Chapter Two Reading Guide- The Planting of English America
Diverse Patterns of Colonization- Key Concept 2.1
-Unlike other European colonizers, the English established permanent colonies based on agriculture and sent large numbers of men and women to populate them.
-The British colonies in the Chesapeake and North Carolina relied on the cultivation of tobacco.
-The British colonies along the southernmost Atlantic coast and West Indies used slave labor and long growing seasons to develop economies based on staple crops.
The Development of Slavery- Key Concepts 2.2
-The English colonists who held a strong belief in British racial and cultural superiority enslaved black people in perpetuity.
-The British colonists along the southernmost Atlantic coast and the West Indies used slave labor to develop economies based on staple crops.
Adapting to the Environment- Key Concepts 2.3
-New Crops from the America’s stimulated European population growth.
-Native Americans in the Northeast and along the Atlantic Seaboard developed a mixed agricultural and hunter-gatherer economy that favored the development of permanent villages.
-Competition over resources between European rivals led to conflict within and between North American colonial possessions and American Indians.
Key Terms: Must Know
Patterns of British colonization
Development of British American system of slavery
Chesapeake colonies Virginia and Maryland
British colonies along southern Atlantic seaboard (Carolinas and Georgia)
British colonies in West Indies
Reading Guide Application Questions:
1.What was the primarypurpose of the English settlement of Jamestown, and how successful were the colonists in achieving that goal in the first twenty years?
2.What features were common to all of England’s southern colonies, and what features were peculiar to each one?
3.In what ways did the relationship between whites and Indians (Powhatans) in Virginia establish the pattern for later white-Indian relations across North America?
4.How did the search for a viable labor force affect the development of the southern colonies? Why did African slavery almost immediately become the dominant labor system in South Carolina, while only slowly taking firm hold in England’s other southern colonies?
5.Which was the most important factor shaping the development of England’s southern colonies in the seventeenth century: Indian relations, the one-crop plantation economy, or slavery? Explain and support your answer.
6.Compare and contrast the early colonial empires of Spain and England in terms of motives, economic foundations, and relations with Africans and Indians (see Chapter 1). What factors explain the similarities and differences in the two ventures?