The Greatest Ocean of All April 23, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: europe, History, Politics, spain, travel
add a comment
While the British and the French battled for hegemony in the woods of eastern America, another series of adventures and struggles shaped America along its Pacific coast.
Once again, it was more disinformation than information which caused some things to happen. The Spanish, ever wary of any threat to the jewel of their empire, Mexico heard rumors of Russian settlers coming down the West coast and of British fur traders tramping out of the wilds and they immediately thought of encirclement.
Russia had moved as Far East across the vastness of Asia as the western European powers had moved west across the Atlantic. They had built the largest empire in the world by conquering one tribe after another until they stood on the shores of the north Pacific. Then they took the jump across the short Bering Sea and landed in Alaska beginning their own colonization efforts.
It was a cold and barren land with few inhabitants but with a wealth of furs and fish. They soon established forts and trading posts and began to claim a large section of the northwest corner of the North American continent. The Russians came primarily seeking furs and built an empire in the north by exploiting the land and brutalizing the inhabitants. The history of Russian America was one of slow growth and slower assimilation. The Russians never seemed to befriend the Indians as the French had done, evangelize them like the Spanish or move them out of the way like the British; they merely seemed to impoverish and terrorize them.
North to California
It was in response to the Russian boasts that they would move down the West coast to California that the Spanish after centuries of neglect finally began to colonize Alta California in earnest. They had claimed the area since the fifteenth century, and they had outposts there almost as long but it was only in the eighteenth century that they began to apply the power needed to make their far-flung claims a reality.
The size and diversity of California is a wonder to behold. It stretches more than eleven hundred miles and includes more than a hundred million acres. Its climate ranges from cool and foggy to alpine mountains to broiling desert to the lowest spot on earth. And before it was forever changed by the arrival of Europeans it had the greatest cultural diversity of any place in the Americas. Hundreds of distinct language groups and cultures fit into every niche in this vast landscape.
Into this world Spain intruded and proceeded to shape the land and the people to fit their view of what a colony should look like. The land was parceled out to grand lords who kept slaves and built dynasties. The mission system was set up and soon the wild diversity of the Indians was dissolving into the Hispanic sameness found throughout the Spanish Empire.
The Last Place on Earth
The Pacific Ocean was the last place on earth that the Europeans took as their own. It took many years of sailing this broad expanse to find all the many islands that had long been settled but had also long been isolated, including the continent of Australia and New Zealand. The French and the British were once again rivals as they sent expedition after expedition to find and exploit new lands. The most famous Pacific explorer was Captain Cook who would eventually give his life in his quest to find and explore these vast expanses of ocean.
The addition of the Europeans in the Pacific basin had the same effect it had in North America, cultures had to adapt to new realities and economies changed as new sources and new technologies were introduced. The eighteenth century saw Europeans reaching the most isolated islands (Hawaii) and finally learning that there was no Northwest Passage through the North American continent.
The great centuries of discovery came to a close and the world which had been circumnavigated in the fifteenth century was by the eighteenth century being circled on a regular basis by European ships establishing and maintaining European Empires. And just as the cultures of the indigenous peoples encountered along the way had changed, so too the cultures of Europe had been indelibly changed by their contact with the rest of the world. The great Columbian Exchange had brought new foods to Europe which remain to this day mainstays of the population to this day. The gold and silver of the Americas changed the balance of power and fueled wars on land and on the seas for generations.
The colonies were planted by the Europeans, they grew until they were ready to stand on their own, then they did, from sea to shining sea.
The Great Plains Indians April 9, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: bison, History, native-americans, travel, writing
add a comment
The storied life of the Great Plains Indian nations is filled with contradictions. In the imagination of today it is easy to imagine the unsullied and pristine life of the nomadic Plains tribe, following the buffalo and secure in the vastness of their isolated terrain. Our minds eye is shaped as much by Hollywood as by history if not more so. The reality is that without the influence of the white man the life of the Great Plains tribes never would have existed at all. Their nomadic life was dependent upon the vast buffalo herds from which they derived every essential of life from clothes to food to fuel for their fires. Yet their ability to follow the herds and to efficiently hunt them depended upon the horse and the horse was introduced into North America by the Spaniards.
