Atlantic Ocean The Illustrated History Of The Ocean That Changed The World.pdf

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that the first trade between the Ameiicas, Europe, and Afoca

ABOVE: This map, d rawn by

was begun from the islands and no wonder that the European

Dutch- or German-born

Antonio de Herrera y

powers fought so bitterly over them and that so many of them

Herman Moll (1 654-1 732)­

Tordesillas illustrated the

one of England's premier

mysterious gods of the

changed hands so often.

mapmakers i n the Age of

Aztecs, along with a

Discovery-shows the vast

portrait of conqu istador

array of New World islands

Diego Velazquez de Cuellar,

THE CONTI N ENT

AND THE CONQUISTADORES

When Europeans finally did begin to settle the mainland, they entered a world m uch different from the primitive wilderness that generations of histmians led their readers to

OPPOSITE: Spanish historian

that not only launched

on the title page of a

Europe into its New World

Descripci6n de las lndias

endeavors but also

Ocidentales (Description of

provided the springboard

the West Indies) , a

for the settlement of the

su pplement to his

American mainland. The

masterwork Historia

map appeared i n Moll's

general de /os hechos de los

sem inal atlas The World

Castellanos en las is/as y

Described (171 5-54).

tierra firme de/ Mar

believe . As Charles C . M ann wrote in his groundbreaking

Oceano (General History of

book 1 491 : New Revelations of the Amerir:as befo re

on the Islands and

Columbus (2005), scientific evidence has revealed that long before Columbus fi rst set sail, there were probably more

the Deeds of the Castilians Mainland of the Ocean Sea) (1 601-1 5).

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.• ·AS INDIA S OCIDE: TALE S DE.ANTONIO �- +r'' " �· / �� '-- ; ' :

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NIS TA MAYORDE�-·�: . ,i;.:=;;.=�:..==.=-. . sV�.., .. -- MAd: DELAS IN: DIAS Y S'ICORONISTA

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€., \Ve ca1ne to serve God a nd his �,1ajesty, to give light to those who ivere z,n darkness, and to groiv rich, as all nien desire to clo. ,., -Bernal Diaz ckl Ca
people making their home in what becan�e Central and South America than in all of E urope. Some of the New \Vorld eities, built before the Egyptian pyramids, had popu­ lations well over 100,000, with as many as 2,5 0,000 living on their outskirts. Several of these cities featured wide, clean streets, beautiful gardens, and an efficient system of running water. Some of the nati\'e groups had developed highly sophistieated agricultural methods, ineluding the eross­ breeding of earn, which Science m agazine eharaeteiized in a

2003 artiele as "man's first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetie engineering." The first Europeans to enter the Ame1iean mainland in great numbers, the Spanish, of eourse knew nothing of these sophistieated societies . The men who eame to be knm,11 as

conquistadores (conquerors) enterera de> la con­

qu ista de la N11cva EsJ!alla (The T111c History
of Nc>w Sp ai11 ), published posthumously in 1632: "\ Ve came to serve God and his M a1· est\·, to l!h·e lil!ht to those who were in �

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darkness, and to grow rich. as all men desire to do."

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111 Mayan codices, folding books written in Mayan hieroglyphic script on bark paper, were sophisticated records of ancient Mayan civilization, religion, astronomy, and astrology. The Dresden Codex, a detail of which is shown here, was created in the Yucatan Peninsula by the Maya arou nd 1 200--50 CE. It was discovered in Dresden, Germany, in 1 739.

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Indicative of the advanced culture of the people who inhabited the Americas long before the first European explorers arrived was the Aztec s u n stone. Unearthed in Mexico City (site of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan) in 1 790, the enormou s stone weighs about twenty-four tons and measures twelve feet across. The en igmatic stone fu nctioned as a ritual calendar with pictographs and hieroglyphs

symbolizing days and months (the Aztec calendar was based on the interrelation of a sacred year of 260 days with the natural year of 365 days) as well as a symbolic representation of Aztec cosmology. This replica of the stone, located in El Paso, was cast from the original at the M useo Nacional de Antropologia i n Mexico City.

1 13

The first conquistador to set foot on what is now United

After landing in Florida, Ponce cle Leon explored its

States soil was Juan Ponce cle Leon, a former governor of

southern coast, drn1iing the rivers he encountered before

Pue1io Rico and a member of Christopher Columbus's second

returning first to Puerto Rko and then to Spain. He returned

e�})edition. Authorized by the king to establish a mainland

to Florida in 152 1 , this time to establish a settlement. His two

colony in a place called Bimini (a mythical island believed to

ships ancl c;olonizing party of about two hundred men, which

contain the Fountain of Youth), Ponc;e de Leon instead landed

induded farmers, craftsmen, and p1iests, landed on Floiicla's

on the mainland, on the n01iheast coast of present-day Fl01ida,

southwest coast. Soon, however, they were attacked by

on Ap1il 2, 1513. Ponc;e de Leon named the land Fl01ida (the

natives, and in the ensuing battle, Ponce de Leon was struck

Spanish \\::Orel for "flowe1y") either because he arrived dming Pasqua Florida (Spanish for "Flowe1y Passover" or Easter

season) or bec;ause he was so taken with the vibrant vegetation he encountered. According to long-standing legend, Ponc;e de Leon c;arne to the mainland seeking not only slaves for the Spanish sugar plantations and untold Iid1es but also the Fountain of Youth, a spiing whose restorative waters had been ,viitten about long before the of Exploration. \ Vhile he may have supposed Fountain of Youth, there is no hard evi­ clenc;e that Ponc;e de Leon was either motivated by or indeed searched for the fabled spring. It was only after his death in July 1 521, paiticu­ larly in Gonzalo Fernandez de Ovieclo's Historia ge11eral y natural de las

Indias

(1.535) (Ge11eral a11d Natu ral History of tltc

Indies), that such a sto1y arose.

An u ndated engraving portra it of Ponce de Leon, explorer of the land he na med Florida. He wrote to his king on February 10, 1 521 of his goal to settle

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The Fou ntai n of Youth was a su bject of fascination for cou ntless medieval a rtists ' such as this fancifu l interpretation by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1 546.

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by a poisoned arrow. The would-be colonists then took to the

horses, cannon, and steel swords. Because of these weapons,

ships and fled to Cuba where Ponce de Leon died of his

along with body armor, none of which the Indians had ever

wound.

encountered, Cortes and his men, although greatly outnum­

In 1 5 1 9, sh: years after Ponce de Leon claimed Florida for

bered, won every battle with the Tlaxcala. But with each vic­

Spain, a much more ambitious and daring conquistador,

tory came a reduction of the Spanish forces, so serious an

Heman Cortes, set out on what has been termed "history's

attrition that Cortes found himself on the brink of defeat.

greatest march of conquest." Since the time the Spanish had

But then unexpectedly, the four Tlaxcala kings presented

been e;,..-ploring and settling the Caribbean islands, they had

Cortes with a proposal. They would stop attacking him if he

heard rn111ors of an opulent Indian empire located on the

would join them in a combined attack on Tenochtitlan, the

mainland. Actually, it was the land of the Aztecs, whose mag­

most powerful of the Triple Alliance city-states. It was an

nificent city Tenochtitlan stood on the site of present-day

offer that Cortes could not refuse.

Mexico City. On April 22, 1519, Cortes landed near what is

In November 15 19, Cortes and his men and some twentv-

today the city of Veracruz. Although estimates vary, it is safe

thousand Tlaxcalans entered Tenochtitlan, led bv a number of

to say that he had with him between four hundred and six

the Spanish mounted on horses (the astounded Aztecs

hundred men.

believed they were one terrifying creature made of animal

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As he made his way inland, Cortes was forced to fight con­

and armor-plated man). No one was more astounded by the

tinual battles with the Tlaxcala, a union of four native king­

invading force, however than Montezuma, the ruler of the

doms that had managed to keep its independence despite

Aztec Empire. For generations, many histories carried the

pe1iodic attempts to defeat it by the greatest native force in

story that when Montezuma first became aware of Cortes's

M exico, the Tiiple Alliance. Comprised of three Aztec city­

presence, he thought he was the Toltec war god Quetzalcoatl,

states-Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacapon-the Triple

who had gone into exile some fh·e hundred years earlier and

Alliance had ruled the entire region of the Valley of Mexico

was now returning to destroy the Aztec Empire. tvlodern his­

since 1428.

torians, however, have refuted this story, basing their findings

Cortes launched his invasion with three weapons that

on the fact that nowhere in all the conquistadores' writings,

would prove decisive in the Spanish conquest of the Americas:

including the many lengthy detailed letters that Cortes wrote

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BELOW: This proud portrait of H ernan Cortes appeared in an im portant literary work that glowingly recou nted the explorer's co nquest of Mexico, by the Spanish historian and royal "Chron icler of the I ndies," Antonio de Solfs. The

Historia de la conquista de Mexico (History of the Conquest of Mexico) was origi nally publis hed i n 1 684; extremely popular, it was translated i nto n u merous European languages.

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to his Spanish king, Charles V, is there mention of

allies. The e1�ing July 1.520

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this belief on M ontezuma's part.

battle was one in which, unlike the

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events

\Vhat has been doeumented is the faet that

at

Tenochtitlan,

the

Tenoehtitlan, with its ,vide streets, its bustling

Spanish were able to stiike terror

marketplaees, its beautifully earved buildings, and

into the hearts of their attackers

its long aqueduets that eanied water into the city

throucrh the use of mounted b

from far- off mountains, amazed the Spaniards.

assaults. After the Aztecs and their

But Cortes knew that there was no time to spend

allies fled in panie at the sight of

admiring this eity that was larger ti.tan any in all of

"half men, half creatures," Cortes

Europe. Aware of the size of the army that

and his troops were able to make

Montezuma had at his command, he captured the

their wa\' to Tla.\eala.

Aztee ruler, held him piisoner in his own palace,

Arguably, the most deter­

and then had him killed.

mined of all the eonquistadores,

The events so shoeked the Aztecs that it took

Cortes refused to gi,·e up his goal

them some seven months before they retaliated. Then, led by

of eonquering the Aztecs and plundering their extraordinar>­

their new ruler Cuitahuae, they mounted a fierce assault

riches. Once in Tlaxeala, he persuaded tens of thousands of

on the invaders, forcing them into the city's narrow alleys

m embers of other Indian states opposed to the Tiiple Allianee

where their horses were of little use. It was an overwhelming

to join his rnl'n and the Tla.\calans in another attaek on

Aztec vict01y in whieh the Spanish and their allies were

Tenochtitlan. Assembling a force estimated l)\· some hist01ians

foreed to flee the eity, but not before thousands of them were

to have been as larcre ti as two lnmclred thousand m en ' he had

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killed.

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thirteen ships h1 1ilt to help carry out his new plan to attack the

Cortes, aware that he was fortunate to still be alive, decided to flee with his remaining forces to Tlaxcala. I le reached it, but not before being attacked

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Aztec stronghol d b:' sea. In 1.5 2 1, with his new arnw . fo1iified bv - reinforecments

the plains of

sent from Cuba, Cortes launched his second attaek on

Otumba by an army made up of Aztecs and other Indian

Tenochtitlan. I le began by laying siege to the eity, a taetic that

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The dramatic painting Conq uest ofTenochtitlan,

shown here, is part of a series of eight large murals known as The Conquest of Mexico, painted by u n known artists i n Mexico in the mid to late seventeenth centu ry. The wealth of Tenochtitlan astounded Hernan Cortes, who wrote i n a 1 520 letter to Charles V his im pressions about the city and the wealth of M ontezuma:

"Can there be anything more magnificent than that this barbarian lord should h ave all the things to be found u nder the heavens i n his domain, fash ioned in gold and silver and jewels and feathers; and so realistic in gold and silver that no smith i n the world could have done better, and in jewels so fine that it is i m possible to imagine with what instruments they were cut so perfectly? . . . i n Spain

there is noth ing to com pare with it." This excerpt is from Cortes's so-called Second Letter to the ki ng. Gathered together with four other letters, they were published from 1 51 9-26 as the Cartas de relaci6n, and were widely distributed. The letters were a masterful blend of fact and embellish ment meant to impress the king and put a positive spin on Cortes's role i n Mexico.

This portrait of Francisco Pizarro appeared in The

New World Heroes of Discovery and Conquest, by

D. M. Kelsey (ca. 1 891). The people Pizarro had been sent to conquer were n u merous beyond his imagi nation. The I nca

Empire alone was larger than the M i ng Dynasty of China, bigger than Ivan the Terrible's Russia, larger than the Ottoman Empire or the largest kingdom i n Africa. It was, i n fact, the largest empire in the world.

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resulted in the death by starvation of many of its inhabitants.

