French America April 2, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: american-revolution, canada, france, History, travel
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For the French being weak in some ways made them strong in others. They had a colder climate, and their rivers were ice bound for a good part of the year. This made it harder to attack them. They had less people. This made their presence less onerous to the Indians and caused them to seek better relations with the tribes, building alliances which helped them have the manpower necessary to stand against the more numerous British. They had less economic activity and fewer settlements than the British. This helped them persuade the Indians that they were less of a threat than the constantly expanding British and facilitated them drawing Indians, even ones in British claimed areas into their alliances. This situation applied to both New France (Canada) and Louisiana. In this way the French were able to effectively control a larger portion of North America than any other colonial power with very few people and a low expenditure of funds by the Homeland.
Contrary to their own cultural bias the French, who believed in a strict social hierarchy were forced by their relative weakness to treat the Indians as equals. They boasted of their power and the vastness of their possessions but in most places their ownership was in name only and merely a boastful fiction on European maps. The Indians remained sovereign in their possessions and the French were more of the officially accepted European presence in their respective areas. They would fight with and for the French when it suited their purposes. They would fight against the British because the British were seen as a power who sought to dispossess them from their lands and the French were only too glad to arm them in their fights with the British if not always join them in the battles.
After the British were able to take, hold and destroy the principle French settlement of Quebec in 1629 the French when they received their colony back in the resulting peace settlement set about expanding the number of inhabitants. They did this by pressuring the Company of New France, which was the monopolistic fur trading entity which had initiated the colony to begin with, to recruit more colonists. The French government had no direct control until 1663 when they took over the colony from the Company. The French, always sensitive to rank and privilege used a system whereby rich men were given titles of nobility (Seigneur) and huge grants of land for equipping ships and sending over colonists.
The colonists that France did send were mostly young single men who were without a means of support in France and thus susceptible to the offer of passage to America if it meant a regular supply of food. Few families immigrated and few single women. In addition, many of the young men who came as indentured servants or soldiers tended to return to France as soon as their term of service was completed. While the new recruits did swell the population when they arrived and while they remained the constant flow of people back to France and the lack of women precluded the French from keeping pace with the rapidly multiplying British.
Much thought has gone into the question of why France, the most powerful, populous and expansive power in Europe during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries were not able to overwhelm the rapid growth of the British colonies with numbers and materiel? This cannot be explained when we compare the available labor pools of the two countries. The peasants in France were even poorer than the peasants in the British Isles. Instead, the difference might be found in the ties which still bound the peasants in France to the land. In England the enclosure movement had severed this tie for many and forced them into the cities where they eked out a wretched existence making them eager for any opportunity that might present itself. The French on the other hand while still poor, still hungry and still with little hope for an improvement were tied to the belief that owning their little farms was the only thing between them and utter destitution. In the end it may have been the lack of an urban poor in great enough numbers that proved the undoing of the French colonial effort.
Another problem which hampered the development of New France was its location and its climate. Being so far north New France had a climate which was much harsher than that of France itself making it unappealing and also unsuited for the crops which had proven to be the economic lifeblood of American colonies, sugar, tobacco and rice. The few things that did flourish, such as wheat and livestock were too bulky and hard to ship to make them profitable as exports. Even the fur trade, which had been the original economic impetus for the founding of the colony, was sporadic at best and since Britain was constantly shipping furs too this was a trade with high competition and fluctuating returns.
And then there was the eternal war with the Five Nations. The French had stumbled into a perpetual war with the largest and best organized confederation of Indian nations in North America. As allies of the Huron they had participated in several early attacks upon the unsuspecting Iroquois who were not yet used to European weapons or tactics. They had inflicted serious causalities on people armed with only Stone Age weapons and in the bargain they had gained an implacable foe. The people of France had heard of the savage Iroquois and this knowledge did not do anything to help inspire people to volunteer to leave everything they had ever known to brave the cold for a new life in a New World.