The French were convinced that they were almost across the continent and that just a little way further on they would find the Pacific and the long-sought way to China. Because of this they continued to try and beat the British to the west following the trading paths with their various allies ever deeper into the northern plains.
Along the way they made the same type of mistake they had made in the east. Just as they had allowed an alliance with the Huron to drag them into perpetual war with the five nations, so they allowed their alliance with the Cree to lead them into a war of revenge with the Lakota. Their tactic of greater involvement in Indian affairs here proved to be a major weakness when compared to the strength gained by the British and their system of waiting for the Indians to come to them.
From America: Volume One: Colonial History available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon.
French America April 2, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: american-revolution, canada, france, History, travel
add a comment
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.
Awakenings March 26, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Bible, Christianity, church, History, preaching
add a comment
In the middle of the Eighteenth Century a series of great revivals swept through the British colonies. Collectively they have become known as the First Great Awakening. This was a manifestation of the great Evangelical movement which was also sweeping the British Isles. Preachers thundered from hundreds of pulpits assuring people that Christ’s millennial return was imminent and that they needed to get right before He came. This great wave of revivals also was marked by mass conversions of colonials, Indians and salves.
While it is a common belief that people came to America to find religious freedom in many cases that was neither the intent nor the experience. It should be remembered that the Europe of that time was preeminently a land of established churches. This had been a part of the peace formula that eventually ended the Thirty Years War. Each sovereign could choose his own brand of Christianity and then everyone in their country was expected to believe and practice the same way. Usually there was a state supported church that everyone paid for with their taxes and which everyone was expected to attend. The church and state were so tightly united that to be a religious dissenter was considered the same as being a traitor to the realm.
It was from such a world that people came to America. Those who did come for religious freedom such as the Puritans did not come for religious toleration. Instead when they set up their colonies they were as intolerant to others as the state church had been to them in England. Where religious toleration was practiced such as in Maryland or Pennsylvania it was very much the exception as opposed to the rule. The whole idea of the separation of church and state was not only foreign to most Eighteenth Century Europeans it was thought of as an aberrant idea which was detrimental to society and the general welfare.
Established churches fostered clergy who were dependent on government for their living and were thus usually compliant when it came to not preaching anything that could be considered as revolutionary or dangerous. Many of the churches even had lectionaries which proscribed not only what scriptures where read at what season but also what the topics of the sermons should be that accompanied those scriptures. To deviate was to invite retribution and often the loss of position. It was on the frontier that change was possible as the people themselves would often band together and build a church bringing in their own clergy who were then not dependent on the colonial government but instead governed by the congregational leaders.
In addition as the century progressed new religious ideas began to circulate. People began hearing of a God who was different than the dour, judgmental God of the Puritans or the lax accept anything God of the Established churches. Instead they began hearing of a God who was rational, a God who loved and a God who was interested in the affairs of men.
Revivals
Revivals have always seemed to flow in waves, a brief intense period of activity followed by a trough of relatively quiet acceptance for the status quo. Revivals are usually sparked by preachers who are good speakers and by ideas which reach out and touch masses of people. Revivals spread by word of mouth and by the traveling of popular preachers to new locals. Revivals are usually emotional responses to emotional pleas. Often they are accompanied by physical manifestations such as the quaking of the Quaker revival.
In the frontier revivals of the Eighteenth Century in America it was often the preaching of the doctrine of God’s grace alone as being sufficient to bring a person to a personal experience of salvation as opposed to religious obligations or monetary giving. The frontier people could readily accept this and could then propose to change their way of life to match what they were taught God demanded of them, clean living and righteous behavior.
Preachers
Jonathan Edwards was one of the primary preachers who sparked the First Great Awakening. He was second generation preacher who had been brought up to be a minister and who took his avocation as a calling from God. He preached many famous sermons which left people emotionally responsive and ready to claim they had been changed forever, this wave of revival sparked by Edward’s sermons swept throughout the North and moved fitfully along the frontier.
