The Greatest Ocean of All April 23, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: europe, History, Politics, spain, travel
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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 Atlantic March 19, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: black-history, britain, History, Politics, slavery
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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
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The always grasping never satisfied Stuart dynasty had a rough time during their four reigns as the kings of England. They sought absolute power and ended up losing the constitutional power they had. The second one was beheaded by his own people and the last one was chased out of the country. The first and the third were wastrels who partied themselves to distraction and spent themselves into poverty. They are best remembered for the line applied to their restoration after the regicide and the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell; “They never learned anything and never forgot anything.” All in all, they were a sad interlude in a proud heritage.
When the people of England could suffer these inept political neophytes no longer, they rose up in what is known as the Glorious Revolution, chased James II from the country and welcomed William of Orange the husband of James’ daughter Mary as the Protestant replacements to the hated Catholic James.
The coup was greeted in the colonies with jubilation on the part of those seeking greater independence. They quickly seized upon the revolution as an opportunity to cast the appointees of James as recalcitrant adherents to the old regime and themselves as ardent supporters of the new. This led to the overturning of every royal colonial government and the installation of more independent and more liberty minded groups.
William of Orange now styled William III of England, was a battle-hardened veteran of the long and bitter continental wars against the aggrandizements of Louis XIV. His main reason for coveting the crown of England was to subtract England from its alliance with France and to add it to his coalition against that same power. He had little concern for the colonies except as they figured into his consolidation of power in England and his mobilization of its power against France.
In consequence to this he picked and chose winners and losers in the colonial power struggles based upon his own calculations not the calculations or interests of the colonists. Sometime this coincided with colonial interests In Pennsylvania William suspended the charter because Penn had been a favorite of James, and he thus made Pennsylvania a royal colony. In Maryland he allowed Lord Baltimore to retain his ownership but took the government of the colonies out of his Catholic hands and put it into the hands of an appointed Protestant governor. In Massachusetts William refused to allow a return to their original charter, and he retained them as royal colonies, but he allowed them a great degree of autonomy and independence in local matters. The smaller New England colonies were allowed to reinstitute their original charters.
William plunged England into a long-lasting series of European wars all designed to hobble France for the benefit of his native Holland. These wars cost England more than anyone could have imagined. They led to a level of taxation never before known to support a massive increase in the military establishment both on land and on the sea. This also meant that William and the crown were occupied elsewhere. They had precious little resources to send to America and sought nothing more than revenue to fight on in Europe. The king didn’t really care what was going on in the colonies as long as they didn’t cause him to divert men or material from his main theater of action and as long as the contributed money to the war effort. Under these circumstances the colonists were able to gain a degree of freedom and independence not known back in England.
During these years the crowns of England and Scotland were formally united. They had become united when James VI of Scotland was crowned as James I of England. Though united in the person of the king and still united after the regicide in the Commonwealth they were officially united in 1707 and after that date the Scots soon came to outnumber the English as immigrants to the colonies. This marks the birth of Great Britain and the end of Scotland as an independent nation.
Another feature of the Eighteenth-Century British Empire was its suppression of the pirates which had once been an unofficial arm of its own foreign policy against the Spanish. As the Spanish Empire declined, and the British became the dominant sea power the pirates had become more and more of a nuisance. Eventually the British used the same tactics which have always worked against pirates, sink their ships, burn their bases and hang those captured. This effectively suppressed the pirates and brought a measure of peace to the sea lanes so a commercial empire like Britain could thrive.
The British were preeminently an empire of shopkeepers and merchants. They may not have had raw political power, but they held economic power that could sway the powers that be. The colonies had been founded as economic enterprises and even after most of them devolved or evolved into royal colonies they remained primarily economic enterprises.
Following the tenants of Mercantilism, ever uppermost in the mid of the royal government was how can the colonies benefit the homeland? How can they contribute to the power of the crown? And while the empire of the English now spread around the world it was profoundly an Atlantic worldview that predominated the thinking of the empire builders just as it was a European worldview that had predominated the mind of King William allowing the colonies to further develop as independent minded enclaves in the midst of a far-flung empire.
New England February 5, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Bible, History, Politics, puritans, Religion
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Originally it was considered the northern part of Virginia and after a few unsuccessful attempts a colonization that froze and starved their way to failure it was considered an undesirable place to attempt a colony. Then Captain John Smith of Jamestown fame made a voyage there and published a popular travelogue including a map and a new name, “New England” which enticed colonists into believing it was a fair approximation of Old England across the pond, and it became an enduring success.