Life in New France
When compared to the lives they left behind in Europe those French who did make the journey and stayed in New France to become free Habitants found themselves in a much better situation then could have been expected looking at all the negatives previously mentioned. They typically lived on 100 acres of land they rented from one of the Seigneurs. This was much larger than any piece of land they could hope to control in France. They could hunt and fish as much as they wanted. In France this was reserved only for Nobles. They had diet built upon meat and bread both of which were always in short supply for the poor in France. Even their housing which was usually tight and warm thanks to the ready supply of building materials and firewood was superior to what the typical poor person would expect in France.
Government
In the development of New France and the British North American colonies we see a laboratory in the differences and the different result of a paternalistic, authoritarian, highly centralized command society competing against one based upon individual initiative, free enterprise and decentralized control.
The French had a highly centralized monarchy that believed in divine right. The King ruled with no interference from a parliament or council as King Louis XIV, who was king from 1661 to 1715 once said, “I am the State.” The French were accustomed to following orders and suffering the consequences if they didn’t. The French government was used to absolute control over the economy and the population, and they expected their North American colonies to fit the mold and fulfill the vision of the king.
To begin with the French instituted an awkward three headed system of government meant to keep any one person from becoming too strong and which resulted in such internecine competition there was more deadlock than there was administration. There was a Governor-general charged with overall command, an Intendant in charge of civil matters, and a catholic Bishop. Each had their own constituency at the royal court. Each had their own agenda. And each fought the other two for control.
There was no elected assembly as in the British colonies. Instead, there was a Sovereign Council appointed by the king and composed of 5 to seven Seigneurs in addition to the Governor-general, the Intendant and the Bishop. This council held all executive, legislative and judicial power. And this was a unitary power. There were no local governments in town, county or township as in the British colonies.
The military obligation was universal, all males between the ages of 16 and 60 were members of the militia and liable to call-up at any times. Everyone was enrolled in a company and every company had a captain. The captains served as local law and civil enforcement officers. Once again, as in all authoritarian states, fearing anyone gaining too much power, these captains were always habitants instead of Seigneurs.
The strict stratification of France was translated to New France. There were more noblemen in New France than in the more densely inhabited colonies of Britain and Spain combined. The great land grants given to the Seigneurs could not be sold or subdivided, ensuring that great estates would remain a part of the landscape and keep the inhabitants from becoming landowners. The Seigneurs were expected to live in the royal towns of Quebec and Montreal maintaining a colonial version of a courtly society. And it was the Seigneurs who were given nearly every commission in the army, posts in the civil service and licensees to conduct the fur trade. This reinforced the class system and at the same time restricted most of the people and their talents from building a better and more prosperous society.
The Second New France
In name there was one unified colony, New France, there were two distinct areas each with their own situation. In the valley of the St. Lawrence River the French followed the pattern of most colonies; they built settlements and the slowly spread out into the interior as their population grew. This is where the largest portion of the population settled, and this is the area that is usually considered when discussions turn to New France in relation to the British colonies.
But this was only one section. Beyond the Great Lakes stretching west to the Mississippi and beyond was what the French called the Upper Country. This was a vast area that was the home of the fur trader. A few scattered settlements, small and completely dependent on the larger and more powerful Indian tribes with which they interact.
There were a few forts, and a couple of towns however, by 1750 this vast area had only a population of approximately 2,000 while at the same time the population in the St. Lawrence valley had reached 52,000. The few towns and forts often acted as almost semi-independent districts. The distance from the royal authority weakened the hand of the king’s representatives and the near proximity and power of the Indians often forced the local commanders to act in contravention to royal orders and in conformity to local realities.
The Iroquois had driven most of the French allied tribes out of the east and many had fled their homelands finding refuge in great inter-tribal refugee camps west of Lake Michigan. They moved away from the shores of the Great Lakes to avoid the relentless pillaging and kidnappings of the Five Nations, but they found that the further they retreated the further the Iroquois pursued. The only hope they and the French had was their unity against their mutual enemy.
