisting of 80 settlers and 10 English labourers. The latter were young indentured labourers who according to some sources had been abducted, effectively making them slaves.[citation needed] Courten's title was transferred to James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle, in what was called the "Great Barbados Robbery." Carlisle then chose as governor Henry Hawley, who established the House of Assembly in 1639, in an effort to appease the planters, who might otherwise have opposed his controversial appointment. In the period 1640-60, the West Indies attracted over two-thirds of the total number of English emigrants to the Americas. By 1650 there were 44,000 settlers in the West Indies, as compared to 12,000 on the Chesapeake and 23,000 in New England. Most English arrivals were indentured. After five years of labour, they were given "freedom dues" of about ₤10, usually in goods. (Before the mid-1630s, they also received 5 to 10 acres of land, but after that time the island filled and there was no more free land.) Around the time of Cromwell a number of rebels and criminals were also transported there. Timothy Meads of Warwickshire was one of the rebels sent to Barbados at that time, before he received compensation for servitude of 1000 acres of land in North Carolina in 1666. Parish registers from the 1650s show, for the white population, four times as many deaths as marriages. The death rate was very high. Before this, the mainstay of the infant colony's economy was the growth export of tobacco, but tobacco prices eventually fell in the 1630s, as Chesapeake production expanded. The introduction of sugar cane from Dutch Brazil in 1640 completely transformed society and the economy. Barbados eventually had one of the world's biggest sugar industries.[7] One group instrumental in ensuring the early success of the industry were the Sephardic Jews, who had originally been expelled from the Iberian peninsula, to end up in Dutch Brazil.[7] As the effects of the new crop increased, so did the shift in the ethnic composition of Barbados and surrounding islands. The workable sugar plantation required a large investment and a great deal of heavy labour. At first, Dutch traders supplied the equipment, financing, and African slaves, in addition to transporting most of the sugar to Europe. In 1644 the population of Barbados was estimated at 30,000, of which about 800 were of African descent, with the remainder mainly of English descent. These English smallholders were eventually bought out and the island filled up with large African slave-worked sugar plantations. By 1660 there was near parity with 27,000 blacks and 26,000 whites. By 1666 at least 12,000 white smallholders had been bought out, died, or left the island. Many of the remaining whites were increasingly poor. By 1680 there were 17 slaves for every indentured servant. By 1700, there were 15,000 free whites and 50,000 enslaved blacks. Due to the increased implementation of slave codes, which created differential treatment between Africans and the white workers and ruling planter class, the island became increasingly unattractive to poor whites. Black or slave codes were implemented in 1661, 1676, 1682, and 1688. In response to these codes, several slave rebellions were attempted or planned during this time, but none succeeded. Nevertheless, poor whites who had or acquired the means to emigrate often did so. Planters expanded their importation of African slaves to cultivate sugar cane. One early advocate of slave rights in Barbados was the visiting Quaker preacher Alice Curwen in 1677: " "For I am perswaded, that if they whom thou call'st thy Slaves, be Upright-hearted to God, the Lord God Almighty will set them Free in a way that thou knowest not; for there is none set free but in Christ Jesus, for all other Freedom will prove but a Bondage."[8] By 1660, Barbados generated more trade than all the other English colonies combined. This remained so until it was eventually surpassed by geographically larger islands like Jamaica in 1713. But even so, the estimated value of the colony of Barbados in 1730-31 was as much as ₤5,500,000.[9] Bridgetown, the capital, was one of the three largest cities in English America (the other two being Boston, Massachusetts and Port Royal, Jamaica.) By 1700, the English West Indies produced 25,000 tons of sugar, compared to 20,000 for Brazil, 10,000 for the French islands and 4,000 for the Dutch islands.[10] This quickly replaced tobacco, which had been the island's main export. As the sugar industry developed into its main commercial enterprise, Barbados was divided into large plantation estates that replaced the smallholdings of the early English settlers. In 1680 over half the arable land was held by 175 large planters, each of whom held at least 60 slaves. The great planters had connections with the English aristocracy and great influence on Parliament. (In 1668 the West Indian sugar crop sold for £180,000 after customs of £18,000. Chesapeake tobacco earned £50,000 after customs of £75,000). So much land was devoted to sugar that most food had to be imported from New England. The poorer whites who were moved off the island went to the English Leeward Islands, or especially to Jamaica. In 1670, the Province of South Carolina was founded, when some of the surplus population again left Barbados. Other nations benefiting from large numbers of Barbadians included British Guiana and Panama.