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But even this result and the large army he had amassed might

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never have brought him victory had it not been for the fact

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that while Cortes had been assembling his forces in Tla."\'.cala, Tenochtitlan had been stricken ,vith a deadly outbreak of smallpox, killing at least a third of its residents. Cortes's victmy and the enormous rewards it reaped bol­ stered the confidence and resolve of other conquistadores anxious to capture similar treasures. Most notable among them was Francisco Pizarro, who had first come to the 0J ew World ,vith N icolas de Ovando in 1502. In 1513, Pizarro took part in the expedition to Panama led by \'asco Nunez de Balboa in which the Pacific Ocean was discm·ered. He remained in Panama as a colonizer and from 15 19 to 1 523 served as the mayor and ma6ristrate of Panama City. But Pizarro, like Cortes before him, lusted after the riches that the New \Vorkl had to offer. In 1532, he invaded Peru, climbed the highlands of the majestic Andes, and conquered the Inca Empire-which had also been decimated by smallpox-taking control of its great sih-er mines. Operating witli the same deceitful and brutal manner that came to char­ acterize many of the conquistadores, Pizarro captured the Inca e mperor Atahualpa and promised that h e would be released upon payment of the contents of an enormous room filled with gold. As soon as the payment was made, Pizarro

had his men execute the Inca leader. A year later, Pizarro suc­ cessfully i nvaded Cuzco, the historic capital of the Inca E mpire. In January 1 5.35, convinced that this city was too high up in the mountains and too far removed from the sea, he founded the city of Lima and established it as the Spanish capital of Pern. With his achieve ments, Pizarro acquired for

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Spain not only most of Peru but the northern half of Chile and part of B olivia, m ore territory than all the rest of' S0t1th A merica combined, teni tory that would remai n in Spanish control for the next three centmies. For Pizarro personally, however there was no h appy ending. In 1 5.37, his former

Francisco Pizarro oversees the execution of the I nca em peror Ata hualpa, one of the thousands of deceits and atrocities inflicted u pon the American natives by their Spanish conquerors. This engraving is also from the ca. 1 891 Kelsey book.

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Hernando de Soto discovers the M ississippi. In this 1 847 painting by William H. Powell, which hangs in the U .S. Capitol Rotu nda, Native Americans look on as their chief (far right) holds out a peace pipe. The soldiers and weapons i ncluded in the foregrou nd indicate the attack upon the I ndians that had taken place earlier.

BELOW: Francisco Coronado's extraordi nary trek was made even more difficult by the fact that most of his horsemen and foot soldiers wore heavy armor most of the way and rarely found streams or lakes to bathe in or to supply them with drinking water. This nineteenth-century drawing depicti ng the march is after an original work by Frederic Rem ington.

partner Diego de Alrnagro, incensed by what he felt was

de Vaca then wrote a tract, based on what he claimed were sto­

Pizarro's failure to share with him both the plundered native

Iies he had heard from his captors, in which he described seven

treasure and jurisdiction over former lncan territmy, rose up

cities constructed of gold, called Cibola.

against him. Pizarro then captured and killed Almagro. But

Cabeza cle Vaca's stmy of the incredibly rich "seven cities of

four years later, on J une 26, 154 1 , followers of Alrnagro broke

Cibola" fanned the flames of conquistador ambition, and none

into Pizarro's Lima palace and executed him.

more so than Hernando de Soto. In 1.5.39, the man who had

\ Vhile Cmtes's and Pizarro's conquests were the most

marched \vith Pizarro and had then served as governor of Cuba,

notable of the Spanish conquerors, other conquistadores, sus­

received the Spanish king's permission to e.\-plore what is today

pecting that the New \Vorld mainland ran far to the nmth of

the southeastern pait of the United States. Leading a party of

Mexico, began seeking treasure there. In 1528, Panfilo de

some sLx hundred, Soto landed at Tampa Bay and marched

Narvaez led an e.\-pedition by boat north from

inland, tortming and killing the natives he encountered along

Flmida and then west along the Gulf Coast. Off the

the way. Reaching the Mississippi, he pressed on, ente1ing

coast of what is now Texas, the party was strnck by a violent storm and most of the expedition, including Narvaez, was killed. The survivors man­ aged to reach the mainland where they were cap­ tured by Native Ameiicans and enslaved for several years. One of the Spaniards, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, managed to escape ancl became a nomad dming which time he not only established fiiendly relations with some of the natives !mt served as a medicine man. \Viii.le living among the Indians lie learned that three of his compatriots, now also free, were located nearby. In 1,534, Cabeza de Vaca and the three men made their way to Mexico. Cabeza

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This map s hows the range of the Spanish territory i n the sixteenth centu ry. It was published in 1 601 as part of

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Descripci6n de las indias occidentales (Description of the West Indies), a volume

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present-day Oklahoma. When it beeame clear that

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he would find no Cibola, he h1rned back but was

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de los hechos de los Castellanos en las is/as y tierra firme def Mar Oceano (General History of the Deeds of the Castilians on the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea).

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in Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas' Historia general

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fatally stiieken with fever. Because Soto had told the

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native population that he was an immortal, his men did not affange an elaborate funeral but buried him in the Mississippi, the great 1iver he had discovered. The tale of the "seven cities of Cibola" also aroused the interest of Francisc'o Vazquez de Coronado, a conquistador who was serving as gov­ ernor of N ueva Galicia, a western province of Mexico. In 1540, Coronado set out to find the treasure. Thus would begin one of the longest

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treks in the American experience, a journey that took Coronado and his 2.50 horsemen, 70 foot sol­

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die,rs, 1,000 friendly Indians, and a host of priests, well up the mainland coast of the Gulf of California, across Arizona, into New Mexico and Texas, and then across northern Kansas to the the first Europeans to view the Grand Canyon. They also heard stories of yet another El Dorado, a place called Quivira, where inhabitants ate out of golden bowls and drank from golden jugs. But

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Nebraska border. Coronado and his party were

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The ded icated and courageous m ission aries who accompan ied the Spanish into the Americas not only established the first schools i n New Spain but also introduced food crops never previously grown in the N ew World, i n cl ud i ng wheat, barley, rye,

ch ickpeas, and lentils, as well as a variety of fruits, i n cluding apples, cherries, and apricots. This ca. 1 524 illustrated catechism was drawn by Saint Pedro de Gante, who fou nded the first school i n Mexico. The m ission s fou nded throughout New Spain by

the Jesuits, and later run by the Franciscans, were bu ilt on the precept of protecting and helping N ative Americans by Christia nizing and civilizing them , but in the end, the rigid structure of m ission l ife and expos ure to European diseases proved devastating.

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� � The Ne iv \Vorld, conquered by you, has conquered you in its turn. ' �

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they found no golden cities. Instead they encountered seem­

into Spain's American possessions, the beginnings of an

ingly endless plains, life-threatening heat, and one small

Atlantic, rather than a national, economic system took place.

p1imitive \illage after another. There were no seven cities of

All of it, of course, at the e;-,_1)ense of the miginal owners of

Cibola. There was no golden Quivira. But de Soto's an
the wealth, the natives. Tl1e toll exacted on the Indians

Coronado's quests made the Spanish aware of the extraordi­

through e;-,_'Ploitation was enormous. The death they suffered

nary vastness of the land that awaited settlement. By 1.56,5,

from such European diseases as smallpox, measles, diph­

the Spanish had established a settlement at St. Augustine,

the1ia, typhoid, and whooping cough, to which they were not

which became the longest continually occupied European

immune, was even more horrific, greater even than the Black

community in the continental United States. By 1607, the

Death that had swept through Europe in the mid 1300s. In

town of Santa Fe had been founded.

less than fifty years, central Mexico's population was reduced

By 1.580, Spain had become the 1ichest and most powerful

from about 7 million to approximately 2.,5 million. Peru's pop­

nation in the world. The empire of its King Phillip I I , who had

ulation declined from 9 million to 1.3 million. The natives on

also become the ruler of Portugal and all its possessions,

Hispaniola and the rest of the Caribbean islands were vi1tu­

stretched from Manila in the Philippines (named for him)

ally exterminated. As one Spanish sergeant, recalling what he

around the world to Mexico and to most of what is now the

had witnessed during his tour of duty in the Americas, pro­

southwestern United States and Florida. More than a quarter

claimed, "There were more iiches than health."

million Spaniards, mostly from the poorest agricultural regions

In the end, the Spanish would pay their own p1ice for their

of Spain, had migrated to the Spanish New \Vorlcl. In the fol­

lust for wealth. Thev had claimed and settled far too much

lowing half century, at least that many more would arrive.

land for them to govern effectively. The gulf between the

Meantime, tons of gol
Spanish noblemen wlio owned the land and the impove1ished

from Mexic � and Pern eve1y year, not only increasing Spanish wealth but also having a profound impact on all of Europe.

Spaniards who settled it created uncontrollable tensions. They were the first in the Ame1icas, but they would not he able to

For as Spanish merchants traded the prccio11s metals for all

make it their own. As Flemish humanist and classical scholar

types of manufactured goods from Fra1 1ce, Germany, Italy,

Justus Lipsius wrote to a Spanish friend in 1603, "The New

Flanders, and England, and as these goods were transported

\ \'oriel, c01H1uered by you, has conquered :'OU in its turn.''

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This 1 591 Theodore de Bry engravi ng called They

Reach Port Royal recreates a watercolor made by J acques Le Moyne, who traveled to Florida and South Carol ina with the French H uguenot explorers Jean Ribault and Rene Goulaine de La udonn iere. Ribau lt's 1 562 French expedition , which

126 )> -{ r )> z -{ ()

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established a short-lived colony at Port Royal , South Carolina, was a n early challe� to Spanish control of the New World. The image i ncl udes depictions of the area's habitat, wild life, and native encam pments.

Another de Bry engraving after Le Moyne depicts Rene Laudonn iere, comm ander of the second French exped ition to Florida, standing by a col u m n erected by Jean Ribault d u ring the fi rst French fi rst expedition. The native Floridians are shown worsh ipping the col u m n and placi ng offeri n gs before it.

127 n 0 r 0 z

THE FRENCH ATTEMPT COLONIZATION

The Spanish had come to the New \Vorlcl seeking treasure,

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and for the better pait of a century , they succeeded. The

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French e,·entually found another type of treasure, but not before initial disastrous attempts at directly challenging both the Spanish and the Portuguese. In 1,5 ,5,5 the French, under naval officer Nicolas Durand de Villegai_gnon, attempted to colonize an island off the coast of Portuguese-held Brazil. It was not only a bold but also a unique endeavor, since it was the first European New \Vorld settlement to include both Protestants and Catholics­ French Huguenots and Swiss Calvinists. From the beginning, however, the two groups clashed with each other, and Durand left the colony in frustration. In 1.560, Portuguese soldiers captured the settlement, and those who survived the attack were forced to flee to the mainland, where they were rescued by friendly natives. In 1 .5 62 another effmt was made when French soldier and adventurer Jean Ribault, hoping to initiate a Protestant (Huguenot) New \Vorlcl presence, tiied to found a colony named Charlesfort in the ve1y heart o f" Spanisli -helcl territory on Panis Island in Po1t Royal Sound, Floiicla (uear present­ clay Beaufo1t, South Carolina). Due to a sl1 ortage of food, however, this colony also failed. In 1 .5 64, yet a third

ABOVE LEFT: A sixteenth­

century French engravi ng depicts the Portuguese attack on Fort Coligny, at the French colony called Fra nce Anta rctique, i n Guanabara Bay (site of present-day Rio de Janeiro).

ABOVE RIGHr. Samuel de

Champlai n 's third voyage to the N ew World brought him to the vici n ity of the settlement he fou nded and named Qu ebec. Champlain's explorations took him as far south as present-day Chatham on Cape Cod . H ere, the fabled discoverer is s hown exploring the Ca nadian wilderness, in a ca. 1 893 pri nt.

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RIGHT: By the mid eighteenth centu ry, the settlement of Quebec was a flourishing city. Like many other renderings of N ew World com m u n ities drawn by Old World artists, this ca. 1 770 hand-colored etching by German engraver Franz Xaver H abermann presents an idealized view of Quebec City as a typical European metropolis.

129

colonization endeavor was made when Rene de Laudonniere and some three hundred soldiers and colonists t1ied to settle at Fort Caroline near present-day Jacksonville, Florida. The Spanish responded quickly. In 1565 they sent a small army under the command of Pedro Menendez de Aviles to destroy the Huguenots. In what turned into a massacre, Menendez not only slaughtered all of the French settlers but also ordered that their bodies be butchered and dumped into a nearby river. It was a bloody maneuver, designed to discourage fur­ ther attempts at encroachment upon Spanish territory, and it was effective. The French would not have a presence in what is now the southern United States until 1718 when they built New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi River. These early failed attempts at challenging Spain's New vVorkl domination led to a concentration on what would truly represent France's interest in No1th Ame1ica-the establish­ ment of a prosperous trade in furs to satisf)1 the enormous demand created by gentlemen throughout Europe wishing to adorn themselves in fur hats and fur-t1immed coats. J 1 1 1 GOS, Samuel de Champlain established a small settle­ ment in the region known

bv the natives as

Quebec, which

wo11ld l ie the beginnings of Q11ebec City. (Some se,·enty years earlier J acques Ca1tier had established a sh01t-lived settle­ t llel l t at nearby Cap Houge. ) Duling the summer of 1 6 1 1, Champlain tra\ 'eled to the area upon which present-day

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M ontreal would be built. But the French presenee i n the

trading operations were also characte1ized by a close relation­

Can adian tenit01ies was almost totally charaeterized by a

ship with many Native Ame1ican t1ibes, made necessary by

vastly scattered stiing of settlements, most of which were a

the need for Indian hunters and trappers . .\ l any French trap­

combination of fur-tradi ng stations and forts where soldiers

pers and traders not only lived among th e �ati,·e A meiicans

were stationed to protect the traders. Most of

but married Indi an women as well.

these stations were located dose to rivers or

In the encl, the French were not able to maintain posses­

bays for easy transportation of furs and eventu­

sion of the northern Amelican tenitorv that thev had named

ally stretched all the way to New Orleans.

