a.p. world ch 17 the diversity of american colonial societies-today

8/2/2019 A.P. World CH 17 the Diversity of American Colonial Societies-Today

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CHAPTER 17The Diversity of American

Colonial Societies

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The Columbian Exchange


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Demographic Changes

The peoples of the New World lackedimmunity to diseases from the Old World

Smallpox, measles, diphtheria, typhus,

influenza, malaria, yellow fever and maybepulmonary plague caused severe declines inthe population of native peoples in theSpanish and Portuguese colonies


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Similar patterns of contagion and mortalitymay be observed in the English and Frenchcolonies in North America

Europeans did not use disease as a tool ofempire

However the spread of Old World diseasesclearly undermined the ability of nativepeoples to resist settlement and acceleratedcultural change.


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Transfer of Plants and Animals

European, Asian, and African food cropswere introduced to the Americas

American crops, including maize, beans,

potatoes, manioc, and tobacco, were broughtto the Eastern Hemisphere

The introduction of New World food crops isthought to be one factor contributing to therapid growth in world population after 1700


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The introduction of European livestock suchas cattle, pigs, horses, and sheep had adramatic influence on the environment and on

the cultures of the native people of theAmericas

Old World livestock destroyed the crops ofsome Amerindian farmers. Other

Amerindians benefited from the introductionof cattle, sheep, and horses


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Spanish America and

Brazil


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State and Church

The Spanish crown tried to exert directcontrol over its American colonies through asupervisory office called the Council of theIndies

There was difficulty of communicationbetween Spain and the New World.

This led to a situation in which the Viceroys of

New Spain and Peru and their subordinateofficials enjoyed a substantial degree ofpower.


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Eventually, Brazil in 1720 would be appointeda viceroy.

Brazil, prior to 1720 was not developed

because early settlers found no mineralwealth or rich native empires


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Catholic Church

The Catholic Church played an important rolein transferring European language, culture,and Christian beliefs to the New World.

Catholic clergy converted large numbers ofAmerindians,

However many Ameindians secretly held onto some of their native beliefs and practices


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Protections from Catholic Clergy

Catholic clergy also acted to protectAmerindians from some of the exploitationand abuse of the Spanish settlers.

One example is Bartolome de Las Casas, a

former settler turned priest He denounced Spanish policies toward the

Amerindians and

He worked to improve the status ofAmerindians through legal reforms such asthe New Laws of 1542.

New laws of 1542 This legislation outlawed

the enslavement of Amerindians and limitedforced labor.


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Catholic Missionaries

Catholic missionaries were frustrated

Amerindian converts blended Christianbeliefs with elements of their own cosmology

and ritual. In response, the Church redirected its

energies toward the colonial cities and towns

Here the Church founded universities and

secondary schools The church played a significant role in the

intellectual and economic life of the colonies


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Society in Colonial Latin America

The elite of Spanish America consisted of arelatively small number of Spanishimmigrants and a larger number of their

American-born descendants (creoles). The Spanish-born dominated the highest

levels of government, church, and business,while the creoles controlled agriculture and

mining


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Under colonial rule the cultural diversity ofAmerindian peoples and the classdifferentiation within the Amerindian ethnic

groups both were eroded


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People from Africa

People of African descent played variousroles in the history of the Spanish colonies

Slaves and free blacks from the Iberian

Peninsula participated in the conquest andsettlement of Spanish America;

Later, the direct slave trade with Africa ledboth to an increase in the number of blacksand to a decline in the legal status of blacksin the Spanish colonies


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At first, people brought from various parts ofAfrica retained their different cultural identities

In time their various traditions blended and

mixed with European and Amerindianlanguages and beliefs to form distinctive localcultures

Slave resistance, including rebellions, was

always brought under control, but runawayslaves occasionally formed groups thatdefended themselves for years.


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Most slaves were engaged in agriculturallabor and were forced to submit to harshdiscipline and brutal punishments

The overwhelming preponderance of malesmade it impossible for slaves to preservetraditional African family and marriagepatterns or to adopt those of Europe.


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In colonial Brazil, Portuguese immigrantscontrolled politics and the economy

By the early seventeenth century Africans

and their American-born descendantsbothslave and freewere the largest ethnic group


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The growing population of individuals ofmixed European and Amerindian descent(mestizos), European and African descent(mulattos), and mixed African and Amerindiandescent were known collectively as castas.

Castas dominated small-scale retailing andconstruction in the cities, ran small ranchesand farms in the rural areas, and worked aswage laborers

Some gained high status and wealth andadopted Spanish or Portuguese culture


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English and French

Colonies in North America


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Early English Experiments

Attempts to establish colonies inNewfoundland (1583) and on Roanoke Island(1587) ended in failure

In the seventeenth-century hope that colonieswould prove to be profitable investments,combined with the successful colonization ofIreland, led to a new wave of interest in

establishing colonies in the New World


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The South

The Virginia Company established the colonyof Jamestown on an unhealthy island in theJames River in 1606

After the English Crown took overmanagement of the colony in 1624, Virginia(Chesapeake Bay area) developed as atobacco plantation economy with a dispersed

population and with no city of any significantsize


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The plantations of the Chesapeake Bay areainitially relied on English indentured servantsfor labor

As life expectancy increased, planters cameto prefer to invest in slaves;

The slave population of Virginia increasedfrom 950 in 1660 to 120,000 in 1756


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Virginia was administered by a Crown-appointed governor and by representatives oftowns meeting together as the House of

Burgesses The House of Burgesses developed into a

form of democratic representation at thesame time as slavery was growing


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Colonists in the Carolinas first prospered onthe fur trade with Amerindian deer-hunters

The consequences of the fur trade included

environmental damage brought on by: Over-hunting

Amerindian dependency on European goods

Ethnic conflicts among Amerindians fighting

over hunting grounds And a series of unsuccessful Amerindian

attacks on the English colonists in the early1700s.