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The Royal African Company was a mercantile company set up by the Stuart family and London merchants to trade along the west coast of Africa. It was led by James, Duke of York, Charles II's brother. Its original purpose was to exploit the gold fields up the Gambia River identified by Prince Rupert during the Interregnum, and it was set up once Charles II gained the English throne in the Restoration of 1660.[1] However, it was soon engaged in the slave trade as well as with other commodities. Originally known as the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa, by its charter issued in 1660 it was granted a monopoly over English trade with West Africa. With the help of the army and navy, it established forts on the West African coast that served as staging and trading stations and was responsible for seizing any English ships that attempted to operate in violation of the company's monopoly. In the prize court, the King received half of the proceeds and the company half.[2] The company fell heavily into debt in 1667, during the war with the Netherlands, the very war it had itself started when its Admiral Robert Holmes had attacked the Dutch African trade posts in 1664, as it had lost most of its forts on the African coast except for Cape Corse.[3] For several years after that, the company maintained some desultory trade, including licensing single-trip private traders, but its biggest effort was the creation in 1668 of the Gambia Adventurers,[4] a new company separately subscribed and granted a ten-year license for African trade north of the Bight of Benin with effect from 1 January 1669.[5] In 1672, the original Company re-emerged, re-structured and with a new charter from the king, as the new Royal African Company. Its new charter was broader than the old one and included the right to set up forts and factories, maintain troops and exercise martial law in West Africa, in pursuit of trade in gold, silver and slaves.[6] At the end of 1678, the license to the Gambia Adventurers expired and its Gambian trade was merged into the company.[7] Slavery IJzeren voetring voor gevangenen transparent background.png Contemporary [show] Historical [show] By country or region [show] Religion [show] Opposition and resistance [show] Related [show] v t e In the 1680s the Company was transporting about 5,000 slaves a year across the Atlantic. Many were branded with the letters 'DY', for its Governor, the Duke of York, who succeeded his brother on the throne in 1685, becoming King James II. Other slaves were branded with the company's initials, RAC, on their chests.[8] Between 1672 and 1689, the Company transported 90,000 to 100,000 slaves. Its profits made a major contribution to the increase in the financial power of those who controlled the City of London. From 1694 to 1700, the company was a major participant in the Komenda Wars in the port city Komenda in the Eguafo Kingdom in modern-day Ghana. The company allied with a merchant prince named John Cabess and various neighbouring African kingdoms to depose the king of Eguafo and establish a permanent fort and factory in Komenda.[9] In 1689, the Company acknowledged that it had lost its monopoly with the end of royal power in the Glorious Revolution.[10] In 1698, the change was enacted into law by an act, which opened the African trade to all English merchants who paid a ten per cent levy to the Company on all goods exported from Africa.[11] This development was advantageous for merchants in Bristol even if, like the Bristolian Edward Colston, they had already been involved in the trade. The number of slaves transported on English ships subsequently increased dramatically. The Company continued purchasing and transporting slaves until 1731, when it abandoned slaving in favour of ivory and gold dust. Charles Hayes (1678-1760), mathematician and chronologer, was sub-governor of Royal African Company until 1752, when it was dissolved. The Royal African Company's logo depicted an elephant and castle. From 1668 to 1722, the Royal African Company provided gold to the English Mint. Coins made with such gold bear an elephant below the bust of the king and/or queen. This gold also gave the coinage its name, the guinea.[12]