As this first great wave of revival seemed about to sputter to a close another famous preacher arrived from England who was destined to have a lasting impact on American society and religion. In England George Whitfield was greatly influenced by reading a book written by Jonathan Edwards entitled A Faithful Narrative of a Surprising Work of God which was his account of the surge of revival which had so impacted the colonies. In this work Edwards not only spoke of how this revival had moved from one area to another he also described the style of preaching and service which had been the catalyst for the religious happenings. These styles were then replicated by many other preachers who saw varying degrees of response but whose emulation created a type of similar experience that was pointed to itself as a sure sign that this revival was from God.
The emotional and sensational (for the times) style that Whitfield developed in response to the reports from America put him at odds with the rationalistic and formulaic patterns of the established church. Whitfield was a dramatic and forceful speaker who was soon drawing immense crowds, crowds too large to fit in any churches so he began preaching in the streets and fields, anywhere he could draw a crowd.
In 1739 Whitfield crossed the Atlantic becoming the first popular celebrity who was able to WOW the crowds on both sides of the Atlantic. He toured from Maine to Georgia speaking in churches and in fields and everywhere he went he created a sensation. He became fast friends with Ben Franklin who in turn used his publishing prowess to promote the English preacher. Franklin was a committed rationalist and didn’t believe in Whitfield’s type of emotional responsive religion but he considered Whitfield to be an exceptional entrepreneur and he appreciated his ability to promote himself. This was a mutually beneficial relationship. Whitfield allowed Franklin to republish his sermons which proved a successful means to increase the circulation of Franklin’s newspaper. As a matter of fact the demand for Whitfield’s sermons in printed form led to a massive increase in the number of pages printed in the next few years.
By the time Whitfield had returned to England in 1741 he had set in motion the religious revival collectively known as the Great Awakening. This was sustained after his departure by a multitude of preachers, many of them on the frontier. This religious revival had a positive effect on the customs and manners of the people. It also inspired many to learn to read so that they could study the Bible. This affected mainly the evangelicals such as the Baptists and the Methodists as opposed to the stricter Calvinists and the nominal Anglicans sweeping masses of new believers into the evangelical churches. The emotional preaching elicited emotional responses and many people were said to dance and sing, to wail and fall under the influence of the stridently emotional and evangelical preaching.
As the revival swept through the colonies it became divisive. The evangelical preachers found themselves denied the pulpit in many established churches. Undeterred these itinerant preachers followed the example of Whitfield and instead began preaching in fields and street corners. In some cases these itinerant preachers began preaching against the established preachers who had locked them out. One is especially well remembered, Reverend Gilbert Tennent preached sermon, “The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry.” In this sermon Tennent indicted the established clergy as being unregenerate. He also said that in many cases they lacked a personal experience with Christ which he and other itinerant preachers said constituted the only credential which gave someone the qualification to preach.
These divisions solidified into what were called the New Lights and the Old Lights. The New Lights were the supporters of the revival movements and believers in the emotional personal experiential type of religion the revivalist preached. The Old Lights rejected the religion preached by the revivalist because it was not rational and too much based upon experience instead of tradition and received knowledge.
A further division was generated within the ranks of the New Lights themselves. This was between the Moderates and the Radicals. The Moderates accepted any minister or church that would accept the Revivalists and their message. The radicals went further than any of the primary preachers themselves stating that organized religion itself was corrupt. They extolled the emotional and physical responses found in the most intense revivals as the only true signs of the working of God. They went so far as to condemn not only the churches and the rationalistic preachers but the government and any other man-made institution claiming that only those who had experienced the divine move of God as evidenced by the emotional and physical signs had any authority.
The radicals soon had the churches bubbling and boiling with controversy. Those who stayed with churches strove to convert these institutions into radical havens for the truly born-again. To do this they sought to expel any they perceived as being unconverted including ministers. Where they constituted a minority they agitated constantly for change. Where they constituted a majority they pushed through their agenda. In many cases this led to church splits as one side cast the other side out. In many Congregational churches when the minority radicals were tossed out they would join the Baptists who had been totally taken over by the Radicals.
