USHAP
August 1619, Slavery in Jamestown, Virginia
(First imported slaves arrive in America) Twenty slaves imported from the West Indies arrived this month in the British colony of Virginia. A Dutch slave trader exchanged them for food. Unlike white indentured servants, these Black slaves will not be able to earn their freedom. Plantation owners plan to use them for labor-intensive crops, such as tobacco. This product has been responsible for Virginia's economic boom, and growers believe that slave labor will greatly increase their production.
Explorers of Spain
•Christopher Columbus made four voyages throughout the Caribbean, becoming the first European to lay claim to parts of the New World •Amerigo Vespucci made several voyages to the New World; his letters publicized the founding of the American continents to Europeans. •Hernan Cortes explored modern-day Mexico and conquered the Aztec empire. •Francisco Pizzaro conquered the Inca Empire, establishing the Spanish claim to Peru. •Juan Ponce de Leon acted as the governor of Puerto Rico, explored Florida and founded the first permanent Spanish city, St. Augustine, Florida, in the New World. •Vasco de Balboa explored the area of modern day Panama and was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean.
Explorers of France
•Giovanni Da Verrazano explored the east coast of North America, including the areas of modern-day North Carolina and New York. •Jacques Cartier explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence in North America while searching for the Northwest Passage, a rumored shorter route to the Pacific Ocean. He also established Mont Real (now Montreal) in present-day Canada. •Samuel de Champlain explored the island of Nova Scotia and established a new settlement at Quebec. •Louis Jolliet and Pere Jacques Marquette explored the Mississippi River, establishing French claim to control of the waterway. •Rene Robert de La Salle explored the Mississippi River to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico, claiming the area of New Orleans for France.
Explorers of The Netherlands
•Henry Hudson explored New York harbor and established the Dutch claim to the New Amsterdam, now the island of Manhattan.
Explorers of Portugal
•Prince Henry the Navigator, although not an explorer himself, established schools for the study of navigation and cartography. •Bartolomeu Diaz was the first European to sail around the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa, the first leg of an ocean trade route with Asia. •Vasco da Gama captained the first European fleet to sail to India from Europe, establishing an oceanic trade route to Asia. •Ferdinand Magellan's expedition was the first to circumnavigate the globe, although Magellan himself was killed during the voyage.
Explorers of Great Britian
•Sir Walter Raleigh founded the colony at Roanoke, on the Outer Banks islands of North Carolina. However, after he returned to England, further expeditions to the colony found that the settlers had vanished, earning the nickname "The Lost Colony." •Captain James Cook explored the Pacific Ocean, including Australia and New Zealand, paving the way for future British claims to these areas.
European concept of "degree"
A concern for power and rank (degree) that dominated European life between the 15th and 17th centuries.
A family was known as "a little Commonwealth"
A family was known as "a little commonwealth" because the Queen is the constitutional monarch for 13 other countries besides Canada, more commonly known as the Commonwealth countries.
Joint-Stock Company
A joint-stock company is a company in which investors can contribute variable sums of money to fund a venture. In doing so they become joint holders of the trading stock of the company, with a right to share in any profits in proportion to the size of their holding. The first joint-stock enterprise established in Britain is the Muscovy Company, which receives its royal charter in 1555. Of later ventures launched on a similar basis, the best known are the East India Company (1600), the Hudson's Bay Company (1670) and the South Sea Company (1711).
Captain John Smith (English explorer)
After a period as a military adventurer, he joined an English group preparing to establish a colony in North America. The Virginia Company of London sailed three ships to Chesapeake Bay, arriving in 1607 to establish the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown, of which Smith later became the leader. On a river voyage to explore the surrounding region, he was captured by Indians of the Powhatan empire; according to his own account, Smith was saved from death by Pocahontas, daughter of the Indian chief. While president of the Jamestown Colony, Smith oversaw its expansion. An injury forced his return to England in 1609. Eager for further exploration, he made contact with the Plymouth Company and sailed in 1614 to the area he named New England. He also mapped its coast and wrote descriptions of Virginia and New England that encouraged others to colonize the New World.
