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American Civilization (Colonial period)
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Lecture notes of 17 pages for the course American Culture and Civilization at Lyon II - Université Lumière
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AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 1AMERICAN CIVILIZATION
Key words
the colonial period: before the American Revolution, but no defined period
settlement: at the beginning, no settlement but only exploitation and trade
England was the first country to send families in northern America
migration: religious persecutions => exile (Puritans)
indentured servants
slaves
=> flight more for food than for any ideological reason
expansion: colonizers came from the east and wanted more land => WEST
colonies: piece of land occupied by Europeans
unstable borders, colonizers were given latitudes
the Atlantic world: land + sea
Europe + North & West of Africa + the Caribbean + the North America
colonies during the colonial period
labor: free labor? slave labor? indentured labor?
=> social hierarchy
self-government: colonial management
relations with the metropolises
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 1
, AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 2
1. American encounters: perceptions and narratives
telling the story of pre-Columbian America & Columbian exchange is difficult: oral traditions, biased and
partial sources
humans are not capable of “discovering” new peoples: our perceptions are always shaped by our experience
we look upon people and places through ideologies well formed, mental maps that give meaning to what we
are seeing (analogies, categories)
texts were „unstable‟
▫ 1500s → „scribal publication‟: manuscripts copied and recopied to be circulated (additions, changes,
etc.)
▫ 1600s → domination of European narratives: publishers published between 500-1,200 copies of each
▫ 1700s → knowledge accumulates but categories remain, although they evolve
Europeans now claim the land
2. Tudor & Stuart England and the Age of Discovery
2.1. Native Americans before colonization
Europeans who reported their journeys to the new continent had interest in telling there were few Natives in
America; but there were actually 5 million people north of the Rio Grande before 1492
30,000 around the Lower Chesapeake Bay
150,000 in New England
1000 BC → all people on eastern seaboard practiced some form of agriculture (grew 70% of their food)
permanent or semi-permanent villages (100-200 inhabitants near farmed land)
farming women / hunting, fishing men
matrilineal cultures: women gave their name to their children, owned tribes, could divorce whenever they
wanted to (yet patriarchal groups living in clans under participatory and egalitarian rule)
4 main linguistic groups
th
Little Ice Age (since the 13 c.) => food shortages => raids, warfare
Indians did NOT fight for annihilation of their neighbors, but for harmony (sacrifice rituals => barbary?)
consolidation of power (chiefs gathering power to be stronger)
increasing trading, gift-giving and alliances
• power measured not with what you can buy but with what you can give
• Powhatan Confederacy (31 tribes) in the Chesapeake
• Iroquois Five Nations in the north
“virgin soil epidemics” => depopulation (80% of Native American life)
th th
2.2. Europe in the 15 -16 centuries
fully sedentary agricultural societies for millennia
patriarchal societies with property owned by men
very hierarchical societies: social hierarchy thought to be natural/inevitable
farmers<landowners<divine-right royal family
Little Ice Age => Europeans chronically malnourished, plagues (Black Death), economic activities and trade
slowed down
th
15 c. → trade between Middle-East and the Indies
western Europe on the margins: global trade dominated by the Ottoman empire
2.2.1. Portuguese conquest
advances in sailing techniques and technologies (astrolabe, printing press)
th
=> slave and commodities trading with the Canaries since the 14 century
1480s → slave trading for plantation agriculture (sugar)
1498 → De Gama reaches India around Africa
colonies in Madeira, Cape Verde, the Azores and Sao Tomé
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 2
, AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 3
2.2.2. Spanish conquest
C. Columbus used to sailing and trading in Portugal and Madeira, believed the Indies were only 5,000 miles to
the west
Ferdinand and Isabella wanted to rival with Portugal and defend Christendom
October 1492 → Columbus arrives to the Bahama Islands
reports published all over Europe => „promotional literature‟
• books, pamphlets, manuscripts, letters, narratives, memoirs
• often illustrated (exoticism)
• promotes exploration & colonial enterprise
• legitimizes land claims & colonial status
• creates heroes & villains
• beginning of Creole historiography
=> America is created by the Europeans‟ imagination
1494 → treaty of Tordesillas divides the Atlantic between Spain and Portugal
1519 → Hernando Cortes to Mexico to conquer the Aztec empire of Montezuma
1531 → Francisco de Pizarro overthrows the Inca Empire in Peru
forced labor, forced conversions and violence
Christian marriages => Mestizo societies
Indian labor and African slaves: gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, ranching
Spanish gold floods European markets
th
2.2.3. England in the 16 century
the English join the colonization movement later:
• religious instability at home:
▫ 1559 → Elizabethan religious settlement
▫ still tensions under pressure from Spain and Rome
• economic instability at home and in Europe:
▫ English cloth market collapses => English merchants explore trading opportunities beyond
the Med
• tensions with Spain:
▫ latitudes left by the Spanish don‟t look much promising
▫ Spanish king builds the largest fleet in Europe
concerns: religious peace and uniformity
Ireland: first English colony
need to take advantage of the Irish people
alliance with Scotland
toleration of privateering (piracy): Spanish ships sailing back to Europe full of gold…
• Francis Drake and John Hawkins
expeditions:
• 1576 → Martin Frobisher looks for the Northern Passage (to India through the west)
• 1577 → Francis Drake privateers on the western side of South America
• 1578 → Humphrey Gilbert gets a patent for a settlement but drowns off the coast of Newfoundland
• 1584 → small expedition sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh under Gilbert‟s patent lands at Roanoke
• 1585 → Thomas Harriot and John White join Captain Grenville to settle “Virginia”
• 1587 → John White returns to build “the city of Raleigh” but sails back to England for supplies as war
with Spain breaks out
1590 → he returns at last but the colony is lost
1580s → western European powers begin to see the potential of planting in the New World for profit
1588 → Spanish Armada defeated
1589 → Richard Hakluyt‟s Principal Navigations asserts England‟s right to claim North America
“enlarging the Queen‟s Dominion, Spreading the Gospel and Relieving the Nation‟s poor”
colonization as a nationalistic, religious, economic and social venture
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 3
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