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The Stamp Act of 1765 (short title Duties in American Colonies Act 1765; 5 George III, c. 12) was an act of the Parliament of Great Britain that imposed a direct tax on the colonies of British America and required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp.[1][2] Printed materials included legal documents, magazines, playing cards, newspapers, and many other types of paper used throughout the colonies. Like previous taxes, the stamp tax had to be paid in valid British currency, not in colonial paper money.[3] The purpose of the tax was to help pay for troops stationed in North America after the British victory in the Seven Years' War and its North American theater of the French and Indian War. The Americans said that there was no military need for the soldiers because there were no foreign enemies on the continent, and the Americans had always protected themselves against Indians. They suggested that it was actually a matter of British patronage to surplus British officers and career soldiers who should be paid by London. The Stamp Act was very unpopular among colonists. A consensus considered it a violation of their rights as Englishmen to be taxed without their consent—consent that only the colonial legislatures could grant. Their slogan was "No taxation without representation." Colonial assemblies sent petitions and protests. The Stamp Act Congress held in New York City was the first significant joint colonial response to any British measure; it petitioned Parliament and the King. Local protest groups led by colonial merchants and landowners established connections through Committees of Correspondence, creating a loose coalition that extended from New England to Maryland. Protests and demonstrations initiated by a new secret organization called the Sons of Liberty often turned violent and destructive as the masses became involved. Very soon, all stamp tax distributors were intimidated into resigning their commissions, and the tax was never effectively collected.[4] Opposition to the Stamp Act was not limited to the colonies. British merchants and manufacturers pressured Parliament, whose exports to the colonies were threatened by colonial boycotts. The Act was repealed on March 18, 1766 as a matter of expedience, but Parliament affirmed its power to legislate for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever" by also passing the Declaratory Act. There followed a series of new taxes and regulations, likewise opposed by the colonists. The episode played a major role in defining the grievances that were clearly stated within the text of the Indictment of George III section of the Declaration of Independence, and enabling the organized colonial resistance that led to the American Revolution in 1775.

Benin

The kingdom of Benin was a small, highly centralized state in West Africa ruled by a warrior king./The king of Benin patronized the artists who created brass sculptures. One of the most crucial events of this prosperous period was the arrival of Portuguese mariners in 1486. Through contact with the Portuguese, Benin established important trade relations in Europe and became the chief exporter of cloth, pepper, and ivory. Trade also brought copper and brass into the empire, allowing metalworkers to refine their traditional techniques of sculpting and casting. While the growth of trade and strengthening of European relations brought Benin great prosperity, it also led gradually to the kingdom's collapse. The European slave trade began in the early 16th century and swept through the region boasting of great wealth and prosperity. Many sources credit Benin for opting out of the slave trade completely, but it is important to consider facts that are often disregarded. Although Benin did not engage in full-fledged slave trade until the 18th century, it never abstained from the system entirely. Its leaders prohibited the export of male slaves during the 16th and 17th centuries, but women, as they did not play a role in the political system, were considered expendable and traded freely. Benin officials also became involved in the importing and reselling of slaves from other regions during this period. The commercial gains brought to West Africa through the slave market were immense but the prosperity quickly led to competition and war. Incessant fighting driven by hunger for human captives destroyed much of Benin's civilization and weakened its economy.