New France . Their failure was due in great measure to their 011

i ntense concentration on f urs rather than on the establish­

two types of Frenchmen-the co11 re11 r dcs /Jois

ment ol' permanent settlements and economic diversification .

("run ner of the woods"), renegade, 11n li­

But there were other reasons as \\'E'll. In endeav01ing to estab­

censecl traders who h un ted an d traded in

lish colo11ies in the northern wilderness, Freneh authorities

the forest, and the vouage11 r, those who

attl' 1 1 1pted lo peqwtn atc the aristocratic Freneh social system

searched for fur s beyond the woods a1 1 d

in the New \\rorld. Tl , i s atte mpt at fe11dalism in America was

out on to tl1e vast Canadian plains, t1vically traveling by canoe. I n direct co1 1trast to t h e

seen most clearlv in th< ' e !T01i made b\' Fnmcc>·s Cardi1 1al

Spanish expe rience, the French fur hunting and

a powe rfu l e mpi re . Establish i n g what lw n amed th e

As the fu r trade grew, it came to depend

l{icl wli1'11 to con solidate New \\'ori el French possessions into

Voyageurs, em ployed by the H udson Bay Com pany, travel by freight canoe through the wilderness of New France in this 1 869 painting by Frances Anne Hopkins. The voyageurs were invaluable to the French not only for their h u nting skills but also for their ability to carry s u pplies to the far-fl u ng fu r-trading stations.

OPPOSITE TOP:

The busiest places in all of New France were the first trading stations where fu rs were sold and traded and where coureur des bois, ("run ners of the woods") and the Native Americans employed by the French were housed. Fu r was a luxury item in Europe, and by the seventeenth century, beaver felt was used extensively for men's hats. This stylish nobleman, ca. 1 630, is resplendent in a fur­ trimmed coat and hat.

OPPOSITE BOTTOM:

Drawn in 1 702 by N icolas de Fer and published in his L'Atlas curieux, this map reveals the enormous amount of North American territory claimed by France. Note how Canada, ou Nouvelle France ("Canada, or New France") abuts the territory of Florida.

BELOW:

Armand-Jean du Plessis (Cardinal Richelieu) attained lofty positions in both church and state. He was ordained a cardinal in 1 622 and was made King Louis Xll l's chief minister in 1 624, a position he held u ntil his death in 1 642. Flemish-born artist Philippe de Champaigne painted this portrait of the cardinal ca. 1 642; it was sent to Rome as a model for the making of a bust by sculptor Francesco M ochi. RIGHT:

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Company of New Franee, Richelieu created a society of noblemen called seig neu rs , who were given huge land grants along lakes and rivers. The seigneurs were then eharged with the task of bringing settlers, called ha/Jita11ts, to farm their land. Yet, once they settled in New Franee, the habitants were much more interested in furs than in clearing the land

for possession of North America, which sueceeded in rnling

and tilling the soil. And in a colony located in so vast a teni­

the continent.

tory-where habitants could easily steal off into the woods

It did not start auspiciously. In 1,5 8 .3, Biitish navigator Sir

and to hunt and trade. for furs on their own-Richelieu's plan

Humphrey Gilbert, hoping to establish England's first pres­

simply eould not be enforced.

ence in North America, received a chmter from Queen

Additionally, many of those who left France for the New

Elizabeth I and, with a small fleet, sailed for ); e\\foundland.

\Vorld chose to settle on the balmier Cmibbean islands. By

He stayed only about a month before setting out for home to

the 1660s, for example, Haiti had a population of some fifteen

pick up more supplies. Fo1tune, howe\ er, was not with

thousand French settlers, a number fivC' tim es greater than all

Humphrey Gilbert. As he made his way back across the

of New France's population at the time. Ultimately, it was the

Atlantic, his ship the Squ i rrel suddenl.v vanished and he was

French possessions in the \Vest Indies, with their flomishing

nevC'r heard from again .

sugar and tobacco crops, that represented France's greatest New \Norld success.

\Vhile saddened hv Gilbe1t's disaster, h i s half-brother \Valter Haleigh saw opportunity in Sir I lurnphrey's failure. Tall, hanclsonw, and extreme! _',' eloquent, Haleigh was a per­

ENGLAND RULES THE NORTH

sonal favorite o!" Eliz.alwtl1 l. And he had an all-consumina b

The Spanish an
English natio11." I l C' was also clear ahout what kind of colon:·

Americas. ThC' French were the fi rst to challenge the Spanish

he wanted to establish. \\'lwreas C ilhert had . from the begin­

New \Vorld presence. Yet, in the end it was Englancl, the last of the great European powers to seriouslv enter the qnest

goal. " l shall," he told his friends, "but li\ e to see America an

ning,

regarded

his

en clean >r

to

bring

settlers

to

Nl'wf01 111dla11 cl as a social experiment, Haleigh's proclaimed

OPPOSITE: Known as the Virgin Queen because she never married, Q ueen Elizabeth I sponsored Sir H umphrey Gil bert's attempt to establish England's first American colony. Elizabeth, who lent her name to what became known as the Elizabethan Era, ruled G reat Britain for forty-five years, a period marked by significant

advances in England's worldwide power and i nfluence. The Armada Portrait was painted by George Gower around 1 588 to commemorate the defeat of the Spanish Armada (depicted through the window in the background). The q ueen's global power is reflected by her hand resting over the globe.

BELOW: Sir Walter Raleigh was a man of many talents and accomplish ments. A skilled poet as well as a warrior, Raleigh, before attempting to establish an English colony in Virginia, was i nstrumental in suppressing an Irish rebellion and succeeded in destroying the lairs of

Spanish and Italian pi rates off the I rish coast. He is credited with popularizing the use of tobacco and, according to u n proved legend, with bringi ng the potato to I reland. This 1 585 portrait miniatu re of Raleigh was pai nted by Engl ish artist N icholas H i llard.

133

goal was to found "a genuine, self-peq_)et­

We were ente1tained with all love, and

u ating eolony, not a mere trading post

kindness, and with as much bountie,

or ganison.

after their manner, as they could

In early 1584, Raleigh initiated

possibly devise. We found the

his quest by sending out two small

people most gentle, loving, and

ships,

P hilip

faithful, void of all guile and

Amadas and Arthur B arlowe, to find

treason, and such as lived under

a suitable location for planting a

the

eolony. In July they reached the

age . . . their meate is very well

outer banks of what is now North

[stewed with corn and beans] and

com m anded

by

manner of the golden

thev., make broth verv - sweete, and

Caroli n a and, after spending time

savm ie. Thei1 vessels are earthen

exploring the area and observing the

pots . . . their dishes are wooden platters

n atives-parti cularly those on Roanoke

of sweete timber; ,,ithin the place where

Island-came to the conclusion that it was not

they feede was their lodging, and ,,ithin that

only a suitable spot to establish a settlement but also an advantageous location from whieh to raid Spanish

their I doll, which they \\'orship, of whome they speake

settl ements to the south. Tli e voyagers then returned to

incredible things.

E ngland, carrying back with them samples of the rc>gion's flora and fauna, two natives, and a detailed report of' the area

Encouraged by his explorers' repo1ts, Raleigh wasted no

an d its inhabitants. Arthur B arlowe, one o f' H aleigh's pro­

time and within a year clispatchecl sc,·en ships under the eom­

teges, wrote a report entitled The First Voynge to H.oanokc.

rnan cl of his cousi n, Sir Hicharcl Crenvillr, to establish "the

1 584 . . . , which was first p1 1blishC:'d in 1 .5 89 in Hichard

l'i rst colo1 1.'' of Virginia." B u t after Gremille's party landed on

H akl uyt's

O i l (!

the northe rn encl ol' Roanoke Island, they almost i mmediately

Discoveries of the English Nat io11 . B arlow speaks glowingly

experienced a m11nlier of troubling incidents with the nati,·es .

of the Native Americans he encountered:

Convinced, however, that with enough settlers all problems

The

Prin cipal! Na vigatio11s,

Vo iages,

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This German version of a map d rawn by John Wh ite and engraved by de Bry i n 1 590 shows t h e arrival of British ships (and a sea monster) off the coast of Virginia. The territories of two Native American tribes, the Weapemeoc and Secota n , are identified, along with the colony of Roanoke located on the island in the mouth of the river.

1 34 ► -I

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could be overcome, Grenville decided to leave a hundred

nine children-all led by Raleigh's artist friend John \Vhite

men at Roanoke under the command of Ralph Lane, prom­

(see " Illustrations for a New \Vorld" in Chapter 3). The party

ising to return in no more than twelve months . He then sailed

landed at Roanoke on July 22, 1587, and was cli srna:·ed to dis­

back to E ngland to gather more colonists and supplies .

cover that of the fifteen men who had been left behind, only

More than a year passed, then .a second and a third. Still

the bones of one could be found. E ncountering a group of

there was no Grenville. Finally, to the great joy of the

Croatoans, who claimed to be the only tiibe in the area still

colonists, n ow desperately short of food and in constant

foendly to the whites, \Vhite and his pa1t_\' were told that the

clanger from various groups of Indians, sails were spotted. But it was not G renville. It was Sir Francis Drake, on his way

fifteen men had been attacked bv , members of other nati,·e tribes and that nine survivors of the assault had taken to a

home from yet another of his successful raids on Spanish

boat and had sailed up the coast .

Caiibbean possessions. Fearing for the settlers' survival,

As determined as Haleigh to make �mth Ameiica a

Drake convinced them that they should return to England

British possession, \Vhite convinced the n ew colonists,

with him . Ironically, a short time later, Grenville, having been

including his daughter, who had gi,·en biith to the first

long delayed by yet another lengthy series of British-Spanish

English child born in America, to remain and build a penna­

conflicts, arrived \vith his relief expedi tion . Alarmed at

nent settlement. For more than a year, he led them in their

finding the colony deserted, he made the i mmediate decision

struggle to s1 1nin:> . But \\ith supplies ru n ning out and aware

to turn back home, but n ot before leaving fifteen h rave souls

that more bodies were needed to provid<:' additional protec­

behind to maintain an English New \Vorlcl presence and to

tion again st the threat ol" l ndia11 attack he l'inall.' · decided that

peq)etuatc Raleigh's claim.

lw n eeded to return to England to replenish the colony.

Raleigh remained undaunted. I n 1 .5 87 he sent out another group of colonists-ninety-one men , seventeen women, and

\ \ '! ten, af'ter two ',·ears, \\rhite fi nalh. made his wav . back to

Hoanoke he had no 1ww settlers with him. Unable to find

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ships because almost every British vessel had been comman­ cleerecl to fight back the attack by the Spanish Annada, the best he was able to do was to gain passage on a privateering e1,.'Peclition that promised to drop him off at Hoanoke on their wav back from their Caribbean raids, \Vhc1 1 \Vhi tc and the

........

p1ivateers fin.ally anivecl at Hoanoke there was not a soul to be found, The onl y due was the word "Croatoan" carved into a post ancl the word "Cro" etched into a nearly tree, Notlii11g else of the colony was ever found-a rnys te1y that, to tliis day, historians struggle to explain,

The British attempt at establishing their first colony at Roanoke ended i n both disaster a n d mystery. M uch of what we do know about the failed attempt is due to the painti ngs created by John Wh ite before he left the island. While i n Roanoke, Wh ite also drew this map of

Virgi nia Colony, s howing the North Carolina coast from Cape Lookout to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, which was engraved by de Bry and publis hed i n 1 590. Roanoke Island, near Trin ity Harbor, is shown i n t h e center toward the bottom as "Roanoac."

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Sir Francis Drake

0

f all the individuals who played their role in the drama of New \tVorld

settlement, none was more daiing or more feared than Sir Francis Drake. Among his many exploits was his accomplishment in becoming the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe ( 1.5 77-80) . Drake was also seconcl - in-cornmand- of the British fleet that, in 1587-88 in one of Great B1itain's most heralded naval victories, defeated a Spanish squadron of more than 120 vessels . Known as the Spanish Armada, the Spanish fleet had been sent to the waters off Great Britain by King Phillip I I in I

an attempt to halt England's raids on Spain's New World possessions and its Atlantic treasure ships . Drake later established himself as the most effective of all the British "sea dogs'· who successfully raided Spanish treasure.

Sir Francis Drake's exploits as a privateer earned h im s u c h fa m e throughout G reat Brita in that portraits of him, such as this one by an u n known artist ca. 1 580, became extremely popular.