The English Puritans were followers of the Protestant reformation. They believed that the Church of England which had been founded by King Henry VIII when he was unable to obtain a divorce from the Pope retained too much of the rights and rituals of the Catholic Church. They might be called purists. They wanted simple services and plain churches. The Church of England retained statues, stained glass windows, golden crosses, ministers they called “Priests” and “Father” adorned in splendid vestments.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Church of England was the “Established’ church. Meaning it was a part of the state. The King or Queen was (and is) the head of the church no matter how worldly they were or even if they didn’t believe in God. They appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury and all the other Bishops. Every citizen was required to support and attend the church. The clergy were paid by the state. The church courts were often used by the state to punish people that the government suspected of disloyalty to the crown. As in all countries with established churches the ideas of heresy and treason became confounded.
Many puritans wanted to remain active members of the established church and reform it from within. Other wanted to immediately separate and form their own pure congregations, these were known as separatists, and they were the object of sporadic and often horrendous persecution. Some of the separatists left the country, many finding sanctuary in Holland where the religious toleration allowed them to worship as they wished.
Socially the Puritans believed in what they saw as the Biblical principles of thrift, diligence and hard work. They were mostly from the middleclass and had much more than most Englishmen who were struggling just to get by. When persecution rose to a crescendo in the 1620s and 1630s the Puritans were finally spurred to action. The Massachusetts Bay Company was founded in London by people who had remained in the Church of England and were able to operate within the legal structure of the day. They sought and received a royal charter to found a colony in the New World. This is where they did something entirely different than the Virginia Company which maintained itself in England as a limited liability company which had shareholders and used its resources to send out expeditions and settlers hoping for a profit. Instead of operating after the model previously established by the Virginia Company the Massachusetts Bay Company relocated to the new World thus establishing itself as self-governing colony with only nominal connection to the royal government.
Landing in an area where a great plague of European diseases had swept away the Native population the Puritans were able to move into deserted villages and plant in abandoned fields. They saw it as the providence of God. The Natives obviously saw it as something altogether different. The Puritan colonists were by nature hardworking and frugal and so had a much easier time establishing a self-sufficient colony than did the indolent and wealth seeking colonists in Virginia. In addition, there was a huge influx of people, men, women and children, whole families that not only added to the population but were also able to multiply it quickly. Within a few decades, by 1640 they were already spreading out and founding secondary colonies such as Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.
Land was granted to groups of people who banded together to find towns. These lands were then held in common and divided among the families according to the wishes of the town. The colony would outline the town’s area but they left it up to the towns to decide upon their internal policies. The land needed clearing and tending. The livestock needed pasture and each village divided the land and managed as they saw fit. Women were accorded equal status in religious matters except the posts of leadership, teaching and preaching, which means they were able to be saved, join the church and work but only men could lead. However, women in New England had more rights and privileges than women in the Chesapeake Colonies.
When the Great Migration ended in the 1640s an economic depression followed the cessation of this constant infusion of new people and money. And this is when the commerce which was to make New England famous around the world began to manifest itself. First the fishing banks of the coast were exploited for local consumption as well as for export to Europe. Next the great and developing agricultural surplus was soon being shipped to Europe as well. Building upon the abundant resources shipbuilding was soon an expanding industry building both ships for the coastal trade and ocean going vessels.
The Bible Commonwealth
The Puritans saw their earthly mission to build God’s kingdom on earth. The Puritans followed the beliefs of the other reformers that everyone should read and know the Bible for themselves. Therefore, printing was an early and an important industry for there was a constant call for more Bibles and other study materials. There were many more churches and more preachers in New England than in Virginia. Since church attendance and hearing the educated preachers was a major source of the education of the day when combined with the higher level of literacy required to read the Bible for themselves the level of education was consequently much higher in New England than in the Chesapeake Colonies.
The insular aspects of the Puritan colonies led to disputes with the non-Puritans who were inevitably drawn to a successful colony. The purity of the colony was diluted by those who came after. The laws had to be loosened to fit the changing circumstances and there were also those who just had different ideas. There were Baptists and Quakers, Anglicans and Catholics all of which were attracted by the material success but who wanted a more inclusive vision. Nontraditional leaders such as Anne Hutchinson, one of the founders of Rhode Island and occurrences such as the witchcraft trails combined to split the once unified and relatively homogeneous New England into competing visions for a fractious future.
It may have faltered as a shining city on a hill and it certainly didn’t create heaven on earth but it was a successful model for a flourishing colony. Materially prosperous and politically independent New England held out a promise that the New World could become something that really was new.