Virginia Company of London
By the terms of the charter, the London Company was permitted to establish a colony of 100 square miles approximately between Cape Fear and Long Island Sound, and also owned a large portion of Atlantic Ocean and inland Canada. On 14 May 1607, the London Company established the Jamestown Settlement about 40 miles inland along the James River, a major tributary of the Chesapeake Bay in present-day Virginia. The future of the settlement at Jamestown was precarious for its first 5 years. The president of the third Jamestown Council, Captain John Smith, was both a strong leader and a good diplomat who was able to form a positive relationship with the Native Americans.
October 14, 1492 (European Colonization)
Christopher Columbus and his three ships arrived in San Salvador/ The Bahamas today. Columbus, believing he had reached the outskirts of India, named the islanders "Indios," or Indians. Columbus noted in his journal that the natives were friendly and hospitable, but he did not find the gold and other riches he was seeking in Asia. Columbus plans to journey onward, convinced that the fabled Orient is close by.
Effects associated with Exploration
Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean islands in 1492. Sailing for Spain, he landed in the area of the island of Hispaniola. He found native people who were friendly and curious. He eventually made four voyages to the New World. The approximately 40 sailors he left behind on one expedition became Spain's first colony in the New World. His promises of riches and precious metals for the Spanish crown did not materialize. Instead, human beings became his capital. He enslaved Native Americans in the areas he explored and brought many back to the Spanish slaves markets. A new era of slavery began for the native peoples of the Americas as Europeans forced them to work in mines and on ranches and plantations. The Europeans and Native Americans embarked on an exchange of culture, religion, crops, and disease of unprecedented proportion. The New World introduced Europeans to a cornucopia of new crops and foods, such as corn, peanuts, squash, and peppers. Europeans introduced diverse elements, such as the Christian religion, new plants, and animals. Unfortunately, they also brought a number of deadly diseases against which Native Americans had no resistance. Millions of indigenous people in the Americas died from smallpox and other deadly epidemics.
Conquistadors
Conquistadors ("conquerors") were Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th to 16th centuries, following the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The two most famous conquistadors were Hernán Cortés who conquered the Aztec Empire and Francisco Pizarro who led the conquest of the Incan Empire. They were second cousins and both of them were born in Extremadura, as were many of the conquerors who were from Spain. Conquistadors in the Americas resembled a volunteer militia more than a regular organized military in that they had to supply their own materials, weapons and horses. Some were supported by governments, such as Cortés, who was funded by the Spanish Crown.
The Mayflower Compact
Created a basic framework of government by majority rule, and settlers agreed to follow rules established by the majority for the good of the colony.
East India Company
East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China. The Company was granted an English Royal Charter, under the name Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, by Elizabeth I on 31 December 1600, making it the oldest among several similarly formed European East India Companies, the largest of which was the Dutch East India Company.
Reasons/ Factors for Exploration
European exploration and colonization of the New World emerged as a result of several factors. Powerful monarchs wanted to expand their empires, and more modern technology demanded new sources of both raw materials and markets. Improved technology made overseas voyages possible. Development of better navigational instruments, more efficient sailing ships, and more accurate mapmaking techniques all contributed toward exploration. Additionally, religion played an important role. In the early era of explorations, Europeans were seeking to spread their religion and Christianize the people of the western hemisphere. In later centuries, people fleeing religious oppression would seek refuge in the New World. The travels of Italian Marco Polo to Asia inspired others in Europe to find the same wealth of riches he described in his writings. His voyage, however, was an arduous, long trek across thousands of challenging miles. Explorers such as Christopher Columbus hoped to find an easier ocean route. Earlier Europeans from Scandinavian countries had traveled to lands in the western hemisphere, but had not established permanent settlements. That changed with the advent of explorations sponsored by Spain, Portugal, France, England, and the Netherlands.