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This British national air was originally included in Alfred, a masque about Alfred the Great co-written by Thomson and David Mallet and first performed at Cliveden, country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales (the eldest son of George II and father of the future George III, as well as the great-grandfather of Queen Victoria), on 1 August 1740, to commemorate the accession of George II and the third birthday of the Princess Augusta.[3] Frederick, a German prince who arrived in England as an adult and was on very bad terms with his father, was making considerable efforts to ingratiate himself and build a following among his subjects-to-be (which came to naught, as he predeceased his father and never became king). A masque linking the prince with both the medieval hero-king Alfred the Great's victories over the Vikings and with the current building of British sea power - exemplified by the recent successful capture of Porto Bello from the Spanish by Admiral Vernon on 21 November 1739, avenging in the eyes of the British public Admiral Hosier's disastrous Blockade of Porto Bello of 1726-27 - went well with his political plans and aspirations. Thomson was a Scottish poet and playwright, who spent most of his adult life in England and hoped to make his fortune at Court. He had an interest in helping foster a British identity, including and transcending the older English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish identities. Thomson had written The Tragedy of Sophonisba (1730), based on the historical figure of Sophonisba - a proud princess of Carthage, a major sea-power of the ancient world, who had committed suicide rather than submit to slavery at the hands of the Romans. This might have some bearing on the song's famous refrain "Britons never will be slaves!". Incidentally, Thomson wrote the word "never" only once, but it has been popularly corrupted to "never, never, never", possibly because it is actually easier to sing. The same theme was repeated in the Navy's own "Heart of Oak", written two decades later: To honour we call you, as freemen not slaves/For who are so free as the sons of the waves?. In 1751 Mallet altered the lyrics, omitting three of the original six stanzas and adding three others, written by Lord Bolingbroke. This version known as "Married to a Mermaid" became extremely popular when Mallet produced his masque of Britannia at Drury Lane Theatre in 1755. Independent history The song soon developed an independent life of its own, separate from the masque of which it had formed a part. First heard in London in 1745, it achieved instant popularity. It quickly became so well known that Handel quoted it in his Occasional Oratorio in the following year. Handel used the first phrase as part of the Act II soprano aria, "Prophetic visions strike my eye", when the soprano sings it at the words "War shall cease, welcome peace!"[4] Similarly, "Rule, Britannia!" was seized upon by the Jacobites, who altered Thomson's words to a pro-Jacobite version.[5] However, Thomson's original words remained best-known. Their denunciation of "foreign tyrants" ["haughty tyrants"?] has some foundation as Great Britain's period of Parliamentary Commonwealth had decisively curbed royal prerogative, leading to the Bill of Rights of 1689 and it was on the way to developing its constitutional monarchy, in marked contrast to the Royal Absolutism still prevalent in Europe. Britain and France were at war for much of the century and hostile in between (see "Second Hundred Years' War") and the French Bourbons were undoubtedly the prime example of "haughty tyrants", whose "slaves" Britons should never be. According to Armitage[6] "Rule, Britannia'" was the most lasting expression of the conception of Britain and the British Empire that emerged in the 1730s, "predicated on a mixture of adulterated mercantilism, nationalistic anxiety and libertarian fervour". He equates the song with Bolingbroke's On the Idea of a Patriot King (1738), also written for the private circle of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in which Bolingbroke had "raised the spectre of permanent standing armies that might be turned against the British people rather than their enemies."[7] Hence British naval power could be equated with civil liberty, since an island nation with a strong navy to defend it could afford to dispense with a standing army which, since the time of Cromwell, was seen as a threat and a source of tyranny. At the time it appeared the song was not a celebration of an existing state of naval affairs, but an exhortation. Although the Dutch Republic, which in the 17th century presented a major challenge to English sea power, was obviously past its peak by 1745, Britain did not yet "rule the waves", although, since it was written during the War of Jenkins' Ear, it could be argued that the words referred to the alleged Spanish aggression against British merchant vessels that caused the war. The time was still to come when the Royal Navy would be an unchallenged dominant force on the oceans. The jesting lyrics of the mid-18th century would assume a material and patriotic significance by the end of the 19th century. The melody was the theme for a set of variations for piano by Ludwig van Beethoven (WoO 79)[8] and he also used it in "Wellington's Victory", Op. 91. Richard Wagner wrote a concert overture in D major based on the theme in 1837 (WWV 42). Johann Strauss I quoted the song in full as the introduction to his 1838 waltz "Huldigung der Königin Victoria von Grossbritannien" (Homage to Queen Victoria of Great Britain), Op. 103, where