The “Newe Found Londe” and English Colonization How did the colony of Jamestown’s idea of a representative government become ingrained in the political.

The “Newe Found Londe” and English Colonization

How did the colony of Jamestown’s idea of a representative government become ingrained in the political fabric of the future United States?

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/amerbegin/contact/contact.htm

CONTACT

• How did Europeans interpret the "newe fonde londe" upon their first contacts?

• How did these initial encounters frame future Indian-European relationships?

• What did the "New World" signify to Europe in 1500? in 1550?

Suspicious Minds

CONTACTFirst impressions are said to be lasting impressions,

and indeed, it is remarkable how soon the New World "that was never before known to anyone" was viewed as a land of wealth, promise, and opportunity.

The expeditions were financed by European monarchs to find a westward route to Asia or, later, to find a route around the obtrusive land mass to reach Asia. All claimed land and future riches for their monarchs. All returned with artifacts of the new land, and/or with captured Indians.

Europe’s Literary ResponseFor Americans, history seems to pivot on the

year 1492. The date inevitably points to the future.

Yet it is instructive to remember that 1492 fell in what historians consider the late Middle Ages. The people who first heard the news of Columbus's discoveries had more in common with the pilgrims who wended their way to Canterbury than with those who fled to Plymouth.

• German Lawyer and poet Sebastian Brandt’s poem entitled Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools.) Translated by Alexander Barclay.

• German artist Albrecht Durer journal entry upon examining the Aztec riches on display in Brussels.

• French poet Pierre de Ronsard’s poem “Les Iles Fortunees” (“The Fortunate Isles”)

Europe’s Literary Response

Ship of Fools 15091. What is "new"? What "world"

entices or threatens Europe?

2. Why does Brandt consider it folly to seek new lands?

Brandt satirized numerous "fools," including gluttons, drunkards, negligent fathers, and, in the excerpt offered here, explorers. Enormously popular in Germany and throughout Europe, Das Narrenschiff was widely translated. In typical medieval fashion, Brandt's poem reminds us of human imperfection and its antidote, devotion to and trust in God. For him the desire to "measure and compass" "diverse countries and regions" is folly born of pride that diverts humanity from self-understanding.

Mexica (Aztec) treasure led German artist Albrecht Dürer to imagine a place of wonder. In 1521 King Charles of Spain displayed Aztec gold and silver sent him by the conquistador Hernan Cortés in an exhibit that traveled throughout Europe. When Dürer saw it in Brussels, it filled his heart with joy and moved him to marvel "at the subtle Ingenia of men in foreign lands" where even humble bedding was the stuff of fairy tales.

http://www.peri-grafis.com/patroklos/spaw/imageshttp://www.peri-grafis.com/patroklos/spaw/images

Ronsard, portrait after an engraving by L. Gaultier, 1557Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman &

Co. Ltd

In the spirit of fairy tales and fables, we conclude with the poem "Les Îles Fortunées" ("The Fortunate Isles") by the French poet Pierre de Ronsard. In ancient mythology the "Fortunate Islands" were the paradise of the gods. Later the name was given to the Canary and Madeira Islands as they were discovered by European explorers—and then to points farther west as the discoveries enchanted the European imagination.

“The Fortunate Isles” by Pierre de Ronsard 1560

"The Fortunate Isles” 1560

• How do Dürer and Ronsard idealize the New World?

• What does the New World offer (as image and as reality) to Europeans emerging from the medieval mindset?

PermanenceWhy do some early settlements still exist? Prosperity? Numbers?

Geography? Luck? Change of vision?

The settlers' commitment or stubbornness, depending on one's view?

The goals of the colonizing nations, obviously.

Spain maintained its American empire for "gold, God, and glory," the first dominating the crown's policies. From the gold and silver mines of Mexico and Central America were shipped enormous quantities of ore to Spain, and the thousands of Spanish settlers in the Americas worked in support of the crown's mining and conquest ventures.

France had the fewest settlers in North America since its riches came from fish and furs, neither of which required large and permanent settlements.

The Spanish Explorations• Within several decades of the earliest coastal

explorations of North America, European adventurers headed into the interior. "Adventurers" is the fitting word here, for more cautious men would have balked at heading into such vast unknowns. And the unknown brought misery—intense cold and exhausting heat, vast plains and unfordable rivers, antagonized Indians and wily guides, hunger and thirst, disease and death, and often incapacitating discouragement. But they learned the landscape of this New World, enabling them to act upon hard-won experience rather than fables, dreams, and plain naïveté.