Fort Nassau, New Amsterdam, and New Netherland
Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, and was located along the Hudson River in present-day Albany, New York, United States. The trading post was a small fortification which served as a center for trade and a warehouse. It was sited on an earlier French fortification from 1540. New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that served as the capital of New Netherland. It was later renamed to New York City. New Netherland was another 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement. New Amsterdam was located at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan on upper New York Bay.
Opechancanough
In 1618 Powhatan (or Wahunsonacock) died, and Opechancanough, who was his brother, became chief of the Powhatan Confederacy, a group of several tribes inhabiting eastern Virginia, including the Pamunkey, Mattapony, and Chickahominy. Although relations between the Indians and the English had been relatively peaceful since the marriage of Pocahontas to John Rolfe in 1614, the growing number of English settlements in the area was making the Indians fearful and angry because of the loss of their hunting grounds. On Good Friday, March 22, 1622, Opechancanough led an attack on the settlements outside Jamestown, killing 347 colonists. The English retaliated soon after, and a bitter cycle of attacks and reprisals continued for the next ten years. Finally, in 1632, the two sides reached a peace agreement, but it lasted for only 12 years. In the spring of 1644, Opechancanough led one last uprising, killing some 500 colonists. This time, however, he was captured. Later he was murdered at Jamestown, reportedly by an English prison guard. In 1646 the governor of Virginia forced the Indians to accept a treaty under which they ceded much of their land to the English.
John Calvin
John Calvin (10 July 1509 - 27 May 1564) was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530. After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where he published the first edition of his seminal work The Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536.
Martin Luther
Martin Luther (10 November 1483 - 18 February 1546) was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517. His refusal to retract all of his writings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521 resulted in his excommunication by the pope and condemnation as an outlaw by the Emperor. Luther taught that salvation is not earned by good deeds but received only as a free gift of God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer from sin. His theology challenged the authority of the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church by teaching that the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge and opposed sacerdotalism by considering all baptized Christians to be a holy priesthood. Those who identify with Luther's teachings are called Lutherans.
Non-Seperatist Puritans
Non-separatist Puritans agreed with Separatists on the necessity of restricting church membership to proven saints. However, they did not condemn the Church of England. They contended that true Christians could and did remain in the Church of England in spite of its unscriptural practices. Furthermore, they believed Christians always existed within the church regardless of the form it took. Nonseparatists hoped to bring about change from within the established church. Separating from the Anglicans would frustrate that goal.
Pocahontas
Pocahontas, the Indian princess born around 1595 was the favorite daughter of the powerful chief, Powhatan, who ruled over an expansive area that included what we now know as Virginia. Pocahontas is known for aiding the English in their attempts to settle the North American continent and for becoming one of the first Native Americans to be accepted and honored in Europe. Pocahontas is said to have saved the life of John Smith, one of the first English settlers, in 1607. She become a close friend of John Smith after he helped save the colony from starvation and immediate failure. Pocahontas continued to help the Jamestown colony even after Smith returned to England in 1609 and after her father and the English were no longer on friendly terms. In 1613 Pocahontas was captured by Captain Samuel Argall who hoped to ransom her in exchange for English prisoners and weapons, which were in Powhatan's possession. During her captivity, Pocahontas was treated as a royal hostage and learned a great deal about English culture. She was baptized in 1614 and received the Christian name, Rebecca. Powhatan, meanwhile, did not grant the English wishes and war between the two cultures continued. It was not until Pocahontas asked for Powhatan's permission to marry an Englishman named John Rolfe, whom she had met during her captivity, that her father made peace with the English. With Powhatan's permission, Pocahontas and John Rolfe were married, creating an important political alliance between the English and Powhatans until Powhatan died in 1618.