America: Colonial History – Introduction December 11, 2024
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: american-history, britain, History, native-americans, Politics
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History has a reputation of being “BORING!” Back in the Dream Times before the dawn of the Internet, YouTube, and Facebook Early American History was almost exclusively the History of English-speaking man. The geographic area was restricted to the Atlantic coast of North America, and that was about it. Sure, everyone assumed there were women around someplace, but they were merely supporting actors (or actresses as they were once quaintly called). Other European colonists, the Norse, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, the Swedish, and the Russians were treated as minor actors waiting in the wings to be discarded as soon as it was convenient to get back to the main story about the British. The Native Americans were impediments constantly moved and moved and moved again. And of course, there were African slaves but they were unfortunate victims behind the scenes of what was essentially a walk in the sunshine as the American colonies quickly rose from outposts in the wilderness to gleaming cities on a hill.
Some have called this the Imperial History. Some have called it the Accepted History. Some say it gave birth to a belief in American Exceptionalism. It had certain aspects that were almost interchangeable from author to author. The American colonists were working to improve the wilderness, to establish freedom and develop limited government, free enterprise, and religious toleration. From the earliest beginnings to the culmination of the continental American empire it was one long story of progress and victory. We never started a war, and we never lost one. It wasn’t America right or wrong. It was America never wrong.
From our politically correct, highly sensitized vantage point here in the 21st Century it is easy to say the prior presentations of American History were simplistic, or racist, or filled with gender bias, ethnic bias, and Eurocentric. However, this critique could in itself be accused of being an exercise in Presentism, or the judgment of previous times through the distorting lens of the present. Instead, we need to realize that every society must present a coherent story of why their independent and continued existence is justified and why it is important. Every society must teach their youth that there is a valid reason why their society must continue, or it will soon break apart into its component parts. Multicultural societies will break apart along cultural lines, and multi-racial societies will fracture along racial lines, whatever the social tectonic plates are unless the members of that society are taught to believe in its relevance it will become irrelevant and soon cease to matter.
However, when all the actors and all their stories are added in while the History may not be as consistently uplifting or as universally consistent it is much more interesting, and it is much closer to the facts. Keeping our eyes upon the past let us begin our study seeking to present an honest, interesting, readable and brief representation of our History we will seek guideposts that will help us navigate the future.
In this study we will work to include all the voices while at the same time expressing the uniqueness of America, its history, and its destiny.
First of all, we must accept that the wilderness that has long been the stage for our understanding of European colonization in the Americas was not wilderness to the Native Americans. It was home. Many of these cultures had lived in the same areas for thousands of years. Others were newer arrivals. Whichever they were they had established nations and territories that were unmistakably developed and sovereign. They had established towns and cities, many of which were permanent and extensive. They’d developed some of the most important food crops in the world today. They had extensive trade networks, worship centers, and all the other components of an advanced culture made up of varied societies.
Secondly, the narrative cannot exclude the less savory side if it is to be in any way complete. Therefore, in out text we will encounter the development of racially tinged philosophy, white solidarity, and the oppression and exploitation of others that became an abiding feature of English colonization. We will also watch the transplanted national rivalries that plagued European civilization wherever they planted their flags anywhere in the world. The text will also take notice of the fact that fifty percent of the population was excluded from political and social equality through the gender bias inherited from the past and transplanted to the new world.
In addition, the text attempts to portray a feature of American History which is often neglected or ignored: the proposition that in the colonial period there really wasn’t an “America.” The boundaries which we see as firm and fixed were then nonexistent. Each colony was a separate entity and unless they were surrounded by other colonies such as Delaware or Rhode Island they all thought of themselves as having a growing frontier in the West. They all dealt with sovereign Indian nations as well as with the colonies of other nations. The Atlantic Sea lanes were an open door to the commerce and navies of the world binding America and Americans in the triangle trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas a trade which bound together the growing community of Western Civilization.
The unimaginably immense impact of the colonials upon the environment of North America is not ignored. The cross-pollination of disease, technology, flora, and fauna, and the political variations of European power strategies outline the Columbian Exchange which has had a massive influence on the subsequent development of the world. Not that pre-Columbian America was static. There had always been the same shifting patterns of life among the tribes and nations of America before the Europeans arrived, but they had always been indigenous except for the fleeting foray of the Norse. After the arrival of the later Europeans in the fifteenth century the Americas would forever be subsumed into the shifting alliances and other variables of European politics.
The larger populations of the colonists, aided by the technological, organizational, and economical developments of the Europeans, possessed the power to gain an overbearing influence in the development of North America once they had established themselves along the East coast. Once the bridgehead was secure the Europeans began an almost continuous advance to the West. Using trade, alliance, and war the sphere of European power grew and grew always bringing environmental, social, and political change as they displaced the native cultures. One thing that is important to remember is that the size and scope of the European movement to North America was not merely a wave or two of immigration. It was so large and so sustained it can only be understood as migration not immigration.