LEFT: From 1 585 to 1 604,

BELOW: This pictorial

England and Spain fought a

d iagram is part of a series

series of battles. Never

of maps on the battle of

formally declared, the

1 588 created by artist

Anglo-Spanish War was a

Robert Adams and engraver

struggle over economic,

Augustine Ryther for

political, and religious

Petruccio Ubaldi n i 's A

control. In 1 587, Elizabeth the Spanish port of Cadiz,

discourse concerninge the Spanishefleete invadinge Englande in the yeare 1588,

completely surprising the

publis hed in London i n

sent Drake to boldly attack

Spanish. In this painting by

1 590. The image depicts

Francisco de Zurbaran,

the culmi nation of the

Defense of Cadiz against the English (1 634) , Spanish

battle, as the English fleet and Spanish fleet meet

leaders are shown against

head on (upper right) just

the backdrop of the battle,

north of the Strait of Dover.

trying to plan what would

137 n 0 r 0 z

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be a futile defense.

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I n addition to his scores of successfu l attacks o n Spanish treasure s h ips, Drake also carried out effective raids on Spanish settlements i n the Caribbean. This 1 589 map painting by J o h n Wh ite shows Drake's 1 586 raid on St. Augu stine and is one of the earliest pri nted depictions of any E u ropean town within what is now the U n ited States.

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s h ips and seizing their cargo, Sir Francis Drake was following a tradition of piracy that began as fa r back a s classical antiqu ity, when the Etru sca ns and the Th racians earned notorious reputations as pirates, and reached a zenith with the Barbary pi rates, privateers worki ng for the Ottomans and the Barbary states (Algiers, Morocco, Tripoli, and Tu nis). From early in the sixteenth century u ntil the nineteenth, the Barbary pi rates preyed on shipping along Africa's Barbary Coast and well i nto the M editerranean. Whether they were called pirates, privateers, buccaneers, kapers ( Dutch) , freebooters

( English), or filibustiers (French) , those who raised havoc on the seas became a well-known part of popu lar cu lture, and the names of the most notorious of them, s uch as Sir Henry Morgan, Captain William Kidd, Jean Lafitte, and Edward " Blackbeard" Teach, became household words. The title page of

The Buccaneers ofAmerica,

written in 1 678 by Alexander Exquemeli n , believed t o b e a French su rgeon who enlisted with the buccaneers for a time, illustrates the exploits of the English, French, and Dutch buccaneers who plied the waters among the Caribbean islands and along the coasts of Central and South America.

Soldier, sailor, author, mapmaker, and i nveterate adventurer-John Smith was all of these. His greatest contribution, however, was as "fou nder" of New England, which he explored, named, mapped, and described. This engraving, which appeared in Smith's 1630 book The

True Travels, Adventures, and Observations of Captaine John Smith, shows him proudly clad i n armor, with his left hand resting on his sword h andle.

140 ► --l ► z --l (")

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The next Biitish attempt at colonizing North Ameiica

known as the Great New \Vorkl Migration, Smith was also a

seemed destined for the same tragic ending. In May 14, 1607,

superb organizer and motivator. At Jamestown, he continually

three ships-the Susall Constant, the Godspeed, and the

mediated disputes between 1ival factions that developed

Discovery, sailed into the James River in Virginia and landed

among the settlers. Most important, he managed to persuade

104 would-be settlers at a site they named Jamestown. It had

the gokl-seeking members of the eolony to abandon their

been a disaster-plagued voyage. Thirty-nine of the voyagers

fruitless quest and to engage i n the farming and other phys­

had died from scurvy on the journey aeross the Atlantic. Many

ical labor necessary to keep the settlers aliYe.

of the remaining members seemed unlikely candidates to

Spurred on by Smith's cheerful goading and direction,

carve out a colony in the wilderness. They were not farmers or

wells were dug, the manufacture of soap was begun, nets and

artisans but members of the gent1y who had come to the New

traps for fishing were fabricated, and the first erops were

\Vorld seeking gold.

l1lanted. Eventuallv enough trees were felled so that eanrnes .,

\.._

(7

They had named their new home Jamestown, but a far

o f ti m ber could he shipped hack to England and exchanged

more proper designation would have been Smithtown. For as

for a steady flow of supplies. The establishment of this vital

events unfolded, the fact that the colony became the first

tra11satlantic trade was the beginning of tlw li feli1w between

English settlement to survive was d11e almost solely to tlic

tl ic British colonies and the mother country throughout the

efforts and abilities o f one man. He was only twenty-seven

entire Colonial Ern.

years old, but John Smith had already jou rneyed through

ln 1 609, Smith was serio11sl:' h11rned in a freak gnnpowder

much of Europe as a soldier of fortune. An eloquent and pro­

accident and was forced to retu rn to Engla nd. But he left

lific writer whose tracts eventually launched what becanlC'

behind a settlement that, through his will, b<:>eame the first

A

D E S C R I PTI O N _o f :AC!w England: OR

O B S E R V A T I O N S, A N D di (coueries, of Captain [o/;n Smith ( Admtrall

THE

.of that Counrry) in the North of America, in the year ufour Lord . I 6 1 4 : n,ith thefaccfj[e of fixe Shipsi that went the nextyea.re I 6 t 5 ; and the -acctdcr.rs b( fell him among the Frend: men of warre: With the proofe of the prefent benefit this Countrey aft-oords : whithet thts prcfem yeare, I 6 1 6 , e,g ht voluntary Shipt are gone to ma�futther trya!I.

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At L O ND O N

Printed by Humfrey Lownes, for Robert C!erke ; and a rc to be {oul
in Chancery lane, ot1er again!t Lin� colnes Inne. I 6 I 6.

Title page from John Smith's A Description of New England (1 61 6), which was one of the most infl uential books written during the settlement of the New World; its "proofe of the present benefit this cou ntry affords" was instru mental in motivating Pilgri ms to seek religious and political freedom in America .

141

English-speaking colony north of Spanish-held Flmida. And his role as Great B1itain's most important early Ame1ican col­ onizer was far from over. In 16 14, Smith was once again back in the New \Vorld, but not as a settler. He had been hired bv, two London mer. chants, who sent him across the Atlantic to hunt whales.

Cruising the waters off the eoast of present-day Maine, he discovered no whales. But his voyage had far more important results. Continuing on down the eoast as far south as Cape Cod, Smith mapped every bay and inlet he encountered, endowing vaiious sites with such English place names as

Plymouth, Cambridge, and Dartmouth. \\1hen he returned to England he described his discoveries in a book whose title, A

Description of New England, endowed the land that had been lrnown as Northern Virginia ,,ith a brand new name. From that time on Smith, who, more than any of his con­ temporaries understood the extraordinary potential of Amelica, devoted most of his energies to championing English colonization of the New \\'orld. If an Englishman ""have hut the taste of virtue and magnanimity," he wrote, "what to such a mind can be more pleasant than plating and building a foun­ dation for his postelity. ,, Com menting on his own personal experience he added "of all t he four parts of the world I have yet seen not inhabited, could I have but means to transport a colonv, I would rather liw here than amwhere else. " J

,

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BELOW: Pocahontas's life is filled with many legends. What is certain is that she eventually married British colonial leader John Rolfe and was baptized. This print, ca. 1 870, illustrates the dramatic moment when Pocahontas is said to have saved John Smith.

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This map, the first accurate description of the Chesapeake region, was drawn by John Smith in ca. 1 606-8 and was based bot� on his own explorations of the area and descriptions of the territory he obtained from Native Americans. When it was first pu blished in 1 61 2, the engraver William H ole added the insert depicting I ndian leader Powhatan's court. Smith recou nted in n umerous writings a romantic and u nverifiable tale of how he had been captured in December 1 607 RIGHT :

and taken north of Jamestown to meet the chief of the Powhatans. According to a letter he wrote to Queen Anne in 1 61 6, Smith claimed that just as he was about to be executed, the chief's daughter, Pocahontas, threw herself across his body "at the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine; and not o n ly that, but so prevailed with her father, that I was safely conducted to Jamestown."

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BELOW: Describing their

brought them over the vast

landing on the bleak wi ntry

and fu rious ocea n, and

shore of Cape Cod, Pilgrim

del ivered them from all the

leader William Bradford

peri ls and m iseries thereof,

wrote in the History of

again to set their feet on

Plymouth Plantation (ca.

the firm and stable earth,

1 650), that they "fell u pon

their proper element." This

their knees and blessed the

l ithograph from ca. 1 846

God of H eaven who had

recreates the landing scene.

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Less than five years later, his proselytizing would have

flrst described by John Smith. Smith, in fact, had offered his

results. In Holland a religious group that had moved to the

services to the Pilgrims before they had left Holland, but they

Netherlands to remove themselves from the dictates of the

had turned him down. Citing what he believed was the reason

Church of England read Smith's Description of New England

why they had declined his offer, Smith wrote in his book The

with growing interest. Alarmed that their children were

True Trauels, Adre11t11res and O/Jsen;ations of Captain Jolin

beginning to become more Dutch than English and anxious

Sm ith (16.30): "My books and maps were much better cheape

to start life anew in a place where they could practice their

to teach them, than myselfe."

religious views without interference, they made a bold deci­

The Cape Cod the Pilgrims encountered was a barren,

sion. They would brave the dangerous Atlantic voyage and

windswept place dominated by dunes and scrnb oak, hardly

establish their own community in that new land that Smith

an ideal place for settlement, so they attempted to sail around

had so glowingly described.

it toward the Hudson River; but, after im mediately encoun­

In July 20, 1620, the people who would forever be known

tering shoals and dangerous currents, they turned around

as the Pilgrims sailed from H olland in two ships, the

and, on November 1 1, anchored in what is today

Speedwell and the Mayflo wer. They were not far out when the Speed1uell proved unseaworthy and both ships were diverted to a port in England. There, as many of the Speed1Vell's passengers as could be accommodated were transferred to the M(/yjlo1Ver. By the time that this was done, and the 1 02 men, women, and children aboard the Ma!;fio1ver were ready to sail, it was mid September and the voyagers were forced to m ake the crossing with winter fast approaching. Battered by winds and storms, the Pilgrims, on more than one occasion, considered turning hack. But on November 10, 1620, land was spotted. They had reached Cape Cod, the area

Pilgri ms, alone i n a wilderness and escorted by armed members of their com m u n ity, make their way to c h u rch, in a ca. 1 893 print. "They had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertai n them or refresh their weather­ beaten bodies," Bradford wrote of the Pilgrim's arrival i n History of

Plymouth Plantation, "no

145

houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor."

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Provincetown Harbor. It was while anchored there that thev

The Puritans were the first group of colonists to follow the

wrote and ,signed the now-famous Mayflower Compact, by

Pilg1ims. Also dissenters against the Church of England, the

which the settlers agreed to follow the rules and regulations

Puritans were even more radical than the Pilgrims. They were

set clown in the compact and the Pilgrims' leaders agreed that

determined to escape the dictates of the Church (and many

they would formally recognize that the government that was

also, of the Crown) and live according to their own 1igid dic­

about to be formed derived its powers from the consent of the

tates. The Pilg1ims crossed the Atlantic in a tiickle; the

governed. Over the next six weeks the Pilgrims searched for a

Puritans came in a torrent. The first seven hundred anivecl in

more suitable site, until finally in late December they sailed

Massachusetts Bay in M arch 1630. By 1 640, more than si-.;:­

i nto Plymouth harbor and decided to make that area their

teen thousand followed, establishing ,illages all along the sev­

New World home.

enty-five- mile-long coast of M assachusetts . \Vhat was

Terrible times followed and despite the fact that the

apparent from the beginning was that the pattern of life in

industrious settlers built houses, occasionally found buried

this eve r -growing number of settlements would be dictated

Indian corn, and caught fish when they could, half of the

by natural conditions . Gi\'en the harsh climate, the forests ,

colonists cliecl_ during the first winter. There would be other

and the rocky soil, farming would never be canied out in a

devastating winters as well, but with each ensuing spriug new

grand scale. As legend has it, an anonymous early settler is

crops blossomed and the colony survived. I ts ve1y survival

said to have exclaimed, "The air of the countiy is sharp, the

became an inspiration to thousands of others back in England

rocks many, [and] the trees innumerable. " It was to the

anxious to exchange the Old World for the New.

Atlantic that New Englanders looked for their prosperity.

OPPOSITE: This engraving pu blis hed i n 1 821 by English printmaker Richard Hol mes Lau rie shows slaves at work on a tobacco pl antation. The print is notable for its i nclusion of the scallop shell, cask, and anchor at its center­ symbolic of the ties between the plantations and merchant s h i ppi ng.

146 )> --i r )>

"The ocean," histoiian M arshall Davidson wrote in his book

Life in America ( 19.51 ) "was their plantation and their hunting

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ground; the cod and its scaly cousins was their staple crop ."

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n

This pattern remained the same as New E ngland colonies

z

spread from M assachusetts to Rhode Island, Connecticut,

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M aine, and New H ampshire. A very different pattern, again based on n atural condi­ tions, emerged in the B 1itish colonies that were established in the Arne1ican South. I n total contrast to the changeable New England climate ,vith its harsh winters, the southern climate was mild and the soil rich and fertile. It was ideal for the growing of tobacco, destined to become the single most important crop in early colonial A merica (see "New \Vorld The Pu ritans were a stern lot as evidenced in this portrait of Reverend John Cotton, a major figure i n t h e early history o f the Massachu setts Bay Colony. While even more rel igiously conservative than the Pilgri ms, the Puritans, however, did not let piety stand in the way of their search for profits in mercantile activities. This painting was created by illustrator Howard E. Sm ith in 1 930.