Besides their monopoly on European manufactured goods the French used another stratagem in their quest to penetrate the vast Upper Country and to tap its resources. More than their British contemporaries the French married into the tribes. They would take an Indian wife thus making themselves a member of a family and clan system. The new wife became an interpreter and teacher, a guide and a helpmate. These familial alliances were indispensable to the French colonial effort in the Upper Country and became a lasting feature in the area. Eventually the offspring of these numerous marriages formed their own villages and a distinct culture blending the native and the European ways.
In the rough country beyond the Great lakes in many ways the French were the smallest and the weakest of the tribes. The refugees from the east and the indigenous peoples were all better suited to life in the woods than were the French. All had traditions and skills that stretched back thousands of years, all adapted to living in the woods and sustaining themselves off the land. The French by comparison were babes in the woods. They needed guides just to get around and instructions to do the simplest of tasks. How could they hope to claim suzerainty over the tribes or ownership over the land?
In native culture there was a long tradition, as in all chiefdom type societies of giving gifts to fulfill ceremonies and to seal bargains. The refugees had barely enough to survive and precious little to use as gifts and therefore, they could not fulfill the traditions. This is where the French wisely inserted themselves. They took it upon themselves to supply the grave goods needed for any who died. They supplied the trade goods necessary to facilitate peace treaties between tribes thus bringing order out of the chaos caused by the mass migration of the Iroquois’ victims, gaining for themselves a place among the tribes and the ability to claim the lands at least among other Europeans.
Louisiana
This area was first reached by French explorers led by La Salle following the Mississippi to its mouth. Upon realizing the vast extent of the Mississippi watershed and the strategic value of controlling a waterway that traversed the continent La sale convinced the crown to establish a royal colony at the mouth of the great river. However, when he returned with a fleet of ships and colonists, he was unable to find the mouth of the river and established a colony some miles away in what is now Texas. This proved to be a disaster that cost La Salle his life and the colony dissolved and returned to France. A later effort was more successful, and a colony was established which fortified the mouth of the river and pushed inland attempting to link up with traders coming down the river from the Upper Country (Canada).
The French Louisiana colony never gained many inhabitants and of those that did come many were convicted criminals and slaves. As in the West Indies, the slaves came to outnumber the free inhabitants. The French stood between the expanding British colonies of Carolina and Georgia and the Spanish to the west. They welcomed many colonists from the West Indies seeking a better opportunity than they could find in the overcrowded little islands.
Louisiana never developed a profitable export trade and was always a drain upon the royal treasury. The weakness of the colony, its situation between two other larger colonial powers pressed home the vulnerability of their situation upon the French. Consequently, unlike the British colonies Louisiana had a permanent military garrison which further reinforced the French authoritarian and centralized characteristics to the further detriment to the economic and social development of the colony.
As in New France Louisiana was made up of two distinctly different areas. There was the plantation core which was analogues to the valley of the St. Lawrence River. Here the European settlers were occupying the land and reshaping it into a plantation system with slaves and expanding civilization. Then there was the vast interior, which was only nominally controlled by France, but which was in reality still Indian country.
The French treated any Indians they could as mere nuisances to be cleared from the land as they would trees. Further upriver as the relative strengths of the two parties changed the French showed great deference for the culture and feelings of the Indians. In the ground in between there was trouble.
The Natchez Indians maintained substantial portions of the ancient Mississippian culture from which they had evolved. They had the ceremonial mounds, the intricately carved temples and the chiefdom style of government. The French felt secure enough to begin brow beating the Natchez acting as if they were a subject people even though they were still greatly outnumbered. In 1729 the Natchez staged a well-coordinated attack upon the French, and they easily overwhelmed them. The French were only able to maintain their position by enlisting the traditional enemies of the Natchez the Choctaw and together the destroyed the Natchez.
After this rebellion it was abundantly clear to French colonial authorities that the only way to maintain their security was through alliance with powerful Indian allies. From this point on the policy of the French was to use the Indians as their militia one tribe against another and as auxiliaries against both the Spanish and the British.