In the South
The Great Awakening burned primarily in the New England and the Middle Colonies and along the frontier. It came belatedly to the South. It wasn’t until after 1743 that the revival began to burn bright in Virginia and the Carolinas. In these areas it was the Baptists who carried the torch and set it to the dry chaff of the frontier. They moved swiftly and cheaply. A Baptist minister was typically not an educated or genteel person. They were instead often as common as the people they preached to having been just like them before they had themselves been revived. The Preachers not only moved and lived cheaply, something that couldn’t be said about the established and the denominational preachers who required massive support, they also replicated themselves constantly. Many a town drunk heard the gospel according to the evangelical itinerant Baptist preachers, accepted Christ as their personal Savior and almost immediately began to preach themselves. These fast moving easily replicated preachers spread the Baptist style and brand of Christianity far and wide across the South and it is still evident today, when a full 16% of all Christians in the South consider themselves some kind of Baptist.
The Great Awakening also brought a renewed interest in the conversion of slaves and Indians. Many were preached to and many came forward to accept Chris as their personal Saviort. However, many were also shocked when the discrimination and prejudice that existed between them and the dominant society continued unchanged after their conversion.
As is always the case, soon the fire of revival began to dim. Beginning in the 1740s the moderates among the New Lights preachers made peace with the Old Lights and they once again united with one denomination after another, they basically agreed to disagree about some matters but to refrain from denouncing each other or condemning each other as unbelievers. The Radicals primarily retreated into the Baptist fold while those among the Old Lights who could not abide any accommodation even with the moderates tended to retreat into the Anglican Church with its prayer book and strict liturgy.
From the Book America by Dr. Robert Owens available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle.
The Atlantic March 19, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: black-history, britain, History, Politics, slavery
add a comment
That the Atlantic Ocean was a barrier between the Old World and the New was attested to by the thousands of years the Americas lay in splendid isolation. Sporadic contact by the Norse, Irish fisherman and the stray mariner blown off course did nothing to end the nearly insurmountable barrier. Then as the technological expertise of the Europeans advanced, as their navigation skills developed a crack was made in the wall by Columbus. He was soon followed by larger and larger Spanish expeditions in the middle latitudes and Portuguese in the south. Soon their empires rivaled Rome and shifted the balance of power in Europe in favor of the Iberians.
The emerging powers of England, France and the Netherlands soon began to prey upon the rich Spanish, then to explore and settle on their own further north. The initial trickle of explorers, adventurers and traders soon became a flood and then a torrent as the wealth and opportunity of the Americas beckoned.
English built their colonies along the Eastern seaboard of North America wedged between the Spanish in Florida and the French in Canada. One after another the colonies sprang to life, Virginia, New England, the Carolinas, and the Middle Colonies all became consumers of English manufacturers and shippers of raw materials and produce. The Atlantic trade grew from a one-way supply line for precarious adventures on the edge of a wilderness into a well-oiled machine moving cargo in both directions and fueling a booming English economy. It also provided the impetus and the means to build the largest merchant fleet and the most powerful navy in the world. In less than 150 years the Atlantic Ocean went from being a barrier to being a conduit, from being an impediment to being a facilitator and England grew from a poor kingdom on the edge of Europe into a world-shaking empire.
Diversity:
An interesting demographic shift took place in the English colonies that was not paralleled in the colonies of its rivals. This was a development that would have dramatic impact on the later development of the British colonies as well as upon the subsequent growth of the United States. The growth of the colonies began to have a beneficial effect on the homeland. The rise in exports and in the shipping, trade led to a boom in the British economy which in turn led to a drop in the number of people who wanted to immigrate to the colonies. This conundrum could have led to a self-defeating spiral however the British came up with a novel idea; they sought to entice people of other nationalities to immigrate to their colonies.
The other European colonial powers, France, Spain and the Netherlands followed a policy of exclusion and consequently the populations of their colonies remained small and in the New World small eventually meant vulnerable. Eventually this became an instance where size really does matter because the British colonies with their much larger populations were able to absorb both the Dutch and the French colonies in North America in many ways because of their denser population.
In a Europe divided by nationality, language and custom how did the British crown manage to entice multiple tens of thousands of non-English to settle in their lands and become productive and supportive citizens? First, they turned to their newly absorbed neighbor Scotland. The two countries had been united ever since James VI of Scotland became James I of England. However, they had remained separate kingdoms with one king each with their own parliament, military, treasury, etc. In 1707 the two nations permanently united to form Great Britain. Enticing the Scots with a similar but better climate and more economic opportunity they soon replaced the English as the number one source of colonists for North America.