This work is written for non-Historians and is a handy easy to read condensed look at Early American History. It is composed of short chapters, each of which is designed to be a stand-alone treatment of a segment of time. It is my hope that this book will help fill the void that is exposed by the general lack of historical perspective which I believe is a major contributor to America’s current lack of self-awareness of and appreciation for the uniqueness which is the United States.
Here We Are May 10, 2021
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, election of 2020, Evangelism, Gospel, Politics, Salvation
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For sixty years I’ve tried to warn people that unless we as Americans woke up and started paying attention our listing ship of state was going to crash into the iceberg of socialist authoritarianism. I held up the freedom and the uniqueness of our Republic, the equality it proclaimed, the prosperity it produced, and the liberty it protected. I extoled, cajoled, and foretold the coming of this long dark winter of our discontent. I tried to use reason, satire, and sarcasm and yet … here we are.
Fifty years of Cold War destroyed the Soviet Union. Twenty-nine years of victory destroyed the United States. All of our bravado, bluster, and hubris has accomplished is to make the post-Stalinist Nikita Khrushchev, “The Butcher of the Ukraine” into a prophet. He told us several things long years ago that we Cold Warriors laughed off as the rantings of a homicidal megalomaniac. Now they sound like a fire bell clanging in the night or the mournful peal for whom the bell tolls. Here are a few things Stalin’s clown, JFK’s nemesis, and our blood-soaked communist Jerimiah told us:
- “You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”
- “We do not have to invade the United States, we will destroy you from within.”
- “The United States will eventually fly the Communist red flag…The American people will hoist it themselves.”
And as if pulling a page from the secret plan of the Masters of the Universe, he also said, “The press is our chief ideological weapon.”
I have spent decades blowing the trumpet. Many others have stood upon the wall and warned us that the enemy of freedom was already within the gates. Over and over America has been warned. And after all of that, the center has broken, the citadel has fallen, and according to the woke world rising all around us, we are now the barbarians within the gates.
So much for the chimera of reality that is the material world. What is here and now is merely what is here and now. Like distorted images we see in a cracked carnival mirror or the mirage of an oasis in the desert the shifting fog of history surrounding us is but a pale representation of God’s reality. The lying spirit of this world tries to tell us all truth is relative. The Spirit of Truth tells us, “… you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
Now for the rest of the story.
For forty years I’ve been shouting this from the rooftops, “Jesus Christ is Lord!” All the rest, everything is just window dressing. This is the only truth that really matters. For as the old saying goes, “All things will pass, only those things done in Christ will last.”
The politics of this world are as fruitless as a dog chasing its tail. We’re gazing at our navel, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, enjoying a first-class seat on the Hindenburg. We’re investing our attention on things that perish with the using and have no eternal significance at all. I’m as guilty as anyone else. I’ve expended much of my thought, energy, and writing skills trying to preserve the freedom and liberty we’ve enjoyed here in America and yet … here we are. I wonder now if I ever encouraged even one person to turn off the game, set down the bear, and look at the shell game Ponzi scheme policies our elected leaders have used to herd us into the socialist corral?
I just can’t do it anymore. I can no longer spend the majority of my time on the minor things of life. I will devote my life to holding out the only hope there is for humanity, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As Paul presents it, “… that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures …” which leads to the ultimate gift of God, salvation, “… that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
That’s it. There are no Herculean tasks to accomplish. You don’t have to meticulously follow some prearranged path of prayer or works. Or, as the Word tells us, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast …” It’s all Him. He does it all. It’s His sheer unmerited favor that opens the door, and it’s His faith that makes it possible for us to believe. And once we are saved, we have an assignment. We are to be His witnesses.
I once was a sinner, lost and alone. I rejected God and served only my own passions and lust. Then Christ revealed Himself to me through His Holy Word. He touched me and made me whole. He gave me a new life, a Proverbs 31 wife, and a mission. That mission is to share what He has done for me with you.
And unlike my fruitless toiling in the fields of political punditry it will bring a harvest. “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” A harvest is promised and a harvest there will be.
You see even though most will ignore this trumpet call just as they ignored the one trying to save the great experiment that was the United States, I am assured that some will choose the right way, “For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Another promise, a few will find it. The Word says it, I believe, and that’s it. After false starts, wasted efforts, and misguided attempts … here we are.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2021 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Parler, Facebook, Twitter, Gab, or MeWe @ Drrobertowens, or visit Dr. Owens’ Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future 