he also quotes the British national anthem "God Save the Queen" at the end of the piece. The French organist-composer Alexandre Guilmant included this tune in his Fantaisie sur deux mélodies anglaises for organ Op. 43, where he also makes use of the song "Home! Sweet Home!". Arthur Sullivan, Britain's leading composer during the reign of Queen Victoria, quoted from "Rule, Britannia!" on at least three occasions in music for his comic operas written with W. S. Gilbert and Bolton Rowe. In Utopia Limited, Sullivan used airs from "Rule, Britannia!" to highlight references to Great Britain. In The Zoo (written with Rowe) Sullivan applied the tune of "Rule, Britannia!" to an instance in which Rowe's libretto quotes directly from the patriotic march. Finally, to celebrate the jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887, Sullivan added a chorus of "Rule, Britannia!" to the finale of HMS Pinafore, which was playing in revival at the Savoy Theatre. Sullivan also quoted the tune in his 1897 ballet Victoria and Merrie England, which traced the "history" of England from the time of the Druids up to Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, an event the ballet was meant to celebrate. The part of the tune's refrain on the word "never" (often corrupted to "never, never, never"), is among those claimed to have provided the theme on which Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations are based. Elgar also quotes the opening phrase of "Rule, Britannia!" in his choral work The Music Makers, based on Arthur O'Shaughnessy's Ode at the line "We fashion an empire's glory", where he also quotes "La Marseillaise". "Rule, Britannia!" (in an orchestral arrangement by Sir Malcolm Sargent) is traditionally performed at the BBC's Last Night of the Proms, normally with a guest soloist (past performers have included Jane Eaglen, Bryn Terfel, Thomas Hampson and Felicity Lott). It has always been the last part of Sir Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs, except that for many years up until 2000, the Sargent arrangement has been used. However, in recent years the inclusion of the song and other patriotic tunes has been much criticised—notably by Leonard Slatkin—and the presentation has been occasionally amended.[9] For some years the performance at the Last Night of the Proms reverted to Sir Henry Wood's original arrangement. When Bryn Terfel performed it at the Proms in 1994 and 2008 he sang the third verse in Welsh. The text is available at Rule Britannia (Welsh). Britannia rule the waves: decorated plate made in Liverpool circa 1793-1794. "Rule, Britannia!" is often written as simply "Rule Britannia", erroneously omitting both the comma and the exclamation mark, which changes the interpretation of the lyric by altering the grammar. Richard Dawkins recounts in The Selfish Gene that the repeated exclamation "Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!" is often rendered as "Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rules the waves!", changing both the meaning and inflection of the verse. This addition of a terminal 's' to the lyrics is used as an example of a successful meme.[10] Maurice Willson Disher notes that the change from "Britannia, rule the waves" to "Britannia rules the waves" occurred in the Victorian era, at a time when the British did rule the waves and no longer needed to be exhorted to rule them. Disher also notes that the Victorians changed "will" to "shall" in the line "Britons never shall be slaves."[

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William III (Dutch: Willem; 4 November 1650 - 8 March 1702; also widely known as William of Orange)[1] was sovereign Prince of Orange from birth, Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland, and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic from 1672, and King of England, Ireland, and Scotland from 1689 until his death. It is a coincidence that his regnal number (III) was the same for both Orange and England. As King of Scotland, he is known as William II.[2] He is informally known by sections of the population in Northern Ireland and Scotland as "King Billy".[3] William inherited the principality of Orange from his father, William II, who died a week before William's birth. His mother Mary, Princess Royal, was the daughter of King Charles I of England. In 1677, he married his fifteen-year-old first cousin, Mary, the daughter of his maternal uncle James, Duke of York. A Protestant, William participated in several wars against the powerful Catholic king of France, Louis XIV, in coalition with Protestant and Catholic powers in Europe. Many Protestants heralded him as a champion of their faith. In 1685, his Catholic father-in-law, James, Duke of York, became king of England, Ireland and Scotland. James's reign was unpopular with the Protestant majority in Britain. William, supported by a group of influential British political and religious leaders, invaded England in what became known as the "Glorious Revolution". On 5 November 1688, he landed at the southern English port of Brixham. James was deposed and William and Mary became joint sovereigns in his place. They reigned together until her death on 28 December 1694, after which William ruled as sole monarch. William's reputation as a strong Protestant enabled him to take the British crowns when many were fearful of a revival of Catholicism under James. William's victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 is still commemorated by the Orange Order. His reign in Britain marked the beginning of the transition from the personal rule of the Stuarts to the more Parliament-centred rule of the House of Hanover.