Conclusion
All in all, the French North American colonies were a disappointment to the crown. They never became self-sufficient. They were a constant drain upon the royal treasury. They became a cause of war and vulnerability during war. The French were never able to gain real possession of the land due to their small numbers and they were thus always held in the embrace of often unequal alliances with powerful tribes. Where the colonies of Britain and Spain enhanced the power of the home countries the French colonies were always detrimental and more of a source of pride than of strength.
From The Book America: Chapter One: Colonial History by Dr. Robert Owens Available at Amazon in paper back and Kindle.
Revolutions March 12, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: american-revolution, History, Politics, Religion, travel
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The always grasping never satisfied Stuart dynasty had a rough time during their four reigns as the kings of England. They sought absolute power and ended up losing the constitutional power they had. The second one was beheaded by his own people and the last one was chased out of the country. The first and the third were wastrels who partied themselves to distraction and spent themselves into poverty. They are best remembered for the line applied to their restoration after the regicide and the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell; “They never learned anything and never forgot anything.” All in all, they were a sad interlude in a proud heritage.
When the people of England could suffer these inept political neophytes no longer, they rose up in what is known as the Glorious Revolution, chased James II from the country and welcomed William of Orange the husband of James’ daughter Mary as the Protestant replacements to the hated Catholic James.
The coup was greeted in the colonies with jubilation on the part of those seeking greater independence. They quickly seized upon the revolution as an opportunity to cast the appointees of James as recalcitrant adherents to the old regime and themselves as ardent supporters of the new. This led to the overturning of every royal colonial government and the installation of more independent and more liberty minded groups.
William of Orange now styled William III of England, was a battle-hardened veteran of the long and bitter continental wars against the aggrandizements of Louis XIV. His main reason for coveting the crown of England was to subtract England from its alliance with France and to add it to his coalition against that same power. He had little concern for the colonies except as they figured into his consolidation of power in England and his mobilization of its power against France.
In consequence to this he picked and chose winners and losers in the colonial power struggles based upon his own calculations not the calculations or interests of the colonists. Sometime this coincided with colonial interests In Pennsylvania William suspended the charter because Penn had been a favorite of James, and he thus made Pennsylvania a royal colony. In Maryland he allowed Lord Baltimore to retain his ownership but took the government of the colonies out of his Catholic hands and put it into the hands of an appointed Protestant governor. In Massachusetts William refused to allow a return to their original charter, and he retained them as royal colonies, but he allowed them a great degree of autonomy and independence in local matters. The smaller New England colonies were allowed to reinstitute their original charters.
William plunged England into a long-lasting series of European wars all designed to hobble France for the benefit of his native Holland. These wars cost England more than anyone could have imagined. They led to a level of taxation never before known to support a massive increase in the military establishment both on land and on the sea. This also meant that William and the crown were occupied elsewhere. They had precious little resources to send to America and sought nothing more than revenue to fight on in Europe. The king didn’t really care what was going on in the colonies as long as they didn’t cause him to divert men or material from his main theater of action and as long as the contributed money to the war effort. Under these circumstances the colonists were able to gain a degree of freedom and independence not known back in England.
During these years the crowns of England and Scotland were formally united. They had become united when James VI of Scotland was crowned as James I of England. Though united in the person of the king and still united after the regicide in the Commonwealth they were officially united in 1707 and after that date the Scots soon came to outnumber the English as immigrants to the colonies. This marks the birth of Great Britain and the end of Scotland as an independent nation.
Another feature of the Eighteenth-Century British Empire was its suppression of the pirates which had once been an unofficial arm of its own foreign policy against the Spanish. As the Spanish Empire declined, and the British became the dominant sea power the pirates had become more and more of a nuisance. Eventually the British used the same tactics which have always worked against pirates, sink their ships, burn their bases and hang those captured. This effectively suppressed the pirates and brought a measure of peace to the sea lanes so a commercial empire like Britain could thrive.
The British were preeminently an empire of shopkeepers and merchants. They may not have had raw political power, but they held economic power that could sway the powers that be. The colonies had been founded as economic enterprises and even after most of them devolved or evolved into royal colonies they remained primarily economic enterprises.
