jump to navigation

The Middle Colonies March 5, 2025

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.
Tags: , , , ,
add a comment

Between the Chesapeake Colonies and New England there existed an expanse of coast and its associated hinterlands that would soon join the English holdings and become known collectively as the Middle Colonies.  They had a better climate than New England and healthier than the Chesapeake region.  They proved extremely well suited for growing grains and raising cattle.  They soon boasted a large and growing population.

Initially however this population wasn’t made up of the English.  They ignored the area for the first part of the Seventeenth Century finding the New England venture and the Chesapeake area enough to keep them busy.   In the interim the Dutch established a flourishing New Netherland along the Hudson River and the Swedes built their New Sweden along the Delaware.  The English weren’t happy about this incursion in an area they considered their own, but they did not directly confront either rival immediately for two reasons.  One, they were not strong enough and two; both of their new world rivals were their Old-World friends.  Both Sweden and the Netherlands were Protestant powers, and both were valuable allies in the religious wars and power diplomacy of the times.

In the latter half of the Seventeenth Century things changed.  For one thing the Dutch had swallowed New Sweden and then the Dutch, who were now England’s main commercial rival in Europe and world-wide were swallowed in turn by the expanding English New Netherlands being renamed, New York in 1664.

Unlike the Spanish, French and Dutch the English crown exerted little direct power over their colonies.  Following the tenants of Mercantilism to their logical conclusions, they instead sought commercial benefit through taxation and the belief that every raw material such as wood or tar that they could produce at home or in a colony made them stronger.  Also, they did not fund the colonies out of the royal treasury as the other European colonizing powers did.  Instead, the cash-strapped English relied upon private enterprise and entrepreneurship leading to what many think is the greatest contribution of the British Empire to economics, the limited liability corporation.  This left much latitude and personal individuality to the separate colonies and also had a great influence on the future development of the United States.

Besides the commercial tradition of free enterprise this situation also had a profound impact on the political developments in the English colonies.  All except New England were controlled by absentee proprietors who were thousands of miles away and often extremely short of cash.  The colonists as they became firmly established and self-sufficient, following in a long line of English tradition, began to flex their economic muscle and the power of the purse to increase their political leverage.  They wrested concession from the proprietors in the form of autonomous assemblies with real power to shape local events.  They also sought control of courts and customs.  In some cases,   they even staged coups such as in Carolina declaring pseudo independence or as in Georgia where they appealed to the crown for protection from the leadership guidelines or strictures of the absentee proprietors.

A special case was New England.  As stated earlier, the proprietors were wealthy Puritans who formed the Massachusetts Bay Company which actually relocated to the colonies.  Having a royal charter themselves and having the principles of the company as actual participating members of the colony made them in everything but name independent and they acted as if they were in fact independent, asking no leave and taking every privilege.  They developed republican forms such as their famous town meetings and looked to no one besides themselves and God for all they wanted, needed, or desired.

Gradually as the proprietors found themselves in financial problems they turned to the crown for a bail-out.  The price of this help always came with strings and eventually the crown gained not only control but the title of colony after colony.  The Puritans even began to fear that the royal fist was next going to aim at them.  But instead, the crown was diverted by the rich prize which lay just to the south of the semi-independent New England.  In 1664 a mighty fleet of English warships descended upon the future port and near perfect harbor of New Amsterdam ascending the Hudson and conquering New Netherland.

The Dutch had built an American empire that was thriving by the time it was appropriated by the English.  It was anchored by the growing community of New Amsterdam located at the mouth of the Hudson River.  This city was founded initially to provide a secure transport hub for the furs coming down river from Fort Orange and the extensive and valuable trade with the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederation.  As time moved, on the Dutch expanded their presence building farms along the river to supply their colonists with food.  These farms soon had a surplus that became a valuable export being used mainly to feed other Dutch colonists in the West Indies.  The Dutch colony was prosperous and growing when it was suddenly plucked like ripe fruit by the English.  It was however a small colony on the fringe of a vast worldwide empire and the overextended Dutch had to pick their battles carefully, so they did not attempt to retake the colony. 

A small nation of only 1.5 million the Dutch had risen in a relatively short time from being a province of Spain to the greatest commercial empire in the world boasting the greatest navy.  While the religious wars wracked Europe and while the other European powers were all united to counterbalance the overwhelming preponderance of Spain little Netherlands was safe behind its dykes and secure in the enjoyment of their wealth.  However, as the religious wars subsided and as they themselves impoverished the Spaniards by stealing their treasure and conquering their outposts others began to look at the growing power of this tiny nation as a slight against them.  Soon England on the high seas and France on land began to seek ways to challenge the Dutch.  In the Americas this translated into the English conquest of New Netherlands.