Flora and Fauna" in Chapter 3). B ecause the growing of tobacco almost immediately became so profitabl e, the crop not only dominated the southern colonies· economy, it dic­ tated the area's physical and societal makeup as well. The Yast region became a land not of industiial population centers as in New England but of enormous plantations , larger e,·en th an those that had first been de,·eloped in the islands. And, as on the islands, the southern plantations were owned by rel ­ atively few planters, all o f whom relied o n the labor o f slaves for their prospeiity. As early as 16.5 3, one planter, Captain Adam Thoro11ghgood, boasted that his plantation encom­ passed ,5 ,3.50 acres. Less than one hundred years later, Robert

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snow: The use of i ndigo as a blue dyestuff dates back to ancient ti mes, when the weari ng of indigo-dyed clothi n g was regarded as a

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RIGHT: The bustl ing skylin e a n d harbor of Charleston can be seen in this panorama, publis hed in London Magazine i n 1 762.

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sign of wealth. As in South Carolina, indigo was a major New World crop on the island of J amaica. This engravi ng of an i ndigo plantation appeared in the Lo ndon publication of A

148

., .,

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New and Complete System of Geography (1 778-79), by C. T. M iddleton.

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"King" Carter's plantation holdings in Virginia totaled more than three hundred thousand. It was a system that endowed the wealthy planters with a lifestyle akin to the most privileged gentry back in England. "Such a country life as they had," \\Tote Andrew Bumab:', an English traveler, in his Tra ccls

i11

tlie j fiddlc Scttlc111e11 ts in

North America (1 ,.59-60), "in the rniclst of a profusion of rural spmts and diversions, \\ith little to do themsekes, and in a climate that seems to create rather than check pleasure. must almost naturally haH' a strong effect in h1inging them to he j 11st planters as fcrdnrntcrs in England make farmers." According to English-horn Virginia minister and scholar I I11gh J ones's Th e Pr('sc1 1 t State of \ 'i rgi11ia ( 1 724). in \\'illiamsl rnrg, the one m ajor urban eom rnunit:' to dew lop in colonial Virginia, the people, "behaH" themselves exactl:' as

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the gentry in London, most families of note having a coach,

wrote the author of Amaican Husbandry (published anony­

chaiiot, berlin [ a four-wheeled covered carriage], or chaise. "

mously in London in 1 77.S), that "no husbandry in Europe can

Tobacco culture gradually spread throughout the South

equal this of Carolina: . . . plenty of good land free from taxes,

although, unlike Virginia, the other southern colonies did not

cheapness of labour, ancl cl e arness of product sold . . . are,

rely solely on this one crop . In No1ih Carolina, pine and naval

united sufficient to explai n the causes of a Carolina planter

stores, p roducts particularly snitecl to the dem ands of

having such vastly superior oppo1tunities of making a fo1tune

E ngland's mercantile well-being, became essential to the

than a British farmer can possibly enjoy. . . liberty reigns in

colony's success. In South Carolina, rice, as well as in digo

perfectiou; t,L\:es are too inconsiderable to be mentioned; no

used in making dyes, were paramount to that colony's

military service; no oppressions to enslave the planter and rob

economy. "Your lordships' Count1y hat!, made more rice ye

him of the fruits of his i ndustry. \Vhen all these great ancl

last crop than we have ships to transport," the colony's gov­

manifest advantages are considered. I think it must appear

ernm� Colonel James M oore, reported in a M arch 1 700 letter

sur p rising that more emigrants from different parts of

to the English Lords Com missioners for Trade ancl

Europe arc not constautly moving from thence to America."

Plantations. By 1 7,5 0, South Carolina had become a sparkling

Along with its products, South Carolina also produce
gem in the British C rown : "It much be apparent at first sight,"

anoth er jt'wel . Ewn before its rice trade hacl been developed,

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Charleston had become a leading port for shipping timber and furs brought down from Canada. Gradually it grew into a social, cultural, and business center and one of the most attractive and cosmopolitan communities in all of America. Bostonian lawyer and patriot Josiah Quincy Jr. wrote in a M arch 1, 1773 letter to his wife (published in Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy . . . , 1 875) that in "grandeur, splendour of buildings, decorations, equipages, numbers, commerce, shipping, and indeed in almost everything" there was nothing in America that could rival Charleston.

THE DUTCH EAST INPIA COMPANY

Of all the colonies that were established in B1itish Ameiica, it was those referred to as the Middle Colonies in which the b�st-balanced economies were formed. \Nhile the Maryland landscape was dotted with tobacco plantations, its excellent harbor at Baltimore made it a thriving commercial and ship­ ping center, particularly for the transportation of milling wheat and flour to the West Indies. New York, which was particularly prized by the British government because its location pro­ vided a bulwark against the French and Indian menace to the north and west, also had a magni ficent harbor, one that gave indication of the colony's future prominence and prosperity.

Baltimore was not founded until 1 729 and, in its earliest years, contained only twenty-five houses and some two h u ndred people. Its loc�tion beside a spacious harbor, however, led to rapid growth, and by 1754, Maryland's royal governor Horatio Sharpe stated in a report to

Frederick, Lord Baltimore (governor of the entire province of Maryland), that the city had now attained "the appearance of the most i ncreasing town i n the Province." This aquatint shows a view of Baltimore and its harbor from Federal Hill, by American artist William James Ben nett, ca. 1 831 .

.

·•

The seamen who sailed for the Dutch East I ndia Company were among the fi nest mari ners in the world. The company itself was the first multinational corporatio n in the world and the first to issue stock. It maintained an important trading presence for almost two centuries. A painting from 1 622 by Hendrik Cornelisz Vroom depicts a few of the company's many

s hips i n the harbor of H oorn, the Netherlands. One of the most powerful com panies the world has ever seen, and one of the first thought to trade s hares, by 1 669, the Dutch company had approximately 40 wars hips, 1 50 merchant s hips, 10,000 soldiers, and thousands of employees in ports across Europe-and Asia.

-- -

LEFT: The Dutch East India Com pany (known as the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC, i n

Dutch) provided Henry H udson with his ship, the Half Moon, depicted here at anchor in the H udson River. Note the N ative American canoes approaching the ship. This print was created ca. 1 895, after a painting by American a rtist Warren Sheppard.

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New York did not start out as a British possession. In 1602, the Estates-General of the Netherlands established the Dutch East •

t

•

India Company, granting it a twenty-one-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia. Like Spain, France, and England, the Dutch were also anxious to find a water route to the East, and in 1609, the Dutch East India Com pany hired a veteran English ex11lorer, Henry Hudson, who had already sought such a route through the frozen North, to carry out their quest. In 1609, in his small Dutch ship, the Half Moon , Huclson

reached North America, sailecl along the Atlantic coast, and discovered the' major river that bears his name. Based on his report of what he had found, the Dutch claimed all the land

along the Hudson Hiver. By 16 1 4, they had built trading establishments on Manhattan Island and, bv, 1625, had sent

settlers to the region and hacl established both the town and the colony they named New AmstC'rdam. By the beginning of the 1 660s, the town of New Amsterdam was a tluiving p01t boasting some twenty-five­ ln mclred people. From the start, there had been bitter ten­ sions between the Dutch and the Blitish over the Dutch

0 z

The Dutch claim to an

complai n ed of how the

Peter Stuyvesant is shown

American empire was both

directors of the Dutch West

arguing with res idents of

brief and modest. I n his

I ndia Com pany were far

New Amsterdam, who

treatise Korte historiael

more interested in

plead with him not to open

ende journaels

extracting heavy booty from

fi re on the British. The

aenteyckeninge (Short

Spanish shipping i n the

painting is by Jean Leon

Historical Notes and

Atlantic: "The d irectors

Gerome Ferris, who in the

Journal Notes of Various

bestowed not a thought

early twentieth centu ry

Voyages, 1 655), Dutch

upon their best trad ing

created a series of

merchant captai n David

post. whether people were

commemorative i nterpre­

Pietersen de Vries

making farms there or

tations of early A merican

not . . . (but) would rather

development cal led The

see booty arrive than to

Pageant of a Nation.

speak of their colon ies."

N ew Amsterdam i n 1 664, the year i n w hich the Dutch colony was taken over by the E nglish. This picture was made i n 1 644 for the Dutch West I ndia Company (a smaller company than the VOC, also based i n Holland) by Joan Vinckeboons.

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presence in the midst of the other E nglish colonies. The situ­

honor of the Duke of York, whose brother King Charles II

ation was made worse when, during the E nglish Civil War

granted him proprietorship of the former Dutch possession.

(1642-49), Dutch trading ships took advantage of Britain's preoccupation with the turmoil and began entering B ritish ports, where they offered goods for sale at reduced prices.

PEACEABLE KINGDOM

Added to it all was the fact that, beginning in 1647, New

Under B ritish control, Ne,v York eventually became one of

etherlands was governed by the arrogant, heavy-handed

England's most valued holdings, but throughout the colonial

Peter Stuyvesant, a man truly despised by the Dutch colonists.

period, it was not that possession but Pennsylvania that shone

In 1 664, the inevitable showdown between the English and

as the most economically diverse and successful of all the

the Dutch took place when Britain sent four frigates to New

Middle Colonies. Pennsylvania was founded by the devout

Amsterdam and ordered the colony's surrender. Although his

Quaker William Penn who, in 168 1 , received a land charter

colony was pr�ctically unarmed, Stuyvesant was determined to resist the B1itish demand but was unable to muster any

from King Charles II. (Legend has it that the grant was given to settle a moneta1y debt that the king owed to Penn's recently

support from the colonists whom he had so often offended.

deceased father.) Penn's grant encompassed all of present-day

After the governor was forced to surrender without a single

Pennsylvania and all of what is now Delaware, one of the

shot being fired, the E nglish renamed the colony New York in

largest land grants in history ever awarded to an individual.

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Folk artist Edward H icks was a native of Pennsylvania and a devout Quaker. Among H icks's most famous creations were h is various versions of his painting The Peaceable Kingdom, many of which included scenes of William Pen n 's treaty with the Native Americans-such as this one (TOP LEFT) from ca. 1834. Years after Pen nsylvania had been

fou nded , French Enl ighten ment writer and philosopher Franc;ois-M arie Arouet de Voltaire, in his Lettres philosoph iques (Philosophical Letters, 1 734)

observed that Pen n's treaty with the I ndians "was the only treaty between these peoples and the Christians that was never sworn to and wh ich has not been broken."

"½ In a short tirne this province will ivant very little fro'ln England, . its rnot lier country. ,, --Pd(•1 k.drn, " ritiu� about Penns� hmiia i n Trarrls i11to .\'orth i\.11u'1"ica I 1 7--1-S)

157

It was not only the size of Penn's grant that endowed him with good fortune. Because of its late founding, Pennsylvania was not plagued by the hunger, disease, and Indian hostility that had plagued the earliest attempts at New \i\Torld colo­ nization. However, the greatest difference was Penn himself. Many of the others who attempted to found colonies were driven by selfish interests or the desire to escape conformity. As the absolute proprietor of a staggering twenty-eight­ million acres, Penn could have set himself up as a feudal lord. Instead, motivated by his Quaker's faith that goodness could be achieved in the tem­ poral world, he crossed the Atlantic intent on establishing an ideal state, one in which the hall­ H icks also pai nted n u merous idyllic scenes of Pen n sylvania fa rms-farms that contributed so sign ificantly to the colony's

success. (TOP RIG HT) The

Residence of David Twining,

1 845-47, was created from memory of the farm H icks l ived on as a boy.

marks would be religious freedom, fair treatment of the natives, and the establishment of a government based on people's needs and wishes. Penn arrived in his new lands in 1682, accompanied by a group of one hundred fellow Quakers. Earlier, with his blessing, other Quakers had preceded him. It was the begin­ ning of a colony that became a model of success in more diverse ways than any other in Ame1ica. By 1760, the rich earth drained by the Delaware, Schuylkill, and Susquehanna rivers made Pennsylvania the breadbasket of the colonies.

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BELOW: By 1 790, less than a

century after its settlement, Philadelphia boasted a popu lation of more than 42,000 people. The home

of many distinguis hed scientists and men of letters, it attracted legions

of foreign visitors, some of whom referred to it as the " London of America." German artist Balthasar Friedrich Leizelt engraved this colorfu l view of Philadelph ia's waterfront i n t h e 1 770s.

