Chapter 4: Frontiers of Empire: Eighteenth Century America, 1680-1763 (#1)

-William Byrd III – successful tidewater planter

  • had a detailed journal that became a classic of early American literature

-boundary commissioners were finding highly independent men and women of European descent

  • the rapidly developing 18th century backcountry – area was not a vast empty territory awaiting the arrival of European settlers
  • maps erroneously suggest a “line of settlement” – steadily pushing outward into a huge blank area with no mark of civilization

-backcountry settlers though, were a populous multicultural zone stretching from the English and French settlements in the north all the way to the Spanish borderlands in the far southwest

  • population in the colonies was growing at unprecedented rates
  • colonial Americans were less isolated from one another than colonists had been during most of the 17th century

-becoming a part of a larger Anglo-American empire

-no one – not even the inhabitants of the distant frontiers – could escape the influence of Britain

  • as the colonists became more British, they inevitably became more American as well

-political, commercial, and military links brought the colonists into more frequent contact with Great Britain and also made them more aware of other colonists

Experiencing Diversity

-population of the English colonies doubled approximately every 25 years

  • becoming more dispersed and heterogeneous

-first national census did not occur until 1790, showed an annual growth rate of 3%

  • natural reproduction was responsible for most of the growth

-young; approximately ½ of the populace at any given time was under the age of 16

-Forced Migration

  • men and women engaged in a largely successful quest for a batter material life
  • Transportation Act – allowed judges in England, Scotland, and Ireland to send convicted felons to the American colonies
  • approximately 50,000 convicts crossed the Atlantic
  • majority seem to have committed minor crimes against property; most were sold in the Chesapeake colonies as indentured servants
  • drained “the Nation of its offensive Rubbish, without taking away their Lives”
  • indirect result of American independence was the founding of Australia by transported felons

Ethnic Cultures of the Backcountry

-fresh waves of voluntary European migration

-backcountry – a region stretching approximately 800 miles from western Pennsylvania to Georgia

-Scots-Irish Flee English Oppression

  • English rulers thought they could thoroughly dominate Catholic Ireland by transporting thousands of lowland Scottish Presbyterians to the northern region
  • many of the Scots-Irish elected to emigrate to America
  • entire Presbyterian congregations followed charismatic ministers to the New World
  • estimated that 150,000 Scots-Irish migrated to the colonies before the Revolution
  • wherever they located, the Scots-Irish challenged established authority

-Germans Search for a Better Life

  • more than 100,000 people came from the German Palatinate
  • religious views were somewhat similar to those of the Quakers
  • Mennonites established in Pennsylvania a prosperous community known as Germantown
  • large numbers of Lutherans transferred to the Middle Colonies
  • looking to better their material lives
  • German migrants – mistakenly called Pennsylvania Dutch because the English confused deutsch with Dutch
  • the Germans were the best farmers in the colony
  • preferred to live with people of their own background, and they sometimes fought to keep members of the other nationality out of their neighborhoods
  • Germans usually remained wherever they found unclaimed fertile land
  • Scots-Irish moved two or three times, acquiring a reputation as a rootless people
  • often found themselves living beyond the effective authority of the various colonial governments
  • most of the time they preferred to be left alone

-Native Americans Define the Middle Ground

  • during much of the 17th century, various Indian groups who contested the English settlers for control of coastal lands suffered terribly, sometimes from war, but more often from the spread of contagious disease (smallpox)
  • cis-Mississippian west – huge territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River
  • many were refugees – remnants of Native American groups who had lost so many people that they could no longer sustain an independent cultural identity
  • established new multiethnic communities
  • strangers were formally adopted to take the places of family members killed in battle or overcome by sickness
  • many seemingly traditional Indian villages of the 18th century actually represented innovative responses to rapidly shifting external conditions
  • middle ground – a term that has only recently entered the interpretive vocabulary
  • relied on white traders to provide essential metal goods and weapons
  • compelled everyone who came to negotiate in the “middle ground” to give them proper respect
  • European goods subtly eroded traditional structures of Native American authority
  • Indian leaders forced their own power by controlling the character and flow of commercial exchange
  • ordinary Indians began to bargain on their own account
  • after the British defeated the French in 1763, the Indians no longer received the same solicitous attempts as they had in earlier times
  • contagious disease continued to take a fearful toll
  • Indian population dropped an astounding 72%
  • some evidence that British military officers self-consciously practiced germ warfare – giving the Native Americans blankets contaminated by smallpox

Spanish Borderlands of the Eighteenth Century

-Spanish administrators and priests – not to mention ordinary settlers – left a lasting imprint on the cultural landscape of this country

-Conquering the Northern Frontier

  • late in the 16th century, Spanish settlers, led by Juan de Oñate – established European communities north of the Rio Grande
  • in a major rebellion in 1680 – led by El Popé – the native peoples drove the whites completely out of New Mexico
  • 1692 – Spanish re-conquered the area
  • St. Augustine – established in 1565
  • first permanent European settlement established in what would become the US (predates the founding of Jamestown and Plymouth by several decades)
  • California received little attention – a fear that the Russians might seize the entire region belatedly sparked Spanish activity
  • organized permanent missions and presidios (forts) at San Diego, Monterey, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara

-Peoples of the Spanish Borderlands

  • Spanish outposts in North America grew very slowly
  • danger of Indian attack as well as a harsh physical environment discouraged ordinary colonists
  • European women rarely appeared on the frontier
  • Spanish males formed relationships with Indian women instead, fathering large numbers of mestizos (children of mixed race)
  • Spanish exploited Native American labor, reducing entire Indian villages to servitude
  • Spanish never had the resources necessary to secure the northern frontier fully
  • small military outposts were intended primarily to discourage other European powers (France, Great Britain, Russia) from taking possession of territory claimed by Spain
  • to a large extent, the old borderlands remain Spanish speaking to this day