Samoset
Samoset (1590-1653) was the first Native American to make contact with the Pilgrims. On March 16, 1621, the settlers were more than surprised when Samoset strolled straight through the middle of the encampment at Plymouth Colony and greeted them in English, which he had begun to learn from an earlier group of Englishmen to arrive in what is now Maine. A member of the Wompanoag tribe that resided at that time in what is now Maine, Samoset was a subordinate chief of his tribe and was visiting Chief Massasoit. He had learned his broken English from the English fishermen that came to fish off Monhegan Island. After spending the night with the Pilgrims, he came back two days later with Squanto, who spoke much better English than Samoset.
Squanto
Squanto was a Patuxet. He was the Native American who assisted the Pilgrims after their first winter in the New World and was integral to their survival. The Patuxet tribe was a tributary of the Wampanoag Confederacy.
Anabaptists
The Anabaptists were a religious group which developed a set of beliefs counter to the dominant Catholic Church. Anabaptist beliefs also set them apart from Protestant reformers. The defining mark of Anabaptism is a rejection of the concept of infant baptism. Anabaptists believe that infants cannot be held accountable for sin, because they have no knowledge of good or evil, and so they do not baptize their infants or honor infant baptisms. Instead, an Anabaptist believes that baptism is a confession of faith, and Anabaptists practice believer's baptism, in which people choose baptism as an expression of their religious faith.
Atlantic Slave Trade (Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade)
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries. The vast majority of slaves involved in the Atlantic trade were Africans from the central and western parts of the continent, who were sold by Africans to European slave traders, who transported them across the ocean to the colonies in North and South America. There, the slaves were forced to labor on coffee, tobacco, cocoa, cotton and sugar plantations, toil in gold and silver mines, in rice fields, the construction industry, timber for ships, or in houses to work as servants. The slave traders were, in order of scale: the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, and Americans. These traders had outposts on the African coast where they purchased people from local African tribal leaders. Current estimates are that about 12 million were shipped across the Atlantic, although the actual number of people taken from their homes is considerably higher.
The Church of England
The Church of England was the state church at that time. It had the monopoly. Religious meetings, particularly evangelical gatherings, were not permitted by the Church of England. These unsanctioned Christian gatherings were illegal. There was no real freedom of religion anywhere in Christendom at that time. There was the government's church. Then there were other Christians meeting secretly and illegally. To the Puritans this was an intolerable state of affairs. The very powers of England, both their church and their king, were against them. The Puritans found this state of affairs quite intolerable.
Encomiendas
The Encomienda was a system that was employed mainly by the Spanish crown during the colonization of the Americas to regulate Native American labor. In the encomienda, the crown granted a person a specified number of natives for whom they were to take responsibility. In theory, the receiver of the grant was to protect the natives from warring tribes and to instruct them in the Spanish language and in the Catholic faith: in return they could extract tribute from the natives in the form of labor, gold or other products. In practice, the difference between encomienda and slavery could be minimal. Natives were forced to do hard labor and subjected to extreme punishment and death if they resisted.
November 21, 1620 (Religious Persecution = Colonists to North America)
The Mayflower arrived today off the coast of present-day Provincetown, Massachusetts. However, the London Company, which authorized the voyage, did not give permission to the Mayflower's passengers to settle that far north. The settlers, realizing they were in a region possibly not governed by British law, signed a compact today.
The Northwest Passage
The Northwest Passage is a long-sought water route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans north of the North American mainland. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, European explorers, particularly the British, made numerous attempts to discover such a route north and west, through (by river) or around (by sea) North America. Captain John Smith, for example, sailed up the Chesapeake Bay from Jamestown in the early 1600s looking for a river that led to the Passage, but by the early 1800s expeditions by Samuel Hearne and Lewis and Clark had proved there was no navigable water route through the continent of North America, so the theory was shifted northward, to be an all-sea route through the Arctic Archipelago around the north of Canada. The earliest of the explorations were based on a mixture of legend, conjecture, and wishful thinking, but later expeditions built on what was learned and gradually extended their maps, at first of North America itself and then of Arctic America in particular.