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Visiting Englishman Alexan
America (1 748) that Pennsylvanians "make almost everything in such quantity an
more than two million people li,ing there-twenty thousand

mid 1700s, the city had blossomed into the most admired

in Boston, thirty thousand in New York, and fort:' thousand in

urban center in Arnedca. Carefully designed and laid out, the

Philadelphia alone-and the makeup of the population was

wide symmetry of its paved and curbed streets, its brick and

unlike anything that had e,,er taken place. Anglicans, Qnakers,

flagstone sidewalks, its beautifully spaced trees, and the inno­

I I ugucnots, Swiss, Germans, Creoles, French, Iiish-all

vative architecture of its buildings combined to make it what

these and dozens of others were represented in a uniquely

D. vV. Meinig in his book The Shaping of A11 1erica: Vol11mr 1 ,

American mosaic. "It has not been necessary to force people

Atla ntic America, 14.92-1 800 (1986) characterized as "the

to come and settle here," wrote Peter Kahn, "On the contrarY,

first important example in Ame1ica of the order so desired hy

foreigners of different languages hm·e left their country,

the merchant and tra
honses, property and relations and ventured r n-er "ide and

By 1775, the lure of the colonies had become so great that

storm,· seas in order to come hither. "

America's Atlantic seaboard was the home of tltc fastest

I l e could wel l have acl
growing population anywhere in the world. There were already

from which they had come, the polyglot of languages thev

159 spoke, and the wide diversity of their backgrounds, the colo­ nization of the Atlantic seaboard was a unifying force . No

becoming a vital part of the

matter what their differences, every one of the colonists had

schooners were also widely

shared the often-terrifying experience of crossing the

used in offs hore fishing

Atlantic. Once in Ame1ica they shared the many challenges of starting life anew in a world that not that long ago had been totally unknown. They had all settled in colonies that faced the Atlantic. And it was the Atlantic that would determine their destinies. From the very beginning, all of the colonies knew that, in order to survive, they had to trade. And well before the seventeenth century was over, small ships from every colony were m oving in and out of eastern sea­ ports.

M assachusetts,

Pen nsylvania,

and

Rhode Island competed ,vith each other to supply the foodstuffs and other goods that the southern colonies, concentrating on their staple crops, needed so badly. New York flour was

exchanged in

Charleston

for rice.

Charleston vessels carried freight to S avan nah . .. ....,.,.,,

BELOW: Along with

The result was not only a needed exchange of goods but also a vital exchange of interests and ideas, another major force in unifyi ng the dis­ parate colonies.

inter-colonial trade,

and became popular as pi lot vessels, particularly i n America a n d northern

Europe. The schooner shown here was used for halibut fishing; the drawi ng was done by one Captai n J . W. Collins a s part o f an 1 881 report to the U.S. Fish Com mission.

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This map cartouche depicts tobacco traders cond ucting busi ness at an American port, while slaves move cargo. It is an enlarged detail from a wel l-known map by su rveyors and British land holders Josh ua Fry and Peter Jefferson , called A Map of the Most Inhabited Part of Virginia . . . , publ ished

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in 1 755.

All of this ever-growing intcrcolonial maritime trade led to an early A m e rican shipbuilding industry, one in which colonial nautical designers, a1iisans, sail makers, and riggers proved them­ selves as skilled as any of their cou nterparts throughout the world, and in many cases even more innovative. In 1714, Captain Andrew Robinson of M assachusetts's Cape Ann created a sleek, two-masted vessel with a fore and aft rig and a forward jib that glided so grace­ ful ly over the water that upon observing her in action, according to legend one onlooker exclaimed, "See how she scoons." The name stuck, and the schooner, particularly adept at short-tack sailing and manageable even with the smallest crew, became the workhorse of intercolonial trade and ship­ ping. Soon nations throughout E u rope tu rned to the schooner for coastal commerce.

people from all those nations into closer contact than e\'er before. It had actually begun as far back as Jamestown when, under John S mith's leadership, the earl_\ ' settlers of that first colony began trading New \Vorld timber with England for life­ s ustaining supplies. It had continued with the Pilg1fo1s dm;ng the earliest clays of their Plymouth settlement, when the_v had sent a vessel back home loaded with clapboard supedor to any that could be found in the mother countr:'· And by 1617 Vi rginia was shipping ten tons of tobacco t o England a year. By the 1640s, the Commercial Ren)lution was well under way, brought on by an increasing desire by those in the colonies to obtain products not :ffailahlc in the �ew \Vorlcl.

THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION

"All foreign com m odities grew scarce," the � l assachusetts Bay Colony's go\'ernor John \Vinth rop \\Tote. "These straits

international trade that the next important clevelopme1 1t in

set our people to work to prmide fish, clapboards, plank, etc. ,

the making of the Atlantic world took place. Called tl ,e

They also looked t o Europe, dnming on the natural

Commercial Revolution, it would change the com merce and

trcasnre that had lured so manv of them to the i"\ew \Vorld in

economies of nations on both sides of tltc Atlantic and bring

the f'irst place . All along the � l assachusetts coast, tm\11s such

It was, however, not in intercolonial m aritime activity but in

and to look to the \Vest Indies for trade. "

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LEFT: By the middle of the eighteenth centu ry, Boston had become a major center of American com merce, as seen in this ca. 1 740 print by English engraver John Carwitham. Its bustling waterfront featured dozens of wharfs, the largest of which was Long Wharf, which extended a half-mile i nto the harbor.

as Salem, G loucester, M arblehead, and others developed into bustling fishing ports. I n 1641 alone, more than three hundred thousand codfish were shipped across the Atlantic to Europe. By 1670, M assachusetts Bay was the home of 430 ships, some of them as Jarge as 2.50 tons. It was the birth of the Yankee slippers, bold new seamen who instituted a hiangular trade, b1inging lumber, grain, and meat to the \Vest I ndies, d1ied cod and barrel staves to France and Spain, ancl wine, salt, and oranges that they had picked up in their ports of call to England. At the same time, trade between the southern colonies and Europe accelerated with the exchange of tar, resin, pitch, rice, and indigo for woolen goods,
.........

busiest commercial activity in the world. By l 7.5 0, more than 1,000 E nglish ships were involved in the transatlantic com­ merce, some 4,5 0 engaged in the sugar trade with the Caribbean islands alone. I n 1 773, more than 1 ,360 French

ABOVE: Balthasar Friedrich Leizelt engraved this image of the port of Salem, M assach usetts, in the 1 770s. By the eve of the American Revolution, colonial sh ipping had i ncreased spectacu larly, and colonial vessels were carryi ng goods throughout the world. "It is the great care of the [colon ial] merchants to keep their sh ips in constant employ,

which makes them trye all ports to force a trade," British royal agent Edward Randolph wrote to his king i n 1 676. Remarking on the fact that there were so many colonial s hi ps plying the Caribbean waters, Randolph added that "There is l ittle left for all the merchants i n England to impo rt i nto any of the plantation s."

This scene of Charleston 's sail-filled harbor was representative of the maritime activity that had transformed the once struggling colonies i nto a major factor in the making of the Atlantic world. The print, ca. 1 838, is by William James Bennett after a pai nting by George Cooke.

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vessels crossed the Atlantic to pick up goods produced in the

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colonies . A staggering 3,500 sh ips from England, the

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Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, and Denmark were

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involved in the Atlantic wine trade, deliveiing the valued

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spirits they picked up in the Azores and the Canaries to ports

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throughout Eu rope, Afoca, and Nmih and South America. The ramifications of the Commercial Revolution were many, not the least of which was a vital transformation in both Europe and New World society. As transatlantic trade became both increasingly vital and commonplace, the traders and merchants on both sides of the ocean gained a new and

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exalted status . In Europe, the merchants replaced the feudal landmvners as the most powerful of all classes, eventually even controlling the politics and the govern ment of many Old World nations. In America, the merchants not only took on a new status, but assumed rol es that went well beyond the trafficking of goods . Before the Colonial period was over, many became the retailers and wholesalers of the goods they brought in; investors in grain m ills, sawmi lls, foundries, wh arfs, and shipyards; and even established themselves as the leading employers and mon eylenders in the colonies. It had been a remarkable two and a h alf centmies . The Atlantic, for so long feared and unknown , had lwe1 1 contin u­ ously transformed-first as the waterway to exploration and discovery; then to the avenue for the greatest migration the world had even known; and finally as the pathway to tl w world .

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S L AVER Y I N H U MAN BON DAG E

A Cotton Plantation on the Mississippi, by Currier & Ives (1884), presents an idealized view of the slave­ driven cotton i ndustry.

S L AV E R Y

Shall \Ve dance to the sound of the p rofitable p oun d in Molasses an d Rn1n an d Slaves ? - AM EIU CAN COl\1PO S E H A N D LY R I C I S T S H E R !vl AN E DWA R D S , F R O M THE M U S I C A L

1 776, 1 969

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Husbandry wrote his 1 775 tract (see "England

the Roman Empire, and in Arabia and Greece, where it was

Rules the North" in Chapter 4), in which he

a key element in the development of the ancient Greek city­

urged planters to leave England and move to the American

states. Early records also reveal that slavery as an i nstitution

southern colonies, one of the advantages he had listed was

included a mixture of debt-slavery, slavery as a punishment

that there were "no oppressions to enslave the planter and

for crime, and, most commonly, the enslavement of p 1isoners

rob him of the fruits of his industry." He was right. The

of war or conquest. Almost nowhere was this slavery based on

p lanters would indeed not be enslaved. But that was hardly

race, nor, cruel and degrading as it was, did it result in the

true of millions of others. And it ,was on the backs of the

mortality that the transatlantic slaYe trade would bring about.

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including the Akkadian E mpire, Assyria, Rome and parts of

auth or of American

hen the anonym ous

slaves, brought to the colonies in chains

from

Africa,

that

the

planters in the southern colonies, as well as those in the islands, made their fortunes . Slavery, of course, did not begin in the Americas-the prac­ tice can be traced back to civiliza­ tion's earliest annals. In the Code of Hammurabi_ the Babylonian code of law written around 1760 BCE,

there are over twenty-five

decrees regarding slaves, which at the time was already a well-estab­ lished institution. Slaverv occurred in

every

ancient

civi lization ,

A detail of The Slave Market (1 888), by G u stave Boulanger; as illustrated here, G reek slaves represented a m u ltitude of n ational ities from across the G reek Empire. Aristotle espoused the view of G reeks on slavery in his Politics, 350 BCE: "And so, i n t h e arra ngement o f the family, a slave is a living possession . . . For that some should rule and others be ruled is a th i n g n ot o n ly n ecessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for s u bjection, others for rule."

This i m age of a convoy of bound slaves in Assyria was drawn by French a rtist Faucher-G udin, after a bas­ relief from the gates of Balawat. The third from left figure is the slave master. The gates adorned a fo rmer palace in the ancient Assyrian city of l mgu r-Enlil (in present-day Balawat, I raq). The image appeared in volume VI of Gaston Maspero's History of Egypt,

167

Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria (1 903-6).

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SLAVERY IN THE ATLANTIC WORLD

There had been slavery on the African continent from the beginning of recorded times. But, as histmian Herbert Klein has pointed out in his essay "The Atlantic Slave Trade to 16,5 0" in Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic \Vorld, 1 450-1 680 (2004), it was a domestic institu­ tion, confined to Afoca's most developed soeieties. Caravan slave routes across the Sahara to the Mediterranean had also existed from pre-Roman times, but it was not until the ninth century CE, when the Arab Empire spread into India and the eastern M editerranean, that a steady international slave trade took place. As historian Paul E. Lovejoy documented in his book Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (1983), between the ninth and fi fteenth centuries from five thousand_ to ten thousand slaves a year were transported along at least six interlocking caravan routes from Africa to the Mediterranean. According to Lovejoy, anywhere from 3.,5 million to 1 0 million slaves, most of them women and chil­ dren, were taken out of their homelands during this period.

Slaves wait to be sold at a slave market in Cairo, in a drawing by Scots artist David Roberts, ca. 1 838, publis hed as part of a collection of drawings i n Egypt a n d Nubia

(1 842-49). The d rawing was done from life by

Roberts d u ring his jou rneys in the region. Practiced since ancient ti mes, slavery remained prevalent i n Egypt th roughout the nineteenth century; i n the 1 800s the majority of slaves were women, forced i nto domestic work.

BELOW: This engraving of a slave caravan in West Africa illustrates the brutal ity of slavery; it was reproduced in the German book

Lesebuch der Weltgeschichte oder Die Geschichte der Menschheit (A Reader on World History or the History of Humanity), by William Redn bacher (1 890).

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The transpmtation of slaves across the great ocean to the A mericas entailed the largest movement of slaves ever under­ taken and had a profound and lasting impaet on the Atlantic world. It began with the Portuguese, who, under the leader­ ship of Prince Henry, were the first Europeans to reach Guinea (see "The Ambition of Piince Henry the Navigator" in Chapter 2 ) . Henry at first actually tiied to forbid slave traffic, but once early Portuguese settlers found that sugar eould be profitably grown on islands off the African coast, they turned to Afiican slaves for labor-

and Henry, to whom profitability

was always a god, reversed his course. Portuguese trading in slaves intensified when its explorers and colonists discovered

tations, particularl:· in the \\'est Indies. These locales had

and settled soil-rich Brazil. lt was also the Portuguese who

everything required for the establishment of a suecessful

first became aware of the African practice of enslaving pris­

plantation system-huge open land, fertile soil, good harbors.

oners of war and who first began trading guns, li<1uor, and

warm winds, and a clim ate pa1tieularl:· condueh·e to gro,,ing

other European goods with black slave owners for slaves. By

not only sugar. but tobacco, rice, and indigo-e,·enthing

1 6.50, other European nations, particularly the Dutch,

except the huge labor force needed to grow, process. and ship

English, and the French, hacl responded to the ever­

the crops. It could1d lie supplied b,· the ::\'ati\'e American

increasing New vVorld demands for slaves ancl had begun

population . who were d)ing from the diseases the earliest

trading with slaveholders from various West African nations.