But this was not enough to keep the boom going so the British turned to the people of Germany. Germany at the time was divided up into many small independent kingdoms, principalities and other types of realms. In theory and on paper the majority of them were united into the Holy Roam Empire with Austria as the usually dominant Hapsburg leader. This was the political reality but the functional reality as experienced by the people was that of a fractured and divided Germany where economic growth was curtailed by local jealousies and international weakness. This unsettled life fostered discontent and a desire for more opportunity. These desires were exploited by the British and soon a torrent of German colonists headed across the Atlantic to swell the population of the British North American venture. The Germans had another benefit; they were by heritage enemies of the French and therefore could be counted on to side with their new government against their ancient enemy.
One major incentive that the British provided was the opportunity to become citizens of the Empire. All an immigrant had to do was live in the colonies for seven years, swear allegiance to the king, take communion in a Protestant church and pay a small fee and they became a citizen with the same rights and privileges any natural born Englishman. This process built a loyal population that within a generation became British in culture, custom and loyalty which combined with the increasing birthrate a larger population automatically provides soon led to the exponential growth of British North America. This growth in turn led to such a difference in size that by the time the final show down with France arrived the ultimate victory was almost a foregone conclusion based upon demographics alone.
The Atlantic as a Conduit for Information:
No longer a barrier the Atlantic became a well-travelled and well-known conduit for trade, immigration and information. Initially the colonies had been further away in time from Britain than the International Space Station is from Houston. Once the colonists arrived in the New World they were effectively cut off from European news and information dependent upon the occasional ship and if they were in the back country perhaps an itinerant merchant with news that was perhaps months if not years out of date.
As the colonies grew and as the Atlantic passage became a well-traveled road these conditions changed. Newspapers began to proliferate, and people began to expect some form of regular contact between the New and the Old World. This brought the colonists into much deeper affinity with the Empire. They no longer felt abandoned at the edge of a howling wilderness, they instead began to see themselves as citizens of a powerful and expanding power. While the largest newspapers were all found in coastal cities there were also several in the interior. All of these helped to integrate the colonies as they were shared and read by one person after another. These multiple news sources didn’t dwell on local news instead they sought to have broader appeal hoping for the hand-to-hand currency that would garner a broad support and a growing reputation. Therefore, they used their locations either on the coast or at some other hub of communication to re-print news from Europe in general and England in particular. What this accomplished was a diminishing of the natural impact of sectionalism or localism and an enhancement of the British character and Imperial outlook of the population.
The Atlantic as a Conduit for Commerce:
What had once been an exclusively one-way trade, Homeland to colonies developed into a vigorous two-way trade and then into a multi-national trade that constantly grew as the export of raw materials increased the colonials prospered and they began to desire much more than the bare necessities. The richer they became the more luxury items they demanded. The traders in Europe were only too glad to extend credit and although the volume of merchandise heading from America to Europe constantly grew it could not keep pace with the desire for the finer things in life. Consequently, the upper echelons of Colonial society found themselves in a debt spiral that for many kept them only one bad harvest away from ruin.
The increased economic activity highlighted one important thing, the average person in America was better off economically than the average person in Britain. They not only had a much greater opportunity to own property they also had a greater opportunity to rise in the social scale. In Britain society was highly stratified and the majority people remained in the class in which they were born. Indeed, the hereditary nobility had a vested interest in maintaining such a tightly knit system of social control.
In the American colonies many of the richest planters rose from nothing often from being an indentured servant. Another contributing factor was that the colonies were virtually exempt from Imperial taxes. The tax burden in Britain was often crushing to pay for wars and the constant need to maintain a military establishment to protect and expand the empire. However, this colonial prosperity and social mobility was not universal. Especially in the cities there was inequality and often crushing poverty. In the winter when ice would close the Northern harbors, and almost all trade would cease there were particularly hard times from the urban poor. Of course, poverty is always a relative term. The poor of the colonies were usually better off than the street dwellers and beggars of European cities. Even the tenant farmers who toiled from sun to sun for someone else and who often found themselves so hopelessly in debt to their patrons that it became a life-long sentence were better off than most of the peasants of Europe.