• The evolving relationships between the Europeans and the Indians is of major consideration. They have come to know each other by now. They are evaluating each other and acting on their evaluations, setting up networks of friend and foe.

1. HERNANDO DE SOTO explored the southeast region of North America for Spain, searching for gold, a suitable site for a colony, and an overland route from Mexico to the Atlantic. From 1539 to 1543, starting in Florida with over 600 men, 200 horses, 300 pigs, and a pack of attack dogs, the expedition meandered for thousands of miles through the interior. At every point the Spanish attacked Indian villages, pillaging, murdering, and commandeering food, supplies, and captives. They "discovered" the Mississippi River—a major challenge to cross—and continued west to Texas (without de Soto, who died from fever on the banks of the river). Finally the surviving 300 men reached Mexico with no gold and no colony, having amassed only the hardened antagonism of the Indians.

2. FRANCISCO CORONADO trekked through the southwest for two years (1540-42) with over 300 soldiers and 1,000 Indians for "Glory, God, and Gold." While they did convert some Pueblo Indians to Christianity, they found no gold and no glory (although they did "discover" the Grand Canyon along the way). Failing to subdue the Indians, Coronado responded brutally, laying a winter-long siege to a town, burning resisters at the stake, enslaving hundreds, and driving many Indians to suicide (as did de Soto). In his report to King Charles I from Tiguex (near present-day Albuquerque), Coronado admits his dismay at learning the famed Cibola is just "villages of straw houses," but he describes the region near Tiguex as offering productive land for settlement.[Letter from Francisco Vazquez de Coronado to His Majesty . . . , 20 October 1541]

Spanish Exploration• What motivated the Europeans' explorations?

What were they looking for?• What led them to deem an expedition a

failure or success?• How did the relationships of Europeans and

Native Americans change after their initial encounters?

• What did the "New World" signify to Europe in 1550? in 1600?

French Exploration

As we turn to the French explorers, let us repeat the litany of hardships that explorers encountered—intense cold, disease and death, unknown hazards and uncharted routes, Indians who might be friend or foe, and other Europeans who might be friend or foe. For Europeans, North America would be a "hard-won achievement," writes historian Karen Ordahl Kupperman. "At times it almost seemed as if the land itself was actively hostile to European lifeways."*

1. JACQUES CARTIER explored the northeast part of the continent intending to find the elusive passage to the Orient. Sailing west of Newfoundland he "discovered" the St. Lawrence River and explored the region in three voyages between 1535 and 1541. He met several Iroquoian tribal groups, establishing friendly relationships, though cautious on both sides. He did not find a route to China; indeed the large sea described to him by the Indians—"there was never man heard of that found out the end thereof"—was probably Lake Ontario.

2. SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN was the quintessential explorer. While aptly credited as the founder of Quebec in 1608, he spent little time there, leaving the small fortified post to others and heading further into the Canadian woodlands, where he functioned as the quintessential diplomat. Unlike the Spanish who brutally dominated the Indians for imperial gain, the French negotiated and traded with them, primarily for furs. But it was inevitable that alliances with some Indian groups would make the French foes of others.

3. JACQUES MARQUETTE & LOUIS JOLIET were sent to explore the Mississippi River in 1673 and answer two questions: Was the Mississippi the long-sought water passage to the Pacific Ocean? Were the fabled kingdoms of Quivira and Theguaio real? They are able to answer the first (no), but not the second. They encounter friendly Illinois Indians and unfriendly mosquitoes, describe "monster" fish (catfish) and "wild cattle" (buffalo). Reaching the Arkansas River, they realize they are risking capture by the nearby Spaniards and

decide to turn back and return to their post on Lake Michigan.

French Exploration While the French presence in North America remained

small compared to the Spanish (and later the English), its influence on the northern environment, the Indian societies, and the European rivalries in Canada was definitive. Its explorers pursued the interior of the continent more deeply than others, forging trade routes and Indian relationships that survived into the 1800s. French dialects are still spoken in Quebec, Louisiana, and even Ste. Genevieve, Missouri.

Contrast the French and Spanish expeditions. Are they more alike than different, or vice versa?