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he British Fiscal Military State The two foundations of the British ficsal military state were Britain's geographic location as a island and societal acceptance of parliamentary rule. Her location as an island provided Britain, before the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the luxury to avoid the brutal continental wars that destroyed entire provinces and strained the financial resources of the warring nations to their limits. The acceptance of parliamentarily rule provided the government legitimacy to pass and enforce taxes effectively. These two unique British traits laid the foundation for the fiscal military state that successfully funded Britain's war efforts from 1688-1789. The financial strains of the wars in the early 18th century against Louis the XIV created Britian's fiscal military state. Britain funded its wars primarily with a long-term, low interest, national debt. Parellel to the growth of the debt was the creation of a highly bueracratic, powerful and professional Treasury to manage the debt. This treasury centralized the financial affairs of the British state. It compiled all of Britain's important financial documents and exercised total control over her tax collection and expenditure. Suspicion of big government and Parliamentary oversight kept corruption and sinecures in the treasury to a minimum. The key to Britain's financial system was its ability to borrow huge sums of money through the selling of bonds at low interest while maintaining financial credibility. Due to her Treasury and her effective tax system, Britain could borrow money and earmark specific taxes (normally excise taxes) to pay the interest on the debt. In other words, she funded her current wars with future revenues while maintaing confidence in her creditors that these future revenues were forthcoming. Because of her fiscal system, Britain was able to pay for and win long wars against France. The effectiveness of Britain's fiscal system is best shown when compared to the other fiscal systems on the Continent. The closest cousin to Britain's fiscal system was the Dutch who also funded their wars with specific taxes to pay for the interest accrued from their debt. Unfortunately for the Dutch, because they were located in a very important place on the Continent they had to fight many wars of survival against, at one time or another, all of Europe's Great Powers. The fiscal strains of these wars in combination with the fact that the Dutch had few lands and economic resources led to the collapse of her fiscal system in the 1700s when, because of excessive borrowing, she was unable even to pay the interest on her debt. This financial collapse had military consequences. Her naval power was eclipsed by England's and she lost many of her colonies (e.g. New York) to England. The other great power in Europe was France who didn't even have a fiscal military state. She financed her wars through the royal treasury where all tax revenues and expenditures passed through the king and his ministers. France in late 17th century had several fiscal disadvantages that prevented her from developing a fiscal military state. First, France had an ineffective, decentralized, and convoluted tax system. Unlike England, France's method of tax collection remained revenue farming, which prevented French state from accuring the extra tax proceeds that came from France's industrialization and increasing productivity. Second, as the result of her heavy involvement in earlier wars (e.g. the 30 Years War), she had created a class of parisitic office-holders who drained the economic resources of the state. This venality and the ineffectiveness of France's tax system hurt France's financial credibility. Meanwhile, the convuluted and un-centralized nature of her tax administration prevented her from developing the financial structures to manage a national debt. Consequently, her method of raising money for wars had to be through short-term, high-interest loans, annuities, and venalities. These methods bankrupted the royal treasury and forced the government to raise taxes to extraordinary levels. High taxes led to economic recessions that led to lower tax revenues. Caught in this vicious of debt, taxes, and recession, both the French economy and her military suffered. All of France's wars from 1688-1789 followed the pattern of early military victories and later military defeats. Because France could not develop an effective fiscal military state, France could not afford a long war. The Spanish didn't develop any financial system at all and her bankruptices ruined her financial credibility. Her army size shrunk from 100k to 50k during 1650-1700. Spain ceased to be a Great Power by the 1700s. These comparisons show the power of Britian's fiscal system. However, this fiscal system would have its limitations as well. The first limitation is the loss of fiscal credibility that would lead to destruction the entire fiscal military state. This event almost happened in 1720 following the South Sea Company bubble explosion. Another weakness was the high taxes that was needed to pay for the interst on the national debt. Following the Seven Years War, Britain was spending up to 50% of her tax revenues to fund the interest on her national debt. Britain's attempt to share her tax burden with the American colonies inflamed colonial tensions that would spark the American Revolutionary War. The third limitation is that despite all of the money England could borrow, England still could not win European wars without a Continental ally. In the Wars of the Grand Alliance, the Spanish Succession, and the 7 Years War, England won because it had European allies to distract France. However, during the American Revolutionary War, England did not have a European ally. England lost the Revolutionary war.