And there was also the frontier. Always off in the distance was the frontier, the ragged expansion horizon that constantly moved west. Here was a place where people could get a new start often with as little investment as an axe and some hard work a man and his family could carve a farm out of the forest and build a self-sufficient if not prosperous life. However, this was no panacea and no guaranteed pathway to success. Many people were unsuited to frontier life. Others shipwrecked on the shoals of resistance from those who got there first or from the indigenous people who stubbornly thought that their land was still their land.
The Export Trade
As the Eighteenth Century matured the growing export sector became more and more important. The race for subsistence had been won in most places and the rich lands were being exploited in more productive ways. Tobacco, rice, indigo and timber products led the way. Many grew rich from the trade, and they then sought ways to enjoy that wealth. Following the lead of European elites the rich in Americas worked to build bigger and better houses furnished with fine China and staffed with liveried servants. Even on the frontier the successful wanted to display and enjoy their material success.
The relationship between the Homeland and the colonies was just as it was designed to be under the mercantilism which was their driving economic policy. The colonies furnished the Homeland with raw materials and then using the funds generated by the exportation of the raw materials purchased manufactured goods from the budding industrialists of the Homeland. It was a circular trade that kept all the funds within the Empire and contributed to the strength of Great Britain at every turn.
The prosperity of the great planters and the large farmers developed into a desire to live what they termed a genteel life, refined far beyond anything earlier generations of colonists could have imagined. The increased information provided by the colonial newspapers and the increased travel inspired and facilitated by the improving system of roads tended to homogenize and unite the upper echelons of society throughout the colonies and even with those of the Homeland. A sense of caste and class was born that was alien to the egalitarian milieu of the frontier.
One aspect of the large percentage of non-English immigrants that the Eighteenth Century brought to America was the development of a pluralistic society. All of the European societies that sought to colonize America were either to a lesser or greater extent xenophobic. They all saw themselves as the standard for development and society. None of them was especially partial to the culture of others and all of them lived in a world of them and us. If you weren’t one of us, you must be one of them. The mixing of the English, the Scots, the Irish and the Germans combined with the leveling experience of the frontier produced a new type of society wherein people related to those with similar experiences instead of those with the same ancestry.
The Slave Culture
The majority of those who came to America in the Eighteenth century were not immigrants from Europe seeking freedom and opportunity. They were instead enslaved Africans kidnapped in West Africa by other Africans and sold into perpetual bondage. Over a million slaves were imported mainly by the British. This vast enterprise in human trafficking greatly enriched the British Empire, allowing them to surpass their rivals in the production of sugar and tobacco. There was an outlandish death rate that kept the African slaves from becoming an overwhelming majority even though in many areas they did become a majority. While millions were brought in hundreds of thousands died from overwork and disease. The horror and violence necessitated by a slave culture degraded both the slave and the master.
There was quite a difference between the culture of slavery as practiced in the northern colonies and the southern. In the north there were no great plantations and no crops such as rice or tobacco which lent themselves well to slave gangs. Therefore, from the beginning the number of slaves in the north was much smaller than the number in the South. Whereas the slave holders of the South encouraged the slaves to wed and have children looking to grow their own crop of servants as opposed to buying them. The slave owners of the North discouraged this practice and in fact kept a much larger proportion of male slaves to female thus precluding any massive number of marriages among their slaves.
The African people in America in many subtle ways attempted to maintain their diverse cultural heritages but as time and contact with whites and other Africans from divergent cultures progressed the African American culture was born as a blend of all these influences. In the face of unspeakable and unconscionable brutality they survived and eventually thrived despite all they had to endure.
From the Book America: Volume One Colonial History
Revolutions March 12, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: american-revolution, History, Politics, Religion, travel
add a comment
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.
The Middle Colonies March 5, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: canada, europe, History, Religion, travel
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.
Carolina February 26, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: american-revolution, britain, History, slavery, travel
add a comment
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.
The West Indies February 19, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: africa, black-history, History, slavery, travel
add a comment
The Seventeenth Century saw the rise of the West Indies as the most important colonies of England. They were the most important because they produced abundant crops of sugar and sugar was what greased the financial wheels for the entire colonial enterprise. It afforded the profits and covered the losses to fuel a growing empire, and the navy needed to make it happen.