Europeans had brouglit with them across the Atlantic. The

The demand was b rought abo11t by the ve1y nature of' the

Al'riea11s, however, were lar�eh· resistant to these diseases.

New \Vorld economies. By the 1.570s, the Prntug11esc had begun establishing sugar plantations in Brazil, and as dis­

Morem·cr, the,·- were acenstomed tn agricultural labor and ' were used to a tropical climate, and thus could be \\'orked as

cussed in the previous chapter, as tlie E uropean desire for

hard as their demanding owners required. ::--Jo wonder that, in

sugar grew, other nations began developing New vVorld plan-

1 670, King Louis XI\' of France repo1tedly proclaimed that

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This depiction of sugar-making i n the West I n d ies s hows a white overseer directing slaves as they carry out various fu nction s of the sugar­ making process. The illustration appeared i n t h e London publ ication Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, in 1 749. ABOVE:

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RIGHT: Scenes of slaves at work in the far-distant islands were common a rtistic s u bjects for Old World i l l u strators. This nineteenth-century en graving of a sugar plantation is by Paolo Fumagalli.

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I n testament to the glory of Ti mbuktu, a West African Islamic proverb stated , "Salt comes from the north, gold from the south, and silver from the cou ntry of the wh ite men, but the word of God and the treasures of wisdom are only to be found in Ti m bu ktu." This engravi ng of the city as envisioned by J. Clark appeared in the 1 830 book by August Rene Caillie, Travels to Timbuctoo. In the M iddle Ages, Tim buktu was legendary to Europeans as a metropolis of uni magined treasure, an oasis i n the Sahara. Over subsequent centuries, many Western explorers who d reamt of finding the city died before reaching their goal, whether succumbing to the brutal heat of the Sahara or being murdered by desert nomads. I n 1 824, the Societe de Geographie of Paris offered 1 0,000 francs to the first European to reach the city-and return al ive to tell about it. That man was French wine merchant August Rene Caillie, who discovered that Timb uktu was no longer an im portant intellectual and spiritual center of the Islamic world, but a small im poverished village on the edge of the desert.

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"there is nothing which contributes more to the development of the colonies and the cultivation of their soil than the labo­ rious toil of the Negroes." Beginning in the 1 600s, the number of slaves brought into Brazil, into Spanish-Ame1ican tenitory, and into Dutch-held

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New World possessions increased dramatically. Before 1 600 there had been fewer than 1 million slaves in the New \Vorld. By the end of the century, the number had grown to about 2. 75 million. By the middle of the 1700s, due greatly to slaves transported to English southern colonies on the North A me1ican mainland to work the tobacco and cotton planta­ tions, the number, according to conservative estimates. had increased to more than 7 million.

A CIVILIZATION THREATENED

Whatever the numbers, for the Af1icans in bondage, slave1y was a catastrophic and dehumanizing e:-..- peiience, made even worse, if possible, by the fact that these were people who came from rich cultures that had flourished for thousands of years; cultures that were facing destruction. Long before the first Europeans arrived, sophisticated civilizations had thiived all along the coast of \Vest Afiica. The people there lived uncler highly developed political and social systems in king­ doms headed by well-established rulers.

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Like Timbuktu, the city of Loango-part of a ki ngdom of the same name-was a h ighly adva nced com m u n ity. Established around the fifteenth centu ry, at its height in the 1 700s , the Loango Ki ngdom stretched from

the mouth of the Congo River and was an i m portant trad ing center for ivory, copper, tin, and slaves. This panoramic depiction of the city was published i n John Ogilby's Africa; being an

accurate description of the regions ofAegypt . . . (1 670).

Mayombe i n the north to

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A fiicanus, who wrote in his manusc1ipt�ie History and Description of Africa and of thr' NotalJle Th ings Therr'ill

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Contained ( 1.5 .50): "The Iich king of To mbuto (Ti mbuktu)

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hath many plates and scepters of gold, some whereof weigh

1,,300 pounds . . . He hath always .3 ,000 horsemen . . . [and] a great store of doetors, judges, priests, and other learned men, that are bountifully maintained at the king's eA1Jense." A frieanus's reference to "learned men " was pa1ticularl:-, · telling. For Timbuktu's lasting contiibution to world chiliza­ tion would not be its wealth but its scholarship . By the four­ teenth century, scores of impmtant books were w1itten in the city, establishing Timbuktu as the eenter of a ,ital ,Y1itten tra­ Representative of the sophisticated communities in which

dition in Africa.

many Afocans lived was the ancient city of Timbuktu, loeated

Africa was also a lan d whose a1tistie and mate1ial culture

in present-day Mali. Established by the nomadic Tuareg

was characterized bv both clh·ersit,· and innm·ation . Their

around 1 100 CE, Timbuktu grew into a city of enormous wealth

artistic creations not only combined form and funetion but,

through its key role in the trans-Salmran trade in gold, ivrny,

as the curators of the U nivcrsity of Virginia's Ba:-, 1:-,· A 1t

salt, and other precious commodities, goods brought to the city

Museum have stated, were "intended not only to please the

from the Islamic nmth and then transferred to boats on the

eye but to uphold moral \ 'alues . " E,·er:-,·da:,; item s sueh as

Hiver Niger. ln the fomteenth and fifteenth centuries, the city

bowls, kniw•s. stools, hair combs, and dru ms were adorned

became the jewel of several successive empires i11cl1 1cling the

with h u m an, ani mal, and supern atural rc'presen tations all

Ghana Empire, the Mali E mpire, and the Sanghi E mpire.

with partic1 1lar cultural and social meaning. African a1t also

Stories of Tim bukt u 's great wealth helped p ro m p t European exploration o f Afoca's west coast, talcs such as t hat written by the sixteenth -century Moroccm 1 t raveler Leo

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t.rreat em1)hasis on the three-dimensional , leaclin hcr to l 1lacccl 0 sculptural works in stone, b ronze, and terracotta that hm·e rarely bec1 1 surpassed.

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U narmed and taken u nawares, most slaves fell easy prey to their captors. The least resistance was met with sheer brutality. African men and women, lashed together by rope, are led from their Mali homes to a ship waiting to take

them across the Atlantic. The slave trader to the far left is identified in the original source as a Mande­ speaking African. The illustration first appeared in 1885 in Mission d'exploration du Haut­ Niger 1879-1881

(Exploratory Mission of the Upper Niger, 1879-1881), by

French colonial administrator Joseph Simon Gallieni.

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This map, entitled Africae Nova Descriptio, was created by Willem Janszoon Blaeu in 1 589. In addition to outlining the countries a nd cities of the African continent (and native animals such as elephants a nd monkeys) in the sixteenth century, in its left a nd right border the map featured illustrations of peoples from numerous African countries, and their various forms of dress. Ships a nd sea monsters ply the waters. Depictions such as this fired the ambitions of European rulers and adventurers eager to obtain the riches that lay within Africa.

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E arly African Art

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he result of a continent inhabited by a multitude of

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the dead, animal spi1its, and other beings believe
Perhaps the most shining examples

�,,,,-�,.. t. of the way in which Afiican ut combined beauty with pm1)ose were the costumes, textiles, and particularly the masks created to be worn during dances, ceremonies, and 1ituals. Dating back to beyond Paleolithic times,

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The a ncient Nok culture of Nigeria (500 BCE-200 CE) is noted for the beauty of its terracotta figures, such as this figu re resting its chin on its knee. The sculptures are remarkable in their expressiveness and for the elaborate detailing of their h air and jewel ry.

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A nineteenth-centu ry Ci Wara headdress of the Bamana people of Mali. The Ci Wara ("farmi ng beast") is a myth ical animal, part antelope, part anteater, sacred to farmers; the wood and metal headdress is affixed to a cap and worn during paired ritual dances to bring strength and success to the farmer.

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Created by tribes people of the pre-colonial Kuba ki ngdom of the Congo, a M u lwalwa mask is worn or d isplayed as a sym bol of the spirit associated with i n itiation i nto man hood. The broad, elongated nose and bulbous eyes on this wood-a nd-raffia early twentieth-century M u lwa lwa are characteristic of the style.

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The Baga people of Gu inea are known for their N i mba s houlder headdresses. Carved in the form of a matu re woman and a celebration of the feminine spirit, N i m ba are worn during joyous ceremon ies. This wooden N i m ba is from the n ineteenth centu ry.

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The graceful li nes of this scul pted bronze head from the Benin ki ngdom of N igeria were created by an u n known artist using the ancient technique of lost­ wax casti ng in the sixteenth centu ry.

A nineteenth-century wood Ngil Society Fa ng mask from Gabon; the Fa ng cu ltu re ra nges across Gabon, Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea. The Ngil was a secret society that acted as symbolic tribal law enforcers. The wh ite masks were used by the Ngil Society in their ritu als. The masks' bold abstractness and elongated l i nes inspiried modern Western artists such as Picasso.

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This illustration was created for volume two of a series of books by Thomas Astley entitled A New Collection of Voyages and Travels (1 745-47), stories

and essays from various European travelers to Africa, compiled and translated i nto four volu mes. The top drawing, Prospect of the Coast from

El Mina to Mowri (towns of

the Gold Coast, Elmina is in present-day G h ana), shows slaves bei ng rowed to a ship at left. The bottom i m age, Prospect of St. George's Castle at El Mina, shows the forbidding­ looki ng fort at Elmina that functioned as a m ajor Port uguese slave trading depot.

1 79

It is no wonder that for the heirs of such a rich culture

TRIANGLE OF TRADE AND SUFFERING

their sudden transfer into the hands of the slave traders was r

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such an incomprehensible expe1ience. Most came f om

These white men were engaged in a trading system that was

tribes that had been captured in tribal warfare. Many histo­

at the heart of the slave traffic. At the center of this traffic was

rians, in fact, now believe that, as the demands for slaves

a product that-like the cod that had lured so many settlers

increased and became more profitable, many tribal wars

to the New World and the economically important tobacco

were started for the sole pm11ose of acquiring captives that

crop-played a pivotal role in shaping the early history of the

could be sold to the traders. Also taken as slaves were those

Atlantic world. That product was rum, an extraordinaiily pop­

who had been convicted of crimes. As historian Winthrop D.

ular beverage whose origins dated back to ancient China and

Jordan wrote in his book The Americans (1988), "As slavery

India. Historians believe that the word "mm" deiives from

became a growing business, African chiefs began to create

the Latin word saccha ru m , meaning "sugar," which is appro­

more slaves. New crimes were invented so more criminals

priate since it was from sugar that rum was produced. More

could be sold into slavery." As Jordan also pointed out, not all

accurately, it was from molasses, a by-product of the sugar­

the victims of the slave trade were those sold by African

making, that mm was manufactured.

mlers. Some had been captured directly by members of

During the sugar-refining p rocess that took place

European slave ships. And a significant number of the cap­

throughout the New ·world islands, an acre of sugar cane

tives had been sold to the slave traders by Arab slave mer­

yielded enough molasses to produce about two hundred gal­

chants whose predecessors had been the first to deal in

lons of rum. But turning molasses into rum required further

African slavery.

distilling, a process that plantation owners felt distracted from

·whatever the source of their captivity, none of the slaves

the main goal of producing the "white gold" that sugar had

had any notio1�_ of what lay ahead. ·what they did know, at least

become, since this further distillation required so much labor

by the time they were forced aboard the slave vessels, was

and wood. By the time that England's mainland colonies had

that they were now no longer in the hands of their original

been established, howe\'er, plantation owners hacl found a

captors, but under the control of men about whom they knew

solution to making rum profitable without disturbing their

absolutely nothing.

sugar-making operations.

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Since early Colonial clays, the manufacture of rum had

it was the Middle Passage that was the most deadly. Often in

been New England's largest and most prosperous industiy.

bad s hape both mentally and physieally 6:- · the time the_,, ,Yere

Throughout the sugar islands, planters began sending their

led from the inteiior to the ships, the eaptives were st1ipped

molasses to New England, where it was turned into rum . The

naked, examined thoroughly, and then foreed below decks

result was what became known as the "tiiangular trade."

into the hold. As South Carolinian slaYe trader Joseph

Molasses was shi pped to the B,itish mainland colonies and

H awkins observed in his memoir A History of a , !oyagc to tll ('

turned i nto rum . The rum , along vvith other products,

Cor,st of Afrirr,, (//Id Tra vels to the lllterio r of that Cou n try

ineluding sugar and tobacco, was cariied across the Atlantic to

( 1 7\:J7), the sight of slan·s being put in irons and hoarded on

Afiica where it was traded for sl aves. The slaves, in what

to the ship was "one of the most affecting scenes that I ever

beeame known as the i n famous Middle Passage, wen"' taken

witnessed . . . their wai lings were torturing heyond wh at words

to the sugar i slands to raise more sngar and m olasses-and

can e\press.

the vicious cycle would begin again . Of all the horrific experiences that t h e slaves w01 dd r

endure, f om thei r capture to their labors on tlw plantations,

Sornc o f thl' captains of the sLl\·e ships were what were cal led "loose packers ." bel i evi ng that h:-, · packing fewer sLl\·es i n t heir holds than most o f' thei r coun terparts thcv woul d

An American antislave illustration, ca. 1830s; depictions such as this one, created by artists for abolitionist publications as expressions of outrage against the s lave trade, appeared on both sides of the Atlantic. But the desire

OPPOSITE:

for profits far outweighed humanitarian concerns, and from the sixteenth through the first half of the ni neteenth century, the n u m ber of Africans placed in bondage increased dramatically.