Virgnia Company of Plymouth
The Plymouth Company was permitted to establish settlement(s) roughly between the upper reaches of the Chesapeake Bay and the current U.S.-Canada border. On 13 August 1607, the Plymouth Company established the Popham Colony along the Kennebec River in present day Maine. However, it was abandoned after about 1 year, and the Plymouth Company became inactive. With the religious pilgrims who arrived aboard the Mayflower, a successor company to the Plymouth Company eventually established a permanent settlement in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620 in what is now New England.
Puritanism
The Puritans were a widespread and diverse group of people who took a stand for religious purity in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries in Europe. Their rise was directly related to the increased knowledge that came to the common people in the Age of Enlightenment. As people learned to read and write, and as the Bible became more accessible to commoners, many began to read the Bible for themselves (a habit that was strongly discouraged in the established church). Some Puritans were connected with Anabaptist groups in continental Europe, but the majority were connected with the Church of England. The word Puritan was first coined in the 1560s as a derisive term for those who advocated more purity in worship and doctrine.
Elizabethan "Sea Dogs"
The Sea Dogs were English adventurers or pirates at the time of Elizabeth I of England. They were active from 1560 to 1605. In the 1560s, John Hawkins was the leader of the Sea Dogs and mainly engaged in attacks on Spanish shipping in the Caribbean. The Sea Dogs would also engage in slave trade from Africa. Sir Francis Drake was also a member of the Sea Dogs and engaged in the raiding of Spanish shipping as far as San Francisco on the Pacific coast. Other Sea Dogs were Walter Raleigh and Martin Frobisher. After 1604, when peace was made with Spain, many Sea Dogs continued their piratical activities by finding employment in the Barbary States, giving rise to Anglo-Turkish piracy, embarrassing the English Crown.
Seperatist Puritans
The Separatists, or Independents, were English Protestants who occupied the extreme wing of Puritanism. The Separatists were severely critical of the Church of England and wanted to either destroy it or separate from it. Their chief complaint was that too many elements of the Roman Catholic Church had been retained, such as the ecclesiastical courts, clerical vestments, altars and the practice of kneeling. The Separatists were also critical of the lax standards of public behavior, citing widespread drunkenness and the failure of many to keep the Sabbath properly. The Puritans were in and of the established church but objected to many of the ceremonies, such as the ring in marriage, the sign of the cross in baptisms, showy vestments, receiving evil livers to the communion. They believed in reform within the church and opposed separation from the church as a deadly sin. Their ministers were oppressed and ruined by excessive fines. The sharp measures against the Puritan clergy called together in defense of liberty and law a great political party which during the reign of James I. (1602-1623) formed the majority in the House of Commons. The settlers of Massachusetts Bay were Puritans--Non-Conformists who at the outset had apparently no intention of separating from the Church of England.
The Virginia Company
The Virginia Company refers collectively to a pair of English joint stock companies chartered by James I on 10 April 1606 with the purposes of establishing settlements on the coast of North America. The two companies, called the "Virginia Company of London" and the "Virginia Company of Plymouth" operated with identical charters but with differing territories. An area of overlapping territory was created within which the two companies were not permitted to establish colonies within one hundred miles of each other. The Plymouth Company never fulfilled its charter, and its territory that later became New England was at that time also claimed by France.
September 1636 (Harvard and Puritan values)
The first institute of higher learning in the British colonies was founded this month near Boston, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard College opened its doors to nine students. It was named for John Harvard, who intends to leave his library and a substantial part of his estate to the college. The Great and General Court of Massachusetts voted to establish the college, which will reflect the Puritan ideals so prominent in the Massachusetts Bay colony.