The islands of the West Indies had been ignored by the Spanish as too small to bother with and they were consequently claimed and settled first by pirates from the three later colonizing powers, England, France and Holland and then colonized by settlers eager to prosper in the New World. With Barbados as their hub the English soon filled these islands with plantations. In a short time, there were more colonists in the West Indies than in the Chesapeake and New England colonies combined which made sense since the financial rewards were also greater.
The same pattern was followed as in the Chesapeake Colonies. At first most colonists came as indentured servants who once they were free sought to build their own holdings into sugar producing plantations. Then when it proved economically profitable the planters began importing African slaves. The Africans proved to be much better suited to the climate and able to survive much better than the indentured servants plus they never had to be freed. The West Indies were the first English colonies to have a majority slave population. This demographic fact is evident in the current population of the Islands. The slave codes or laws as with the work and climate were particularly harsh all of which led to high mortality rates among the slaves and a consequently high rate of importation of more Africans to swell the constantly thinning workforce.
In contrast to the wretched existence of most of the population, which were slaves the apex of society was held by the great planters. Growing sugar was an expensive proposition if it was going to pay. In other words, it takes money to make money. As time went on the land in the West Indies became more and more concentrated in the hands of a small minority of Great Planters who bought or muscled out the smaller ones. These Great Planters became fabulously wealthy and lived in a grand style in opulent homes surrounded by the finest imports from Europe.
Besides sugar which was refined and processed into raw sugar, molasses and rum the West Indies also produced a highly sought after grade of tobacco. All-in-all, the West Indies were without a doubt the jewel in the crown of English colonialism.
Puritans and Indians February 12, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: History, pilgrims, puritans, Religion, Thanksgiving
add a comment
The Puritans didn’t see the land they colonized as pristine, which it wasn’t, and they didn’t see it as merely undeveloped, which it wasn’t, instead they saw it as a “hideous and desolate wilderness full of wild beasts and wild men.” With such an outlook is it any wonder that they looked upon the land as something to be conquered? Is it any wonder that they looked upon the Native Americans as inferior members of an inferior culture to be shunted aside at best and eliminated at worst?
The Native Americans the Puritans encountered in New England were mainly from the Algonquian linguistic group. They were divided along linguistic lines by dialect and along clan lines by families. The main groups subdivided over and over and there was much individual freedom to move between groups along these inter-relational lines. They possessed the same advanced horticultural techniques which were almost universal along the Eastern coast of North America. They grew the same crops and used the same weapons as the Natives encountered by the English in Virginia but they did not have the same level of political development. There were no great confederations like the Five Nations or the Powhatan. And so the Puritans did not have to fit into local power structures as the least powerful and newest entrants on a varied and dynamic political stage. Instead they moved into abandoned villages left empty by the ravages of European imported diseases and claimed well cleared fields left fallow by the death of their owners. They even went so far as to say God had cleared out the heathen so they could enter in, and they believed it was true.
At a very early point the growing Puritan colonies began pushing the Indians out of more and more land. They saw every agreement on the part of the natives as an abject acceptance of English sovereignty. They used trade goods and the ability to traverse great distances between various tribes as a means to not only capture much of the intertribal trade but to use it to their advantage playing one tribe against another.
A prime example of the exploitation of rivalry is found in the history of the Pequot War. The usual story is that the Pequot were recent invaders who came in and mercilessly subjugated the local Mohegan and Narragansett and that the New English merely aided them in freeing themselves from the hated oppressors. In reality the Puritans wanted to incorporate the lands of the Pequot into their growing commonwealth and to do so they lured the other Indians into guiding them to the isolated Pequot villages.
The traditional mode of combat among the Indians was long on show and short on mayhem. They sought to capture women and children to incorporate them into their tribes to make themselves stronger and their enemies weaker. They did not engage in wholesale slaughter and the general conquest of the lands of others but that is just what they signed on for in the Pequot War. In less than two years’ time the Puritans had so decimated the tribe that they declared the Pequot to have ceased to exist as a tribe. Later they resurrected the Pequot by convincing some who had been adopted into the Narragansett to once again reconstitute their tribe as allies of the Puritans in a war against the Narragansett. One side against the other until the Puritans were the only side left.