Following the tenants of Mercantilism, ever uppermost in the mid of the royal government was how can the colonies benefit the homeland? How can they contribute to the power of the crown? And while the empire of the English now spread around the world it was profoundly an Atlantic worldview that predominated the thinking of the empire builders just as it was a European worldview that had predominated the mind of King William allowing the colonies to further develop as independent minded enclaves in the midst of a far-flung empire.
Carolina February 26, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: american-revolution, britain, History, slavery, travel
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Unlike the other English colonies in North America the Carolinas were established under the auspices of the Lords Proprietors by West Indian planters. The Lords Proprietors, 8 extremely rich men were based in London, and they wanted experienced colonists to ensure the success of their financial venture.
Many of the rich planters of the West Indies did not want to divide their land between multiple heirs. They instead followed a strict enforcement of primogeniture leaving everything to the eldest son. Daughters were of course married off, but younger sons found it hard to make their way and the Carolinas offered a great opportunity to set them up in great style and add to the family wealth at the same time.
However, there was a potential problem. Founding a society of great planters on a frontier had its dangers. The planters were afraid that their slaves would run off into the wilds and perhaps join with the Indians to fight against them. To avoid this, they devised an ingenious plan to at the least keep the slaves and the Indians apart. And at best they make them mortal enemies. To accomplish their purpose, they made treaties with the Indians providing them with weapons and other trade goods for returning run-away slaves.
The Colonists:
Though this was a society designed to be a steep pyramid led by a small group of very rich planters who started at the top and had every intention of staying there the colonists were overall a diverse lot. There were rich poor and in between. There were great planters, tradesmen and indentured servants. They came from the West Indies and from England. What they had in common was the opportunity to shape a fertile land that seemed vast and open to people accustomed to the confined space of the West Indian islands and the crowded cities of England. The Lords Proprietors were generous in their grants of land, from the great estates given to the Planters to the relatively large plots given to the indentured servants who survived their years of labor. Some of these former servants were able to rise to the top ranks of society and this mobility was something that could not be equaled in either England or the West Indies.
The independence and prosperous settlements around the Albemarle Sound, which had been founded by Virginians didn’t like the idea that they were included in the royal grant to the Lord Proprietors and thus a part of Carolina ruled from Charles Town. This discontent finally led to the split between North and South Carolina in 1712.
From its founding the Lord Proprietors ruled Carolina as a personal possession. Yes, they were generous in their grants of land, however since this land really belonged to the Indians and had been granted to the Lord Proprietors by a King who had never seen them, they proved the rule that it is easy to be generous with the belongings of others. This generosity did not however, extend to actual control of the colony.
The Coup:
In 1719 the Assembly of South Carolina exhibited independence which would mark its character ever since. Feeling that the Lords Proprietors far off in London were hopelessly unconnected to the affairs of the colony the Assembly revolted and declared themselves to be the governing authority of the colony authorized by the people to take control of governmental affairs. Recognizing the reality of the situation, in 1729 the crown purchased all the rights of the Lords Proprietors and converted the Carolinas into royal colonies. The crown only exercised minimal control, appointing governors and regulating international trade. This exchange of the Colonial Assembly for the Lords Proprietors consolidated the power of the Great Planters. It was they who usually filled the Assembly and it was their children and clients who also filled the courts and the bureaucracies. Often it seemed as if the major object of the colonial government was adjudicating the growth of plantations and the maintenance of Carolina’s ridged slave laws.
Carolina’s Unique Indian Policy
While in most colonies it was one of the principal points of policy to prevent weapons, especially firearms and ammunition from falling into the hands of Indians the leaders in Carolina came up with a novel approach. As mentioned earlier one major concern for the planters was the fear that their large slave population would combine with the indigenous people and overwhelm the greatly outnumbered Caucasians. To forestall this, they came up with the policy that would live in infamy as the Gun Trade.
Here’s how it worked. Instead of working rigorously to keep firearms out of the hands of the Indians the colonists chose powerful local tribes and armed them. Initially this was to be used for enlarging the natives’ ability to obtain furs and skins for trade. Then as time and relationships progressed the colonists engaged the Indians to catch runaway slaves paying for the slaves with more guns. Exploiting the Indians tradition of taking members of other tribes as captives the colonists were also willing to purchase Indian captives which they would send to the West Indies to sell as slaves, thereby making money while at the same time reducing the number of Indians they had to contend with.