Illustrations of the New World

Images were also desired and highly marketable in sixteenth-century Europe. Some became early European "best sellers." Soon artists were included on expeditions to document the environment and inhabitants of the New World, and their illustrations were popularized as engravings.

The most familiar European illustrations of the New World come from a man who never left Europe himself—Theodore de Bry, the Flemish publisher and engraver who adapted others' first-hand illustrations for his multi-volume Grands Voyages, which sold widely across Europe. But what of those first-hand drawings and watercolors?

In 1585 John White served as the official artist for the English expedition to Roanoke Island on the Outer Banks of present-day North Carolina. Most of his initial drawings were lost when the colonists left Roanoke in 1586, but he later produced sixty-three watercolors that survived in private collections.

Examine White's watercolors of the Algonquian Indians, paired with the de Bry engravings based on them and published in 1590. There may be no better example of the metamorphosis of popular imagery than these White/de Bry pairings.

Illustrations of the New World

Watercolor drawing "Indian Village of Pomeiooc" by John White (created 1585-1586). Licensed by the Trustees of the British Museum. ©Copyright the British Museum.

Engraving "The Tovvne of Pomeiooc" by De Bry (printed 1590) based on watercolor by White. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University

Through their drawings, how do the Europeans interpret the New World and its inhabitants?

Jamestown SettlementJamestown Settlement

Brainstorm and Categorize

First Arrivals• JAMESTOWN. Hampered by small royal coffers and

by war with Spain and Ireland, England did not pursue an Atlantic coast colony for two decades after the loss of the 1587 Roanoke colony. Then in 1607 a new group of investors (the Virginia Company of London) received a charter from the new king (James I) to make a new attempt at a Virginia colony (Jamestown). This time the venture succeeded, but only after years of financial and human loss.

Today’s Topic Question

How did the colony of Jamestown’s idea of a representative government become ingrained in the political fabric of the future United States?

First Arrivals

TheTheLondonLondon

Company,Company,16061606

TheTheLondonLondon

Company,Company,16061606

JAMESTOWN is justifiably called "the first permanent English settlement" in the New World—a hard-won designation. Of the first 104 colonists who landed in April 1607, only thirty-eight survived the winter. Of the 10,000 who left England for Jamestown in its first fifteen years, only twenty percent were still alive, and still in Jamestown, in 1622.

Geographic/environmental problems?Geographic/environmental problems?Captain John Smith:Captain John Smith:The Right Man for the Job??The Right Man for the Job??Captain John Smith:Captain John Smith:The Right Man for the Job??The Right Man for the Job??

There was no talk…There was no talk…but dig gold, wash but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, gold, refine gold,

load gold…load gold…

Settlement and Hardship

JAMESTOWN, 1609-1610. Known as the "starving time," the winter of 1609-1610 brought such "a world of miseries" to the settlers that hunger became the force governing the colonists. They ate their horses, then rats, then shoe leather. Some were driven to murder and digging up corpses. Others stashed food as they planned a secret return to England. Food was begged from the Indians or, if not forthcoming, stolen. The resulting cycle of attacks and counterattacks brought more misery and death. Who was to blame? John Smith? As the colony's previous governor he had compelled the men to work and was soon deposed and sent back to England, later justifying his dictatorial policies in repetitive histories and accounts. Or George Percy? Governor of the colony during the "starving time," he wrote this "true relation" partly as his defense against accusations of failed leadership.

It would be many years before Jamestown was anything but "a world of miseries."– [George Percy, A True Relation of the Proceedings and Occurances of Moment which have happened in

Virginia . . . anno 1609 until my departure out of the Country which was in anno Domini 1612, publ. 1624]

Permanence• JAMESTOWN. It is remarkable that Jamestown survived its first years. Hunger, disease, frigid

winters, failed harvests, Indian wars, feuding leaders, ill-chosen settlers, and the prevalence of what would today be called "gross mismanagement" nearly doomed the colony. In 1610 the situation was so dire that Jamestown was abandoned by its sixty surviving settlers who, as fate would have it, sailed only a short distance down the James River before meeting the new governor, Lord de La War,r arriving with supplies from England, who ordered them back to Jamestown. Still, Jamestown's population could not stabilize and grow until the cultivation of tobacco began after 1613. Even then the colony never returned profits for its investors in the Virginia Company. In 1624 a commission formed by King James to investigate the colony's failure questioned John Smith, one of the colony's early governors, and sought his advice on saving the colony. Although writing with his usual self-serving prose, Smith delivered clear point-by-point recommendations to the commission. The decision: Jamestown was put under the control of the crown and the Virginia Company ceased to exist.