middle passage

the transatlantic sea voyage that brought slaves to the New World; the long and hazardous "middle" segment of a journey that began with a forced march to the African coast and ended with a treak into the American interior Equiono describes the sensation of being put under the decks: "I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; so that with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything." He felt a little better when he found people of his own nation, but was convinced that the white men were evil spirits. Similarly, he was amazed by the workings of the ship, and thought it moved by magic. Down in the hold, he was assaulted by hot air unfit to breathe because of its loathsome smells. Many people grew sick and died, "thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers." The screams and cries of anguish and terror made the hold like a scene from Hell. Thankfully, because of Equiano's young age, he was not put into chains and had more freedom to move about.

Navigation Acts

• Passed under the mercantilist system, the Navigation Acts (1651-1673) regulated trade in order to benefit the British economy. The acts restricted trade between England and its colonies to English or colonial ships, required certain colonial goods to pass through England before export, provided subsidies for the production of certain raw goods in the colonies, and banned colonial competition in large-scale manufacturing. The Navigation Acts were a series of English laws that restricted the use of foreign ships for trade between every country except England.[clarification needed] They were first enacted in 1651 and were repealed nearly 200 years later in 1849. They reflected the policy of mercantilism, which sought to keep all the benefits of trade inside the Empire, and to minimise the loss of gold and silver to foreigners. They prohibited the colonies from trading directly with the Netherlands, Spain, France, and their colonies. The original ordinance of 1651 was renewed at the Restoration by Acts of 1660, 1663, 1670, and 1673, with subsequent minor amendments. The Acts formed the basis for English overseas trade for nearly 200 years. Another way to define them is that they were laws created by England to limit their colonies' trade with other countries. Additionally the Acts restricted the employment of non-English sailors to a quarter of the crew on returning East India Company ships. On the whole, the Acts of Trade and Navigation were obeyed, except for the Molasses Act of 1733, which led to extensive smuggling because no effective means of enforcement was provided until the 1750s. Stricter enforcement under the Sugar Act of 1764 became one source of resentment of Great Britain by merchants in the American colonies. This in turn helped push the colonies to start the American Revolution in the late 18th century. The major impetuses for the Navigation Acts were the ruinous deterioration of English trade in the aftermath of the Eighty Years' War, and the concomitant lifting of the Spanish embargoes on trade between the Spanish Empire and the Dutch Republic. The end of the embargoes in 1647 unleashed the full power of the Amsterdam Entrepôt and other Dutch competitive advantages in world trade. Within a few years, English merchants had practically been overwhelmed in the trade in the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean and the Levant. Even the trade with English colonies (partly still in the hands of the royalists, as the English Civil War was in its final stages and the Commonwealth of England had not yet imposed its authority throughout the English colonies) was "engrossed"[clarification needed] by Dutch merchants. English direct trade was crowded out by a sudden influx of commodities from the Levant, Mediterranean and the Spanish and Portuguese empires, and the West Indies via the Dutch Entrepôt, carried in Dutch ships and for Dutch account.[1] The obvious solution seemed to be to seal off the English and Scottish markets to these unwanted imports. A precedent was the Act the Greenland Company had obtained from Parliament in 1645 prohibiting the import of whale products into England, except in ships owned by that company. This principle was now generalised. In 1648 the Levant Company petitioned Parliament for the prohibition of imports of Turkish goods "...from Holland and other places but directly from the places of their growth."[2] Baltic traders added their voices to this chorus. In 1650 the Standing Council for Trade and the Council of State of the Commonwealth prepared a general policy designed to impede the flow of Mediterranean and colonial commodities via Holland and Zeeland into England.[3]