This policy caused the tribe being armed to vault to the top of the local power pyramid. Immediately they would begin expanding their territory and raiding as far afield as they could to obtain furs, skins, runaway slaves and captives. These sparked innumerable wars among the tribes further destabilizing them and making them less able to stand up to the constantly expanding colony.
Eventually the first armed tribes started to need more weapons, powder and shot than they could pay for, so they went into debt. When the debt became substantial enough the colonists would arm another tribe and become their allies against the first tribe while at the same time cutting off weapons, repairs and supplies to the first tribe. Soon tribe number two was bringing tribe number one as captives and now they were on the boat to the West Indies. In time the process was repeated with tribe number three against number two and four against three until the Indian problem was solved.
This ingenious way of subverting an entire race spread the influence of the Carolina colony through the Piedmont and into the Blue Ridge Mountains, through the southern plain all the way to the Mississippi as tribes using their technical advantage to attack tribes further out seizing furs, skins, hunting lands and captives. The slaves were intimidated by the ferocious army of armed men waiting for the opportunity to catch and return them if they managed to escape.
The French used an intimate cultural knowledge and the willingness to share the lifestyle of the Native Americans to gain allies and friends. The Spanish sought to turn the Native Americans into Hispanics seeking to convert them into taxpaying subjects. The English of the Chesapeake colonies or New England sought to overwhelm and conquer the natives clearing the land through attrition. Only the colonists of Carolina hit upon the idea of using their economic advantage to pay the Native Americans to destroy themselves.
Economics:
Mercantilism was theory that was dominant in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. It held that the wealth of a nation depended on its possession of precious metals. In practice this meant that the governments of Europe sought to maximize foreign trade surpluses by promoting national commercial interests, building a powerful navy and a large merchant marine. These were then used to establish colonies which were seen as sources of raw materials and markets for manufactured products.
As with any colony in an empire based upon the economic theory of Mercantilism, Carolina had to find a way to not only provide a place for people to live but also a way to produce exports to add to the wealth of the homeland. Adapting quickly to the land and its resources the [people of the Carolinas initially became a primary source for the lumber and tar so necessary to ship building and of vital importance to an empire built and sustained by a large and growing navy and merchant marine.
Next, they excelled in the production of cattle and pigs using the warm marshes and nut rich forests to free range their livestock even though it caused irreparable harm to the open fields of the Indians extensive horticulture-based society. However, though these early successes proved the worth of the colony and provided much needed capital for expansion they still needed a cash crop. Virginia had tobacco. New England had fish. Carolina found theirs when they tried growing rice in the humid and rich lowlands of the coastal region. Soon the planters were draining swamps and moving forward to become the rice bowl of the English Empire.
This lucrative enterprise soon afforded the Great Planters a lavish lifestyle rivaling their forefathers in the West Indies and surpassing even what many English Lords were able to sustain. Their homes, their clothes, furniture and jewels were becoming the stuff of legend. Conversely the great rice plantations were built on the homelands of Indian tribes seizing their towns, hunting lands and sacred places. The growth of the rice plantations also caused untold suffering for the tens of thousands of slaves who toiled and died in the disease infested swamps that had been turned into rice paddies. Caucasians were soon the minority in the colony as the slave population swelled. The Great Planters through the Assembly they controlled enacted increasingly stringent slave codes to keep their victims enthralled. While the planters boasted of the liberty they had obtained through their successful coup and their resulting rule by Assembly they kept the majority of the population in abject poverty, ignorance and terror.
Georgia:
No story of the Carolinas can be complete without also sharing the founding of Georgia.
To secure England’s hold on the increasingly prosperous Carolinas, it was decided to establish a colony between the thriving new colony and the Spanish holdings in Florida. Spain was still a formidable power, and she still claimed the land to the north of her Florida holdings. In the past Spanish raiding parties had ranged up and down the Atlantic coast looking for the interlopers.
