The American Colonies Take Shape

• Explain how European immigration to the colonies changed between the late 1600s and 1700s.

• Analyze the development of slavery in the colonies.

• Describe the experience of enslaved Africans in the colonies.

Objectives

Terms and People

• indentured servants – poor immigrants who paid for passage to the colonies by agreeing to work for four to seven years

• triangular trade – three-part voyage that brought enslaved Africans to America

• Middle Passage – enslaved Africans carried across the Atlantic in brutal conditions

• Phillis Wheatley – first African American to publish a book of poems

Migrate- to move from one country or place to live or work in another

Diversity- the state of having people who are different races or who have different cultures in a group or organization

Which major groups of immigrants came to Britain’s American colonies in the 1700s?

In the 1700s, great numbers of Europeans from Germany and Scotland immigrated to the colonies.

These newcomers reshaped American colonial society.

• 1600s- about 90% of the migrants to the English colonies came from England.

• By 1700, approximately 250,000 people of European background lived in the colonies.

• By 1775 that number would increase to approximately 2.5 million.

Developments in England

• developments in England caused the percentage of immigrants from England to drop dramatically.

• After 1660, the English economy improved and political and religious conflicts diminished.

Immigrants from many backgrounds brought diversity to the colonies.

• Scottish emigration increased dramatically• Scots gained easier legal access to the colonies

after 1707 when Great Britain was formed by the union of England, Wales, and Scotland.

• The Scots immigrated to the colonies in three waves. The first came from the_Scottish lowlands_. The second came from the _Scottish highlands_. The third came from Northern _Ireland_ and became known as the __Scotch-Irish_.

New groups immigrated in the 1700s.

Scots and Scotch-Irish Germans

Became the largest immigrant group.

Became the second largest immigrant group.

Motivated by poverty and easy legal access as part of Great Britain.

Worked as merchants in the tobacco trade and farmed from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas.

Motivated by war, taxes and religious persecution.

Mostly settled in Pennsylvania and farmed.

German Immigrants

• Germans immigrants were pushed by war (and required military service), taxes, and religious persecution. Pennsylvania pulled German immigrants because of its land, low taxes, and absence of required military service.

• Quakers soon became a minority in Pennsylvania

• No group was large enough to impose their beliefs on other groups.

• People realized that when they got along in a diverse society, everyone benefited.

Diversity in the colonies meant that:

Slavery in the Colonies

• Initially, many poor immigrants to the colonies were indentured servants.

• They had their passage to the colonies paid in return for an agreement to work for a certain number of years.

• Supply of indentured servants began to decline.

• After Bacon’s Rebellion, some colonists turned to a “less troublesome” source of labor.

• First Africans were brought to the colony of Jamestown in 1619 by the Dutch.

• Treated more like indentured servants• 1640- John Punch, a runaway indentured

servant, becomes the first documented slave for life.

Slave Codes

• Laws defining slave status based on race and regulating slave behavior

• 1662- Virginia passes a law that makes a child born to a slave mother a slave

Slaves Codes

• 1705- Virginia General Assembly• "All servants imported and brought into the

Country...who were not Christians in their native Country...shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion...shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resist his master...correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction...the master shall be free of all punishment...as if such accident never happened."

• African Americans in Jamestown• http://www.nps.gov/jame/historyculture/afric

an-americans-at-jamestown.htm

• 10 million Africans were brought to the New World• 400,000 brought to North America, the majority

after 1700• By 1680s black slaves outnumbered white servants

among the immigrants coming to the plantations• 1750- slaves accounted for about half the

population in Virginia• In South Carolina, blacks outnumbered whites two

to one• 1.5 million pounds of tobacco shipped by 1630s.

40 million pounds by end of century.

• Farmers, particularly in southern colonies, needed a work force to grow labor-intensive crops of tobacco, rice, and indigo.

• Virginia passed a law decreeing that any servant, not a Christian in their native land, was to be enslaved.

• Traders began to purchase slaves from African merchants and transport them to the colonies to sell to plantation owners.

Colonists used slaves as a source of labor.

Africans were taken by force from West African countries to the colonies and Europe.

During the Middle Passage, Africans were shackled together into small spaces below a ship’s deck.

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Africans in America

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gniRFE2RWPU

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UNgCS_CCEs

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZd3BArKoGo

By the mid-1700s, the triangular trade of goods and slaves was well-established.

• Manufactured goods were traded for captured Africans.

• Slave traders carried captured Africans to American colonies in the Middle Passage.

• Enslaved Africans were sold to colonists for raw materials.

• Traders took raw materials to England to be turned into manufactured goods.

Slavery in the Southern Colonies was cruel.

Enslaved Africans worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, in fields growing labor-intensive crops.

Most enslaved Africans were given limited clothing and food, and lived in crude huts on plantations.

Enslaved Africans were closely supervised by white overseers who often whipped those who resisted being enslaved.

Slave labor represented a small minority of the workforce in New England and the Middle Colonies.

They worked as farmhands, sailors, dock workers, and house servants.

Africans reacted to enslavement by:

RebellingRebellingUprisings of Africans against theirwhite owners often occurred.

Running AwayRunning Away

Africans ran away and lived in forests and swamps, or fled toSpanish Florida where they were free.

Resisting Resisting Africans subtly and purposefully worked slowly or feigned illness.

Slave Rebellions

• New York 1712– More restrictive laws passed

• 1739- Stono River, South Carolina- fifty slaves tried to march to Spanish Florida– http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomin

gamer/peoples/text4/stonorebellion.pdf

Africans blendedtheir variousAfrican traditions into the culture.

They modified African instruments and music, and created new musical traditions. The banjo here is a modified African instrument.

• Slave Songbook• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

1JtD_YpyXYU• Roll Jordan Roll• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

7oFcFzJT7Tw

Freed slaves spoke out against slavery.

After he gained his freedom, Olaudah Equiano wrote a widely read book about his enslavement.

Phillis Wheatley became the first African American poet to publish a book of poems in America.

Her Boston owner allowed her to learn how to read and write. Her poetry could be seen in newspapers, but despite wide praise, colonial publishers refused to publish a book of her work.

On Being Brought from Africa to America

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,Taught my benighted soul to understandThat there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.Some view our sable race with scornful eye,"Their colour is a diabolic die."Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.