Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

This is Unit Three, part two. Part one covered Spain, the Dutch, France and the Chesapeake. This one opens with the rebellion that changed what colonial labour was, then turns to New England, and closes with what a century of colonisation did to the land itself. By the end you will be able to explain what Bacon's Rebellion changed about colonial labour, and state the two corrections the witnesses supply to the usual account. You will be able to say why the Puritans emigrated, and distinguish that from religious freedom. You will be able to account for King Philip's War and the change in English perception it produced. You will be able to describe the scale of the Atlantic trade and the forms resistance took. And you will be able to explain why the colonial wars cannot be read as Europeans against Native peoples.

Part one left Bacon and Berkeley quarrelling over frontier land, with former servants behind Bacon. Here is what that produced — the longest entry in the unit, and one that carries corrections from outside the anchor.

The rebellion, its four consequences, and the two things the witnesses correct.

USH1 0326 Bacon's Rebellion and the Turn to Slavery

Bacon marched on Jamestown, forced Berkeley to flee and burned the city. Planters were alarmed most of all because Black and White servants had allied. The turn to Black slavery reduced reliance on White servants, created a racially defined labouring caste, and helped unite wealthy and poor Whites as a supposedly superior racial group.

And how quickly that intent became law.

USH1 0327 The Laws That Followed

Virginia's sixteen eighty law prohibited free and enslaved Black people from bearing arms, banned large Black congregations, and set harsh punishments for those seeking freedom. A law of sixteen eighty-two made all Africans brought to the colony enslaved for life.

North now, and to a distinction this course wants held very precisely, because getting it wrong makes the next century unintelligible.

Who the Puritans were, and the reason they crossed.

USH1 0328 Why the Puritans Came

They sought to purify the Church of England of un-scriptural elements, and by the sixteen twenties the state church prohibited their preaching as a security threat. They emigrated not to establish religious freedom but to practise their own faith without persecution.

What that migration actually looked like, set against the Chesapeake.

USH1 0329 Massachusetts Bay

The sixteen thirties exodus founded Massachusetts Bay, New Haven, Connecticut and Rhode Island, bringing families with children and university-trained ministers rather than the Chesapeake's male labourers. Church membership required a conversion narrative.

If freedom of conscience was not the project, the test is what the colony did with people who disagreed. Two dissenters, and one panic.

Two figures, and the specific offence in each case.

USH1 0330 Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson

Williams held that the state must not punish people for belief, and founded Rhode Island as a sanctuary. Hutchinson's chief offence was claiming direct religious revelation, which negated the minister's role. Winthrop noted her death as God's righteous judgment against heresy.

And the panic that ended in executions.

USH1 0331 Witchcraft and Salem

Puritans believed witches allied with the Devil, and hundreds were accused across New England, women forming the vast majority. At Salem Village in sixteen ninety-two many accusers had experienced trauma from the Native frontier wars. Authorities executed nineteen people.

Those frontier wars deserve their own entry, because one of them changed how the English wrote about Native peoples permanently.

The war, and what it left behind in English attitudes.

USH1 0332 King Philip's War

Metacom resolved to stop Puritan expansion into the Connecticut River Valley, and Native forces destroyed half the frontier Puritan towns before English forces prevailed. Afterwards Puritan writers vilified Native peoples as bloodthirsty savages, and a new racial hatred became characteristic.

Back to the trade that topic one turned on, and to its scale — which is the context every later unit depends on.

The company, the monopoly, and the numbers.

USH1 0333 Slavery's Rise, in Figures

The Royal African Company, chartered sixteen seventy-two, held a monopoly on transporting enslaved Africans to English colonies and carried about three hundred fifty thousand over four decades. Between fifteen oh one and eighteen thirty about four million Africans were transported to the Caribbean.

The crossing itself, and what the course says about resistance.

USH1 0334 The Middle Passage and Maroon Communities

The crossing lasted one to two months and many thousands perished during the voyage. In the Chesapeake arrivals faced a lifetime of tobacco. Escaped people created maroon communities that resisted recapture, and the course states that everywhere Africans resisted slavery.

Now three entries that correct a habit of reading. Native peoples in this period were not reacting to Europeans; they were using them.

What European goods became once Native peoples had them.

USH1 0335 European Goods and Native Adaptation

Early trade goods were glass beads, copper kettles and metal utensils, and Native peoples adapted them — cutting copper kettles into status-conferring jewellery, and using iron awls to produce an astonishing increase in wampum.

And what happened when the goods were weapons.

USH1 0336 The Arms Race

Brassware became arrow points and axes became weapons, with muskets the most prized. The course draws the consequence directly: formerly weaker groups with access to European metal and weapons suddenly gained the upper hand against once-dominant ones.

Underneath all of it, the disagreement about what land is.

USH1 0337 Two Views of Property

Native peoples viewed land as a resource held in common for the benefit of the group, close to usufruct — the right of common use and enjoyment. Colonists did not practise usufruct widely, establishing fields and fences that restricted seasonal movement.

Three entries to close, on what a century of this did to the land — and one on a piece of knowledge Europeans were offered and refused.

Two species, and what happened to the systems around them.

USH1 0338 Beaver, Pigs, and the Environment

Beaver were hunted to extinction in New England and New York, driven by European demand for beaver-trimmed hats and Native demand for firearms, and their ponds had been habitats for fish and water for deer and moose. Free-ranging pigs consumed the foods deer depended on.

The impact the course ranks above all the others.

USH1 0339 Disease as the Greatest Impact

The course calls disease perhaps colonisation's single greatest impact on the North American environment. Epidemics claimed seventy-five percent of Native populations along the New England coast between sixteen sixteen and sixteen eighteen, with the very young and the elderly worst affected.

And one last entry, about knowledge that was offered and refused.

USH1 0340 The Peacock Flower

Native American and enslaved African women are said to have used the peacock flower to prevent the birth of children into slavery. The course notes that Europeans distrusted medical knowledge from African or native sources and lost the benefit of it.

Look back at what you can now do. You can explain what Bacon's Rebellion changed, and give both corrections: that it accelerated a shift already fifteen years into statute, and that the availability of enslaved workers mattered alongside the fear of a united lower class. You can say why the Puritans came — to practise their own faith without persecution — and hold that apart from religious freedom, which the banishments, the excommunication and the nineteen executions at Salem make necessary. You can account for King Philip's War and the racial hatred that followed it. You can state the scale of the trade, four million to the Caribbean, and say that resistance was everywhere. And you can explain why these wars were never Europeans against Native peoples: weaker nations with access to weapons gained the upper hand, and pursued their own strategies throughout.