This conquest had an ulterior motive.  As a matter of fact, when the English fleet sailed there was speculation that it was headed for Boston to assert royal control over the semi-independent New England.  Although the blow fell on the Dutch instead of the Puritans the lesson was not lost.  The crown intended to take a more active role and the establishment of a royal colony on their southern border let the Puritans know that from then on, the representatives of the king would not be far away.

The Covenant Chain

Once the English supplanted the Dutch as the dominant European power and the traders at Fort Orange (renamed Albany) they took the place of the Dutch in their alliance with the Five Nation Iroquois Confederation.  The two allies stood together against the French and swore to help each other against all other enemies.  The Five Nations claimed to have conquered the western regions as far south as Ohio and as far west as the furthest reaches of the Great Lakes.  These claims were more hyperbole than reality, but the English acknowledged them as true and by extension claimed that since they asserted their suzerainty over the Five Nation by extension, they said they held title to all these far-flung territories.  This was a claim the French bitterly refused to acknowledge basing their competing claims on their far-ranging exploration and the many relationships they had established with the tribes who controlled the territories.

The English not only traded with the Five Nations and used their boasts to expand their claims they also used them as enforcers regarding the other smaller Indian nations in the area.  This alliance came to be the lynch pin of English American diplomacy regarding the relations with the Native Americans North of the Chesapeake Colonies.  It was the source and the summit of power.  The guns given to the Iroquois became the tip of the English lance towards any tribe that dared try to stand against them.

New Jersey

The House of Stuart had ambitions of becoming absolute monarchs on the model of the French.  But they were held back by English tradition and a lack of money.  They did not have the vast estates and the power to tax by decree that the French monarch had.  Instead, they had to wheel and deal with an often intractable and always jealous parliament.  One place they looked to increase their riches which would increase their power was the colonies.  They wanted more royal control so they could tax the continually growing commerce.  After the royal conquest of New York, it appeared that they were finally on their way to establishing direct royal control but then they took a divergent course which added to the diversity of the American colonies instead of to the size of the royal treasury.

Unable to keep a strategy headed in the right direction and almost immediately after seizing New York the King’s brother the Duke of York granted a charter to two wealthy patrons for political consideration.  This grant was for all the land between the Hudson and the Delaware rivers as a separate colony called New Jersey.  The reduction of royal control was further diluted when these two absentee proprietors sold off their rights to two separate groups.  One was headed by a Scotsman and the other group was headed by Quakers.  These two groups promptly divided the colony into East and West New Jersey.  The Scotts took East Jersey, and the Quakers took West Jersey.

This situation lasted until 1702 when the crown reunited the two Jerseys into the royal colony of New Jersey.  The fact that the proprietors retained legal title to the land led to many disputes in East Jersey due to the exorbitant rents and demands made upon the rent holders.  This led to riots and to a depressed rate of economic growth which contributed to the fact that New Jersey lagged behind its neighbors both to the North and the South for generations in development and wealth.

Pennsylvania

William Penn was a rich gentleman descended from a famous and well-connected admiral.  He was also a creditor of the king.  The always cashed strapped Stuart King James I settled a debt with Penn by granting him 45,000 square miles of land beyond the Delaware River.  This was augmented by grants from the Duke of York.  Penn, a rich and grand living Quaker founded a colony where religious tolerance and economic opportunity soon established a thriving colony filled with industrious people.  The Quakers had withstood persecution in England because they refused to take part in or support the established church.  Penn himself was jailed on several occasions as an unlicensed preacher.  Therefore, there was a ready impetus for them to immigrate to Pennsylvania.   Like the Puritans of New England many of the settlers in Pennsylvania were families with their own resources.  They were tradesmen and merchants, farmers and artisans.  This type of population adapted well, worked hard and soon established growing communities ever deeper into the woods, always moving west.

William Penn was a shrewd and good administrator of his colony.  He treated the Indians with respect and acknowledged them as the rightful owners of the land.  He did not trick them or appropriate their land he purchased it and he didn’t allow anyone to settle on any land unless he first purchased it from the Indians.  This led to a more peaceful occupation of the land than in any other colony.

The harmony of the colony was disrupted by sectional rivalries which plague the commonwealth to this day.  The counties to the east are pitted against the counties to the west each always striving for their own advantage.  In colonial times this could deal with the perceived need for fortifications or roads, Indian relations or economic developments.  The profitable colony could not keep pace with the lavish lifestyle of its proprietor and in 1707 William Penn found himself sentenced to an English debtor prison even though he personally owned a colony bigger than some European countries.