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The southern part of the Carolinas wassettled by planters from Barbados anddeveloped a slave-labor plantation economy,producing rice and indigo.

Enslaved Africans and their descendantsformed the majority population and developedtheir own culture;

A slave uprising (the Stono Rebellion) in 1739led to more repressive policies toward slavesthroughout the southern colonies


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Colonial South Carolina was the mosthierarchical society in British North America.

A wealthy planter class dominated a

population of small farmers, merchants,cattlemen, artisans, and fur-traders

These people economically stood above thepeople of mixed English-Amerindian orEnglish-African background and slaves


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New England

The Pilgrims, who wanted to breakcompletely with the Church of England,established the small Plymouth Colony in

1620. The Puritans, who wanted only to reform the

Church of England, formed a chartered joint-stock company (the Massachusetts Bay

Company) and established theMassachusetts Bay colony in 1630


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The Massachusetts Bay colony had a normalgender balance, saw a rapid increase inpopulation, and was more homogenous and

less hierarchical than the southern colonies. The political institutions of the colony were

derived from the terms of its charter andincluded an elected governor and, in 1650, a

lower legislative house


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Without the soil or the climate to producecash crops, the Massachusetts economyevolved from dependence on fur, forest

products, and fish to a dependence oncommerce and shipping.

Massachusettss merchants engaged in a

diversified trade across the Atlantic, which

made Boston the largest city in British NorthAmerica in 1740.


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The Middle Atlantic Region

Manhattan Island was first colonized by theDutch and then taken by the English andrenamed New York.

New York became a commercial andshipping center; it derived particular benefitfrom its position as an outlet for the export ofgrain to the Caribbean and Southern Europe


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Pennsylvania was first developed as aproprietary colony for Quakers, but soondeveloped into a wealthy grain-exporting

colony with Philadelphia as its majorcommercial city.

In contrast to rice-exporting South Carolinasslave agriculture, Pennsylvanias grain was

produced by free family farmers, including asubstantial number of Germans


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French America

Patterns of French settlement closelyresembled those of Spain and Portugal; theFrench were committed to missionary work,

and they emphasized the extraction of naturalresourcesfurs.

French expansion was driven by the fur tradeand resulted in depletion of beaver and deer

populations and made Amerindiansdependent upon European goods


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The fur trade provided Amerindians withfirearms that increased the violence of thewars that they fought over control of hunting

grounds. When firearms reached the horse frontier in

the early eighteenth century, they increasedthe military power and hunting efficiency of

the indigenous peoples of the American Westand slowed the pace of European settlement.


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Catholic missionaries, including the Jesuits,attempted to convert the Amerindianpopulation of French America, but, meetingwith indigenous resistance, they turned their

attention to work in the French settlements. These settlements, dependent on the fur

trade, were small and grew slowly.

This pattern of settlement allowedAmerindians in French America to preserve agreater degree of independence than theycould in the Spanish, Portuguese, or Britishcolonies.


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The French expanded aggressively to theWest and South, establishing a second fur-trading colony in Louisiana in 1699.

This expansion led to war with England inwhich the French, defeated in 1759, wereforced to yield Canada to the English and tocede Louisiana to Spain


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Colonial Expansion and

Conflict


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Imperial Reform in Spanish America

and Brazil

After 1713 Spains new Bourbon dynasty undertook a

series of administrative reforms including:

Expanded intercolonial trade,

New commercial monopolies on certain goods,

A stronger navy

Better policing of the trade in contraband goods tothe Spanish colonies.

These reforms coincided with the eighteenth-centuryeconomic expansion that was led by the agriculturaland grazing economies of Cuba, the Rio de la Plata,Venezuela, Chile, and Central America


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The Bourbon policies were detrimental to theinterests of the grazing and agricultural exporteconomies, which were increasingly linked to

illegitimate trade with the English, French,and Dutch.

The new monopolies aroused oppositionfrom creole elites whose only gain from the

reforms was their role as leaders of militiasthat were intended to counter the threat ofwar with England


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The Bourbon policies were also a factor in theAmerindian uprisings, including that led bythe Peruvian Amerindian leader Jos Gabriel

Condorcanqui (Tupac Amaru II). The rebellion was suppressed after more

than two years and cost the Spanish coloniesover 100,000 lives and enormous amounts of

property damage


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Brazil also underwent a period of economicexpansion and administrative reform in the1700s.

Economic expansion fueled by gold,diamonds, coffee, and cotton underwrote thePombal reforms, paid for the importation ofnearly 2 million African slaves, and

underwrote a new wave of British imports


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Reform and Reorganization in British

North America

In the latter half of the seventeenth centurythe British Crown tried to control colonialtrading (smuggling) and manufacture bypassing a series of Navigation Acts and by

suspending the elected assemblies of theNew England colonies.

Colonists resisted by overthrowing thegovernors of New York and Massachusetts

and by removing the Catholic proprietor ofMaryland, thus setting the stage for futureconfrontational politics.


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During the eighteenth century economicgrowth and new immigration into the Britishcolonies was accompanied by increased

urbanization and a more stratified socialstructure


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a.p. world ch 17 the diversity of american colonial societies-today

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