Slave ship owners and captains became masters of packing their vessels with as many captives as cou ld possibly be placed onto their ships. This diagram of an inhumanely crowded ship BELOW:

from the Atlantic slave trade is from an Abstract of Evidence, whic h a ntislave activists compiled for their presentation to a select committee of the British House of Commons in 1 790.

181

reduce the mortality rate of the Middle Passage. B ut the vast m ajority of captains loaded as many of their human cargo as could possibly fit, convinced that the largest possible load would make up for whatever fatalities occurred. But what­ ever the predilection of the captain, the M iddle Passage was, for the slaves, more b rntal than can be adequately described. And it was not only the physical abuse they suffe red. For most, still in shock from what had happened to them, the psychological damage was equally destructive. M any had n ever seen a white man, a ship, or the ocean . The emotional damage they suffered as they realized that they were being torn from home, family, native land, indeed eve1ything they cherished, was, for many, as devastating as the suffoeating conditions, the corp oral punish ment, and the lack of ade­ quate food and sanitation, all of which resulted in a horren­ dous death rate on almost every voyage . It is esti mated that as m uch as eigh teen percent of all the millions of slaves f orced to make the Middle Passage died somewhere on the Atlantic from some type of disease, lack of nourishment, or physical cruelty. A significant n umber, u nable to endure the conditions and an unknown and terri fyi ng future, took their own lives: "Two of my weari ed countrymen who were chained together, preferring death to such a life of rnise1y, somehow m ade through the n ettings ancl j umped i nto the sea" wrote Olauclah Equiano, one of the most articulate of all

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The n u mber of slaves w h o died i n the Atlantic crossing was staggeri ng. H istorian Patrick Manni ng, i n his Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades (1 990), has esti mated that in order to deliver nine million ABOVE:

slaves to the Americas i n the period between 1 700 and 1850, some twenty-o ne million people were captured. This harrowi ng ca. 1 930 lithograph by America n artist Bernarda Bryson Shahn depicts em aciated African captives o n the deck of a slave s h ip.

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Captioned "Stowi ng the Cargo on a Slaver at N ight," this engravi ng was published i n Con necticut h istorian Henry Howe's Life and Death on the Ocean, ca. 1 855. The pictu re depicts seamen forcibly moving a group of slaves-who had OPPOSITE:

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been taken u p d u ri ng the day for air-back down to the airless, dark, and cramped hull of the s hip, where disease was rampant. The slavers also succu m bed to the u nsanitary conditions aboard s hip; it is estimated that s hips lost an average

of fifteen percent of their crew to disease d u ri ng Atlantic crossi n gs.

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the Africans taken into captivity, in his book T!te Interesting

traders. "Mothers clasped their other children m their

\Tassa, tlie African ( 1 789) .

only they might not be torn from them," Pmtuguese chroni­

Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equ iano, or Gustavus

arms . . . receiving blows with little pity for their own flesh, if

hours in the Americas were equally traumatic. Once the ship

cler Gomes Eanes de Zurara wrote in Cr611 ica dos feitos da

docked, the slaves were sold either to planters or to whole­

Gu inea)( l4.S3). It continued on the auction blocks in the

salers of slaves. Most were sold several times before reaching

islands and later in the mainland colonies.

For those who managed to survive the voyage, the first

G11 ine (The Ch ro11 icle of tlic Discovery and Conquest of

the far-off pl�ntations where they would spend their lives in

Until 1619, all the slaves transported to the New \Vorld

backbreaking labor. In the process, many suffered what for

were delivered to the vmious Cmibbean islands. But in that

them was the ultimate rnise1y, as families were broken apart

year, a Dutch vessel brought twenty black captives to the

forever. It was a misery that had begun with the vc1y first

American mainland at Jamestown. A torrent would follow. By

separations initiated by the earliest Portuguese slave

the early 1700s, some 14.S,000 slaves worked the Virginia and

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This l ithograph after an 1 851 painti ng by American artist J u n ius Brutus Stearns depicts President George Washington tal king to the overseer at his Mt. Vernon farm, as slaves work h is fields. The painting, created ten years before the Civil War broke out, depicts an u n realistic scene of idyllic contentment among the slaves. Although Washington owned many sl aves (both inherited and bought) , his attitude toward slavery changed as he grew older. As president he did not publ icly oppose sl avery because he feared it would divide the new nation. However, i n his will he left instruction s for all of h is slaves to be freed after his wife's death.

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To many of those who benefited most from the transatlantic slave tradestock compan ies, merchants, insurers, ban kers-the trade in h u mans was simply the global distribution of products. The pu blication of disturbing scenes such as this one left them u naffected. The caption i n this hand-colored etching by popular English artist

Isaac Cru i kshank reads "The abolition of the slave trade. Or the i n h u manity of dealers i n h u man fles h exemplified in Capt'n Kimber's treatment of a you ng N egro girl of 1 5 for her virjen modesty." Cru i kshank created this i mage for London print publisher S. W. Fores i n April 1 792, one week after British politician William Wilberforce pu blicly

protested in the House of Co m mons against the brutality of slavery as epitomized by the m u rder of a you ng African girl. The girl was stru ng up and beaten by one Captai n John Kim ber, after she refused to dance for him on deck, and d ied several days later. Kimber was tried b y the Ad miralty Court in J u ne 1 792, but i n the end was ho norably acqu itted .

Maria Graham (later Lady Maria Callcott), an English writer and illustrator, drew this i mage of a slave market in Rio de Janeiro. It was reproduced in her 1824 BELOW:

bookjournal ofa Voyage to Brazil, and Residence There, During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823.

187

Maryland tobacco plantations alone. Tens of thousands of

commodities and valuable markets for Europe and North

others toiled in the South Carolina and Georgia coastal rice

America: what moved in the Atlantic in these centuries was

belt. Slavery even flomished in some regions of the North,

predominantly slaves, the output of slaves, the inputs of slave

paiticularly in the farming areas of New York, New Jersey,

societies, and goods and services purchased with the earnings

and Rhode Island, where many Southern planters maintained

of slave products . . . Slavery thus affected not only the coun­

summer residences with large slave estates.

tries of the slaves' origins and destinations but, equally, those

By 1 775, thirty-six: percent of all the slaves had been brought to Blitish Ame1ica. Thiity-two percent labored in Pmtuguese territory, particularly in the fielcls and the mines of Brazil. Another thirteen percent labored on plantations in French New \Vorld tenitory, while nine percent toiled in Spanish America. The impact of the labor performed by those in bondage, represented by the tens of millions of dollars worth of commodi­ ties they produced and the trade it stimulated, led to nothing less than the emergence of the Americas into the international economy. As historian Barbara L. Solow has written in Slaven) and the Rise of the Atlantic System (199 1): ''[It was slavery] that made the empty lands of the western hemisphere valuable producers of

countries that invested in, supplied, or consumed the prod­ ucts of the slave economies.

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OPPOSITE: This receipt from

RIGHr. A fam ily is separated

engraved by James Fuller Queen , which illustrated

December 20, 1 849,

at a slave auction , and the

records that a J udge S.

caption-" Buy us too"-

the journ ey of a slave from

Williams of Eufaula,

expresses the mother's

a pla ntation to his struggle

Alabama, paid six h u ndred

anguish. Many slave-

for liberty as a U nion

dollars for the purchase of

owners, particularly in the

soldier during the Civil War.

an eighteen-year-old African

American South, actually

Published as a set called

wom an named J a n e, her

defended the institution by

The Slave in 1863, they

one-year-old son, H e n ry,

claiming that their slaves

were produced as part of

and all of h er future

were content with their lot.

William A. Stephen's Album

child ren, dated December

This image is part of a

Varieties, a series of

20, 1 849.

series of twelve cards by

collectible cards produced

H en ry Louis Stephens,

d uring the Civil War.

189 CJ)

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TJIE 'PART IX G -lluyus too:··

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RIG HT: Artist William L.

Sheppard d rew this image, captioned "The First Cotton G i n " for the December 18, 1 869 issue of Harper's

Weekly. The incongruous scene envisions black slaves happily operati ng the gin while wh ite landowners d iscuss the new i nventio n.

By the 1 800s, cotton grown in the American South had become one of the world's most valuable commodities. With this development, even the slightest chance of s lavery bei ng abolis hed there became nonexistent. This ca. 1 850 l ithograph by

Bern h ard ) . Dondorf depicts the bustling harbor of N ew Orleans as viewed from the Levee Steam Cotton Press Company, which housed an enormous steam power plant that com pressed cotton bales for s hipping.

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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIO N C UTTI N G T I E S A C R O S S T H E AT L A N T I C

This hand-colored, ca. 1 781 French print depicts the su rrender of British com mander Charles Cornwallis to the Americans and French at Yorktown, Virgin ia. The French fleet is shown at right in the York River.

TH E A M E R I CA N REVO LUT I O N

Th e sun never shined on a cause of greater ,vorth. 'Tis not the affair of a city, a cou ntiy, a provi nce, or a kingclo1 n ; but a continent­ of at least one eighth part the hahitahle (;lobe. - TH O M A S PA I N E ,

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Com mon Sense, 1 776

�

y the third decade of the ] 700s, England's trade

and a distinct culture had arisen. It was not ari American cul-

with its Ame1ican colonies had become a corner­

ture, but a British-American culture. On all levels, colonial

stone of the Bri tish economy. Twenty percent of all

politics and government were based on British models .

the shipping that entered England's home p01ts came from

Throughout the colonies, the prevailing social values were

the colonies. Industrial towns throughout Great Britain were

also E nglish. On the eve of events that were to profoundly

busily occupied producing clothing, tools, cutlery, and a

change both the New World and the Old, the proudest boast

myriad of other goods for the American market.

of most of Great B1itain's American subjects was that they

Most of His M ajesty's American subjects were equally

were Englishmen .

sanguine about their condition, and, their feelings were based not only on trade. The American colonies were both pros­ pering and growing. B eyond the thriving seaport communi­

THE BREACH BEGINS

ties, more than two million people were already living in

l t was not that England had refrained fro m trying to place

farms, villages, and towns. Colonial industry was ex'Panding

controls on the colonies. As early as 16.S ] , the B ritish

In the middle of the 1 700s, Boston was both the h u b of N ew England a n d a principal trading port in America. Most of its citizens, like those in its sister colon ies, were

confident that nothing but increased peace and prosperity lay a head. German en graver Franz Xaver H aberm a n n made this print of Boston H a rbor around 1 770.

ABOVE: This 1 736 view of the

Britain's Fort George (origi n a l ly Fort Amsterdam), on the southern tip of M a n h attan , shows the skyline as i t looked a t t h e time. The i m age is by London engraver John Carwitham.

COMMON SENSE ; A ll l> l U I I D TO T IU

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Parliament had passed the first of what would be a series of Navigation Acts designed to impose severe restrictions on colonial trade \vith any nation but England. However, the acts had never been enforced, and the colonists had happily ignored tbem. As Thomas Bredon, a New England royalist, had written in a letter in 1660: "[The colonists] look upon themselves as a free state, . . . there being many against the King, or having any dependence on England."

011 the following iottr:IU•t

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B

IV, Of the prefenr Ability of Amcri«, with fome m:(. «llf.oeous .Rc�dions.

Man k11ow1 no Maller fa'l'c �c• ing H u n • • Ot tb.m� wh4m dloi,;c and co.u.nua go·>d ord.tio, T tt O M t O N' .

P H I L A D E L P H l A1

1'ii11UJ, ad Sold. by R. B E l L. la Thitd-btet.

M DCC LXX VI.

laws of England are bounded by within the fonr seas, and do not reach America. The subjects of his majesty hence not being represented in Parliament, so we have not looked at our­

The title page of Thomas

selves to be impeded in our trade by them." As noted in a later

printed in Philadelphia i n

Paine's Common Sense,

1 776. It incl udes a s an epigraph a quote from Scottish poet Ja mes

prophetically noted that unless tl1esc types of complaints were

Thomson's Liberty (1 734):

dealt with, "There can be nothing expected hut a breach."

save creating Heaven, Or

That the breach would come, was in many ways, preor­ clained. As the colonies became more prosperous and as the colonists steadily clewloped ways of life ancl thinking that were more American than English, it became inevitable that an island nation three thousand m iles away would /'ind it impossible to control so vast a contine11t as America. Thomas

s.

UL Thoughts 011 the prtf