• What motivated the Europeans in their initial settlements?

• What factors led to the survival or abandonment of a settlement?

PermanenceThe English, however, did not establish colonies on direct orders of

the crown. Instead, with permission of the crown (charters), private groups of investors established their own settlements in pursuit of their own economic goals.

Their first attempts were disastrous. Permanence would require, as historian Karen Ordahl Kupperman states, "a complete overturning of previous notions of what colonies were to be for. . .

The keys lay in learning about the environment and what it would grow, and then finding a commodity for which an infinitely expanding market existed or could be created in Europe." By 1650, the English had made this transition.

English Migration: 1610-1660English Migration: 1610-1660English Migration: 1610-1660English Migration: 1610-1660

The first colonists were adventurers - perhaps contributing to their initial failure?

John RolfeJohn RolfeJohn RolfeJohn Rolfe

What finally made the colony What finally made the colony prosperous??prosperous??

Tobacco PlantTobacco PlantTobacco PlantTobacco Plant

Indentured Indentured

ServitudeServitude

Indentured Indentured

ServitudeServitude

HeadrightHeadrightSystemSystem

Indentured ServitudeIndentured ServitudeIndentured ServitudeIndentured Servitude

Headright System:Headright System:

Each Virginian got 50 acres for each Each Virginian got 50 acres for each person whose passage they paidperson whose passage they paid

Indenture Contract:Indenture Contract:

5-7 years.5-7 years.

Promised “freedom dues” [land, $]Promised “freedom dues” [land, $]

Forbidden to marry.Forbidden to marry.

1610-1614: only 1 in 10 outlived their 1610-1614: only 1 in 10 outlived their indentured contracts!indentured contracts!

Why was Why was 16191619 a pivotal year a pivotal year

for the for the Chesapeake Chesapeake settlement?settlement?

Why was Why was 16191619 a pivotal year a pivotal year

for the for the Chesapeake Chesapeake settlement?settlement?

VirginiaVirginiaHouse of BurgessesHouse of Burgesses

VirginiaVirginiaHouse of BurgessesHouse of Burgesses

Permanence? Permanence?

Powhatan ConfederacyPowhatan Confederacy

Permanence? Permanence?

Powhatan ConfederacyPowhatan Confederacy

Powhatan UprisingPowhatan Uprisingof 1622of 1622

Powhatan UprisingPowhatan Uprisingof 1622of 1622

By 1685 they are extinct: victims of the 3 D’s

What if there were no significant towns in a colony? The settlers of Virginia in the mid 1660s were widely dispersed in plantations with no towns of any size to serve as centers of community, government, and religion. This latter function, of religious community, so concerned the Anglican Bishop of London that he commissioned an investigation into the failure of Virginia's planters to build an adequate number of churches. The main recommendation of the report: build towns. "It is easy to conclude," stresses the report's author, "that the only way of remedy for Virginia's disease . . . must be by procuring towns to be built."["R.G.," Virginia's Cure: An Advisive Narrative Concerning Virginia, for the Bishop of London, 1662]

Permanence?

Permanence? Permanence?

Population of Chesapeake Colonies: 1610-Population of Chesapeake Colonies: 1610-1750 1750

Permanence? Permanence?

Population of Chesapeake Colonies: 1610-Population of Chesapeake Colonies: 1610-1750 1750

Permanence?VIRGINIA'S STATUS. In 1624, after nearly two decades of failure, Jamestown was

placed under the control of the crown instead of the investment company that founded it.

By the 1650s, with a tobacco production boom and an emigration boom of poor people arriving from England as indentured servants, Virginia had turned its course toward permanence.

Many servants who survived their indenture were able to start their own farms. Prosperity? Not yet, except for the few wealthy planters favored by William Berkeley the appointed governor from 1641-52 and 1660-77.

In 1663 he wrote a status report on the colony, basically recommending that Virginia abandon its economic dependence on the "vicious weed of tobacco."

A few years later, Virginia would fall into harder times from tobacco overproduction, trade limitations imposed by England, attacks by Dutch rivals, and the consequences of the restoration of the English monarchy, and in 1675 a settlers' rebellion would break out.