The effort to establish a buffer colony was led by several wealthy philanthropists headed by James Oglethorpe and collectively known as the Georgia Trustees. It was their intent to accomplish what the Virginia Company had originally said was one of their main goals; provide a place for the rehabilitation and succor of England’s urban poor. Receiving a charter for twenty-one years the trustees had almost total control until the colony would automatically revert to the crown and become a royal colony. The Trustees invested their own money, raised charitable donations and received grants from the crown and the parliament to finance their experiment. James Oglethorpe led the first colonists personally; however, he had no plans to remain in America and after establishing the first few outposts returned to London.
Seeking to maximize the number of small Yeoman farmers and minimize the number of large plantations, the Trustees at first limited people to fifty-acre tracts. They also hoped this would limit the number of slaves since it would not be economically viable to maintain slaves with only fifty acres. They also made the importation or owning of slaves illegal. Another of their innovations was to restrict the growth of rice which required a plantation system and instead encourage the growth of hemp for rope, mulberries for silkworms and silk production, grapes and other crops that didn’t require vast holdings but did require diligent farmers. The goal was to inspire tightly knit densely populated settlements which would provide the large militias needed to protect a long and exposed frontier surrounded by antagonistic tribes and a hostile Spain.
Conclusion:
As the only English colony to outlaw slavery Georgia was at the forefront of liberation and freedom in America but the experiment was not to last. Soon planters from Carolina were migrating and establishing outposts in the territory. Soon to the English colonists wanted to emulate the genteel society and thriving economy of Carolina. The Trustees tried to keep the lid on things by restricting the consumption of rum, and the avocation of lawyers among other things. However, the great distance and the lack of understanding of the colonial experience on the part of the trustees opened a wedge between them and their wards that grew greater and greater as time went on.
Eventually the divide escalated into open rebellion as the colonists sought liberty and property rights including the right to own larger holdings and slaves. Even before the twenty-one years expired the Trustees capitulated to the rising demands and surrendered their rights and so Georgia reverted to the crown becoming a virtual clone of the Carolinas.
Virginia January 22, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: american-revolution, books, History, Religion, revolutionary-war
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Between the Spanish to the South and the French to the North the English sought to carve out their own colonies in what they called “Virginia” named for the virgin queen Elizabeth I. The English relied on private investors operating under royal permission to found colonies that were some of the first international joint stock companies. These promoters sought the quick riches of conquest and gold. But instead, they found themselves in an area with a climate which initially proved deadly to Europeans and a land that had no easily obtainable minerals and that wouldn’t grow the preferred money crop, sugar.
In addition, after a false start at Roanoke they decided to try to establish themselves at Jamestown within the territory of a large tribal power known as the Powhatan Confederacy. The first years of the colony were ones of short lives and brutal work. Most people were either indentured servants who were worked to death or gentleman who refused to work. The colony needed constant infusions of people to make up for the large death rate.
Emerging from a series of wars and revolutions the British Isles had eventually been unified under the scepter of the English monarch. The social structure was a carryover from feudal times a steep pyramid with many poor people on the bottom and a few wealthy at the top. Several occurrences such as the Civil War had begun to empower Parliament and mitigate the suffering of the people. The franchise was exclusively for men with property but at least the Monarchy was no longer absolute, and the beginnings of a democratic structure were growing. The enclosure of the land to facilitate animal husbandry as opposed to crops left many former peasants landless and uprooted from their homes. These became the grist for the colonial mill supplying a large pool of ready workers and easy transplants.
The colonists eventually grew in number and after the introduction of tobacco they had a cash crop. Spreading out quickly within a generation they were hundreds of miles into the interior building forts and plantations. The freed indentured servants built new towns and constantly pushed deeper and deeper into the continent. When the Indians had finally had enough it was too late. The wars against the Indians cost the lives of many colonists but they decimated the Indians. By the 1670s there were more than 40,000 colonists and they were pushing the Indians back and out through the piedmont and into the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future 