Piece of the Pie

1. Piece of the Pie What were the benefits and challenges between rival imperial models?

2. Rival Imperial Models • Spain • France • Holland • England

3. Spain • Spanish explorers penetrated deep into the present-day U.S. in their quest for gold. • Francisco Vasquez de Coronado searched for vain in the 1540s for the legendary city of gold. • Hernan de Soto and 6oo Spaniards brought terror to much of Florida and Alabama on their fruitless quest for gold. • By the 1560s, Spain had to begin defending its empire against England and France.

4. Spain • Spanish conquerors continued to subjugate the native peoples they encountered. • Those tribes practicing polygamy and traditional religions were whipped and punished. • By 1680, coordinated rebellions against the Spanish in Florida cost hundreds of Spaniards their lives.

5. France • The first permanent French settlement came in 1608 when Samuel de Champlain founded the fur-trading post of Quebec in what is present-day Canada. • In 1662, King Louis XIV turned New France into a royal colony and began subsidizing the migration of indentured servants. • New France developed a fur-trading empire due to its lack of farmers and colonist because of the cold climate and desolation it faced.

6. France • Between 1625 and 1763, hundreds of French Catholic priests lived among the Iroquois and Great Lakes peoples attempting to convert them. • However, the French Jesuits (type of priests) did not exploit Indians for labor or enslave them as the Spanish had done.

7. Holland • By 1600, Amsterdam had become the financial and commercial hub of northern Europe. • Dutch merchants owned more ships and employed more sailors than England, France, and Spain combined. • Profits from sugar plantations in Africa, Indonesia, and Brazil helped to build immense wealth within the Dutch economy.

8. Holland • In 1609, English mariner Henry Hudson was sent by the Dutch to find a navigable route to the riches of the East Indies. • Instead he discovered a plentiful fur supply building forts among the Iroquois and establishing a trade network that spurred the growth of New Amsterdam including Manhattan Island. • In 1643, Algonquian tribes launched an attack to reclaim farmlands that nearly destroyed the colony.

9. Holland • In 1664, the Dutch lost to English invaders and the colony fell. • By 1699, the Dutch had intermarried with the English and under the strict hand of the Duke of York, New York seemed more like a conquered foreign land than an English colony.

10. England • In 1606, King James I granted the Virginia Company all of the lands stretching from present-day North Carolina to southern New York with the primary goal of trading with the native population. • The early English colonist came seeking gold instead and were very disappointed with nearly half of them dying in the first few years due to disease and malnutrition.

11. England • The tribal chief of the thirty chiefdoms between the James and Potomac rivers, Powhatan, treated the English as potential allies and spared the life of Captain John Smith. • Powhatan provided the English with corn and sought to create a partnership to fend off invading tribes with the marriage of his daughter, Pocahontas, to colonist John Rolfe.

12. England • However, John Rolfe had illegally imported tobacco seeds and began cultivating the crop that was in high demand as countless Europeans became addicted to its nicotine making such alliances unnecessary for English interests in America. • This crop would prove the economic motivator that the English had hoped for as profits soared and the plants grew plentiful in the climate.

13. Expanding Needs • In 1632, second tobacco-growing colony developed in neighboring Maryland after King Charles I proved sympathetic toward Catholicism establishing a colony under the Lord Baltimore, Cecilius Calvert. • This created a refuge for persecuted Catholics from England that became known as Calverts. • However, many non-Catholics were also imported as artisans and the Toleration Act (1649) was enacted to curb growing resentment by Protestants in the colony.

14. Economic Growth • Freeholds, small family owned and farmed plantations, gradually gave way to larger plantations headed by gentry or noble families with established tenants and wage laborers. • This copied the hierarchical structure in place in England of tenant farmers by buying English indentured servants and enslaved Africans.

15. Economic Growth • Many greedy masters ruthlessly exploited their indentured servants who could generate as much as five-times their value in one year of their contract making them a very lucrative investment. • This made African slaves an even more attractive offer as indentured servants began to leave service after their term and as English “common law” did not acknowledge “chattle slavery” there were no legal obligations to slaves like there were for indentured servants.

16. Social Repercussions • As the supply of tobacco continued to increase the demand and, thus, cost began to considerably drop. This did not deter growers from continuing to plant and harvest tobacco, which eventually lead the economy into a recession. • This made the disparity in wealth greater between the poor and wealthy plantation owners. • This began to breed corruption among the elite.

17. Social Repercussions • As numbers of Indians had dwindled over the years and Europeans had increased their presence along with that of Africans, land was becoming scarcer. • In 1675, a vigilante group of frontiersmen murdered a group of Indians and Chiefs who came to negotiate that resulted in a retaliation killing hundreds of whites.

18. Social Repercussions • Nathaniel Bacon, a young migrant from England emerged as a leader of a band of rebels who refused to submit to colonial authority and with the help of his neighbors attached the Indians without the support of the colonial army. • The governor had Bacon arrested but was forcibly released when his “army” turned on the colony after his imprisonment.

19. Social Repercussions • This resulted in the House of Burgesses enacting political reforms to curb the powers of the governor but it was too late. • Bacon issued a “Manifesto and Declaration of the People” demanding removal of the Indians from the colony and an end to rule by a wealthy elite after which his army burned Jamestown to the ground and plundered local plantations of the governors allies.

20. Social Repercussions • When Bacon died of dysentery in 1676, the governor took revenge dispersing the army by seeking the property of the well-to-do rebels and hanging 23 of the men. • This proved a pivotal event and lead to political and social reforms to curb dissent and resulted in the removal of Indian peoples from the region.