Permanence?Permanence?

Early Colonial TobaccoEarly Colonial Tobacco

Permanence?Permanence?

Early Colonial TobaccoEarly Colonial Tobacco16181618 — Virginia produces 20,000 pounds of tobacco.

16221622 — Despite losing nearly one-third of its colonists in an Indian attack, Virginia produces 60,000 pounds of tobacco.

16271627 — Virginia produces 500,000 pounds of tobacco.

16291629 — Virginia produces 1,500,000 pounds of tobacco.

Permanence?Permanence?

Tobacco Prices: 1618-1710Tobacco Prices: 1618-1710

Permanence?Permanence?

Tobacco Prices: 1618-1710Tobacco Prices: 1618-1710

NathanialBacon’s Rebellion

Power - Colonial RebellionFor the English Atlantic colonies—the first of England's overseas

possessions to win their independence—the claim to have fomented the "first rebellion against royal authority" is a mark of honor.

But how should "first rebellion" be defined, and which colonial uprising merits the label?

The Virginia rebellions led by John Pott in 1635 and Nathaniel Bacon in 1676?

The Carolina revolt led by John Culpeper in 1677? The civil uprisings in 1689 that deposed governors in New England and

Maryland after the English Revolution? Or perhaps the Barbados rebellion of 1675, even though the island colony

didn't achieve independence from Britain until 1966. If independence was not the goal of a rebellion, what was? Each rebellion

has the inevitable nuance that resists the simple category of "colony vs. England.”

BACON'S REBELLION—BACON'S VIEW. On one level, Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 was an uprising of backwoods farmers against the ruling class of rich planters in Virginia. On another level, it was a power struggle between two groups of planters, those in the inner circle of economic power and those excluded from it. The men who led the backwoodsmen in their revolt, primarily the young and hot-headed Nathaniel Bacon, were planters excluded from the powered elite led by Governor William Berkeley and thus from the lucrative Indian trade monopolized by Berkeley's friends. Using the very real grievances of the common farmers—falling tobacco profits, rising taxes, reduced opportunities to buy their own farms, harsh shipping regulations imposed by England, and finally, the outbreak of war between the backwoods farmers and the Susquehannock Indians (with whom Berkeley wanted to maintain trade)—Bacon led the farmers in armed rebellion. Jamestown was occupied and burned; tidewater plantations were attacked and plundered. When Bacon died suddenly of dysentery, the rebellion ended. Governor Berkeley hanged twenty-three of the rebellion's leaders. At the height of his short-lived power, Bacon released this declaration "in the name of the People of Virginia," listing his followers' grievances against Governor Berkeley and his "pernicious councilors, confederates, aiders, and assisters."

Power - Colonial Rebellion

BACON'S REBELLION—A PLANTER'S VIEW. Almost thirty years after Bacon's Rebellion, the son of one of Governor

Berkeley's inner circle offered his perspective of the uprising. In The History and Present State of Virginia, Robert Beverley, Jr., presents

Bacon as a man "in every way qualified to lead a giddy and unthinking multitude," yet he does not assign all blame to Bacon and the Indians while exonerating the governor and the crown. He methodically lists Virginia's problems in the 1660s and 1670s, from falling tobacco prices to disabling wars with the Dutch to parliamentary actions restricting colonial trade. The final aggravation of Indian raids made the backwoods settlers who were "already full of discontent . . . ready to vent all their resentment against the poor Indians.”

Bacon saw in the backwoodsmen's sense of abandonment by the ruling coastal planters a platform for his own struggle with the elite: a class war, perhaps.

[Robert Beverley, The History and Present State of Virginia, 1705]

Power - Colonial Rebellion

Some results of Bacon’s Rebellion?* The House of Burgesses voted to curb the power of the gov’nor*local offices were likely converted to elected posts*landless freedmen got the right to vote*slavery in the Chesapeake colonies expanded

Power - Colonial Rebellion

Homework

• Colonies Chart

• Quiz upcoming!

Today’s Topic QuestionHow did the colony of Jamestown’s idea of a

representative government become ingrained in the political fabric of the future United States?

Unit Organizing PrincipalBetween 1607 and 1763, the British North

American colonies developed experience in, and the expectation of self-government in the political, religious, economic, and social aspects of life.