Jamestown
The founding of Jamestown, America's first permanent English colony, in Virginia in 1607 sparked a series of cultural encounters that helped shape the nation and the world. The colony was sponsored by the Virginia Company of London, a group of investors who hoped to profit from the venture. Chartered in 1606 by King James I, the company also supported English national goals of counterbalancing the expansion of other European nations abroad, seeking a northwest passage to the Orient, and converting the Virginia Indians to the Anglican religion. The Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery, carrying 105 passengers, one of whom died during the voyage, departed from England in December 1606 and reached the Virginia coast in late April 1607. The expedition was led by Captain Christopher Newport. On May 13, after two weeks of exploration, the ships arrived at a site on the James River. Initially, the colony was governed by a council of seven, with one member serving as president. Serious problems soon emerged in the small English outpost, which was located in the midst of a chiefdom of about 14,000 Algonquian-speaking Indians ruled by the powerful leader Powhatan. Relations with the Powhatan Indians were tenuous, although trading opportunities were established. An unfamiliar climate, as well as brackish water supply and lack of food, conditions possibly aggravated by a prolonged drought, led to disease and death. Many of the original colonists were upper-class Englishmen, and the colony lacked sufficient laborers and skilled farmers. Captain John Smith became the colony's leader in September 1608 - the fourth in a succession of council presidents - and established a "no work, no food" policy. Smith had been instrumental in trading with the Powhatan Indians for food. However, in the fall of 1609 he was injured by burning gunpowder and left for England. Smith never returned to Virginia, but promoted colonization of North America until his death in 1631 and published numerous accounts of the Virginia colony, providing invaluable material for historians. Smith's departure was followed by the "starving time," a period of warfare between the colonists and Indians and the deaths of many English men and women from starvation and disease. Just when the colonists decided to abandon Jamestown in Spring 1610, settlers with supplies arrived from England, eager to find wealth in Virginia. This group of new settlers arrived under the second charter issued by King James I. This charter provided for stronger leadership under a governor who served with a group of advisors, and the introduction of a period of military law that carried harsh punishments for those who did not obey. In order to make a profit for the Virginia Company, settlers tried a number of small industries, including glassmaking, wood production, and pitch and tar and potash manufacture. However, until the introduction of tobacco as a cash crop about 1613 by colonist John Rolfe, who later married Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas, none of the colonists' efforts to establish profitable enterprises were successful. Tobacco cultivation required large amounts of land and labor and stimulated the rapid growth of the Virginia colony. Settlers moved onto the lands occupied by the Powhatan Indians, and increased numbers of indentured servants came to Virginia. The first documented Africans in Virginia arrived in 1619. They were from the kingdom of Ndongo in Angola, West Central Africa, and had been captured during war with the Portuguese. While these first Africans may have been treated as indentured servants, the customary practice of owning Africans as slaves for life appeared by mid-century. The number of African slaves increased significantly in the second half of the 17th century, replacing indentured servants as the primary source of labor. The first representative government in British America began at Jamestown in 1619 with the convening of a general assembly, at the request of settlers who wanted input in the laws governing them. After a series of events, including a 1622 war with the Powhatan Indians and misconduct among some of the Virginia Company leaders in England, the Virginia Company was dissolved by the king in 1624, and Virginia became a royal colony. Jamestown continued as the center of Virginia's political and social life until 1699 when the seat of government moved to Williamsburg. Although Jamestown ceased to exist as a town by the mid 1700s, its legacies are embodied in today's United States.
The "Lost Colony"
The village of Roanoke was the one of the first English colonies to be established on the soil. However this village did not turn out to be that of a successful one. The Governor of this hamlet had the name of John White. The small population of Roanoke complained about their lack of food and tools. They also contained frightening suspicions that the Natives may launch a surprise attack on them. These complaints eventuated in John White going to England to later return along with the proper supplies the colonists requested. John White returned three long years afterwards. But what he returned to was not that of a colony but of a ghost town. The area which was once a village was stripped of its people. Houses and other shelters were nowhere in site. What was left behind were some small cannons, an opened chest, a tall fence built around the perimeter of the former village site, and a single word inscription carved on a fence post, "Croatoan".