Missionary Activities & Praying Towns
Pushed and prodded by their fellow believers back in England the Puritans began actively attempting to evangelize the Indians beginning in the late 1640s. Many members of the smaller and weaker bands of Indians had decided that it was foolish to try and resist the ever increasing English and so they sought protection and advancement by adopting Christianity and following European ways. They gathered together in large inter-tribal villages known as “Praying Towns” where they could learn from the English and begin to gain the advancements that civilization had to offer. Though the larger and most powerful of the tribes never found the Praying towns or the missionaries appealing these towns did grow and become an important part of the Puritan scene in Massachusetts. This venture eventually crashed against the shoals of the bloodiest war ever fought between the Indians and the Puritans.
King Phillip’s War
Victors write History. This is a reality which has colored the perception of events since the First Emperor of China made himself the first emperor by destroying all the records of anything that had gone before. Thus it is with “King Phillip’s War.” King Phillip wasn’t even the name of the man the Puritan’s have immortalized as the Machiavellian leader of the coordinated attack against the innocent English in 1675.
After seizing the land and displacing the cultures of the many tribes and bands who were the original possessors of the land the Puritans began acting in a very high handed manner by imposing their laws and conventions on the members of any and all tribes in their vicinity. In the spring of 1675 they arrested and hanging several Indians who had killed an Indian from one of the Praying Towns who was considered a traitor by other Indians for guiding the English to their camps.
This act of self-declared sovereignty over the people of another nation led to spontaneous reactions from the Indians. These people believed in blood feuds and retribution, revenge raids and reciprocity and the Indians who were hung all had relatives and friends. Soon many of the tribes joined in a massive effort to rid their lands of the ever more intrusive English, but it was too late. The Great Migration and a prodigious birth rate had increased the English population to the point that they easily outnumbered all the local tribes combined.
The technological advantage had been lost. Greedy traders had ignored the law against selling firearms to Indians and they had gained flintlock rifles and become very adept at using them. However, the English, held a monopoly on the repair of broken firearms and the production of gunpowder. In addition, contrary to the myth which has been perpetrated and preserved, the English held an overwhelming advantage in organization. The tribes never united. Each tribe fought under their own leaders in their own way for their own goals. The English on the other hand immediately ceased their petty disputes and stood united against the tribes.
The Indians sought to cleanse their land by destroying every visage of the Europeans. They burned buildings, knocked down fences and killed livestock. They were so intent on cleansing the land that they even killed many families including women and children contrary to their own custom of adopting women and children. They had learned the lesson of total war from the English during the Pequot War and they were using that knowledge to restore their sovereignty in the land that had once been their own.
The Indians had also adapted their tactics as well as their strategy. Instead of fighting in massed formations with great displays to prove their bravery they set ambushes and fought a gorilla style campaign that proved highly effective since they knew the terrain so much better than their enemies. They would stage a surprise attack and then retreat. When they were pursued they would set ambushes choosing the place to fight and inflicting heavy casualties on their pursuers. In frustration at not being able to find or defeat their foes the English turned against the Indians of the praying towns attacking and killing the defenseless Christianized Indians because they could.
Eventually the English learned a valuable lesson. They abandoned their traditional European style tactics of massed formations and adopted the same gorilla style as the Indians which worked so well in the thick forests and swamps. Using other Indians as guides and scouts they were soon inflicting serious losses on the tribes and whereas the English could absorb the losses they had sustained and rebound the Indians could not. When the food supplies or equipment of the Indians was destroyed in a raid they could not requisition replacements from the coast as the English could. Instead they starved. When they ran out of shot and powder they couldn’t get more from their storehouses they had to retreat before the firepower of the English.
The Mohawk Indians, one of the Five Nation Iroquois also allied themselves with the English seeing this as a perfect opportunity to smash their longtime rivals the Algonquians. As the tribes began to surrender one by one the war fizzled to a close when Metacom, the man immortalized as King Phillip, was killed by one of the Praying Town Indians in the service of the English. The Puritans cut off Metacom’s head and mounted it on a pike at Plymouth as a warning to all who would dare resist their conquest of New England and thus died the hopes, dreams and memories of the proud Indian nations who had once owned the land.
Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future 