HST 201 Module #3
Module Three: There Goes The Neighborhood (1607 CE - 1713 CE)
Welcome to HST 201 Module Three! We are looking at effects of Europeans on the North American landscape. Academics as done a real number on me. After countless hours sitting in a classroom, whether in the back row or up front giving a lecture, one thing stands out to me a pox on the American education system: The group project. Such a vile form of torture. Everyone remembers the first group project they had to do. Their middle school teacher pair you off with 2 to 4 other people to give a presentation on some topic or another. It was something you didn’t necessarily have a passion for, but you wanted to get a decent grade, so you were willing to work with others on this task.
Now enters the actors. First, the bossy student that is the loudest and most insistent on doing thing THEIR way. They refuse to work with other and have a shared vision of only their vision. You know the type, self-aggrandizing that have an inflated self-worth. These are the people that run for political office someday.
The other student is far more insipid. This person sits back quietly, doesn’t contribute, aside from nodding their head in approval occasionally. They promise to give the presentation after YOU make the poster board and YOU do all the research. As the group toils away laboriously, they sit and wait to deliver the speech portion, that everyone for some reason tries to avoid like the plague. Then, in an act of cunning treachery, the day the presentation is due, that kid is OUT SICK. So, the bossy kid makes you do the presentation, because when the rubber hits the road, the domineering kid is loud, not actually informed. You were played like a fiddle.
Why this clearly anecdotal story? Rule number three of history: Credit is important. Everyone one, whether political party or ethnic group wants to take credit for the past. Who built what. Who was the first. In the scheme of things, this can seem innocuous, or harmless. But not if you ask “why” the credit is being taken.
Welcome to HST 201 Module Three! We are looking at effects of Europeans on the North American landscape. Academics as done a real number on me. After countless hours sitting in a classroom, whether in the back row or up front giving a lecture, one thing stands out to me a pox on the American education system: The group project. Such a vile form of torture. Everyone remembers the first group project they had to do. Their middle school teacher pair you off with 2 to 4 other people to give a presentation on some topic or another. It was something you didn’t necessarily have a passion for, but you wanted to get a decent grade, so you were willing to work with others on this task.
Now enters the actors. First, the bossy student that is the loudest and most insistent on doing thing THEIR way. They refuse to work with other and have a shared vision of only their vision. You know the type, self-aggrandizing that have an inflated self-worth. These are the people that run for political office someday.
The other student is far more insipid. This person sits back quietly, doesn’t contribute, aside from nodding their head in approval occasionally. They promise to give the presentation after YOU make the poster board and YOU do all the research. As the group toils away laboriously, they sit and wait to deliver the speech portion, that everyone for some reason tries to avoid like the plague. Then, in an act of cunning treachery, the day the presentation is due, that kid is OUT SICK. So, the bossy kid makes you do the presentation, because when the rubber hits the road, the domineering kid is loud, not actually informed. You were played like a fiddle.
Why this clearly anecdotal story? Rule number three of history: Credit is important. Everyone one, whether political party or ethnic group wants to take credit for the past. Who built what. Who was the first. In the scheme of things, this can seem innocuous, or harmless. But not if you ask “why” the credit is being taken.
Early military instillations from 17-18th century North America
HIGHLIGHTS
LECTURES
READING
My classes utilize both Howard Zinn's Patriot's History of the United States and Larry Schweikart's Patriot's History of the United States, mostly in excerpts posted to the modules. You can access the full text of People's History or Patriot's History by clicking on the links.
- Carnes Chapter 2 American Society in the Making”
My classes utilize both Howard Zinn's Patriot's History of the United States and Larry Schweikart's Patriot's History of the United States, mostly in excerpts posted to the modules. You can access the full text of People's History or Patriot's History by clicking on the links.
Zinn, Chapter 3 “Persons of Mean and Vile Condition”
“…In the 1600s and 1700s, by forced exile, by lures, promises, and lies, by kidnapping, by their urgent need to escape the living conditions of the home country, poor people wanting to go to America became commodities of profit for merchants, traders, ship captains, and eventually their masters in America. Abbot Smith, in his study of indentured servitude, Colonists in Bondage, writes: "From the complex pattern of forces producing emigration to the American colonies one stands out clearly as most powerful in causing the movement of servants. This was the pecuniary profit to be made by shipping them."
After signing the indenture, in which the immigrants agreed to pay their cost of passage by working for a master for five or seven years, they were often imprisoned until the ship sailed, to make sure they did not run away. In the year 1619, the Virginia House of Burgesses, born that year as the first representative assembly in America (it was also the year of the first importation of black slaves), provided for the recording and enforcing of contracts between servants and masters. As in any contract between unequal powers, the parties appeared on paper as equals, but enforcement was far easier for master than for servant.
The voyage to America lasted eight, ten, or twelve weeks, and the servants were packed into ships with the same fanatic concern for profits that marked the slave ships. If the weather was bad, and the trip took too long, they ran out of food. The sloop Sea-Flower, leaving Belfast in 1741, was at sea sixteen weeks, and when it arrived in Boston, forty-six of its 106 passengers were dead of starvation, six of them eaten by the survivors. On another trip, thirty-two children died of hunger and disease and were thrown into the ocean. Goitlieb Mitelberger, a musician, traveling from Germany to America around 1750, wrote about his voyage:
During the journey the ship is full of pitiful signs of distress-smells, fumes, horrors, vomiting, various kinds of sea sickness, fever, dysentery, headaches, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot, and similar afflictions, all of them caused by the age and the high salted state of the food, especially of the meat, as well as by the very bad and filthy water.. .. Add to all that shortage of food, hunger, thirst, frost, heat, dampness, fear, misery, vexation, and lamentation as well as other troubles.... On board our ship, on a day on which we had a great storm, a woman about to give birth and unable to deliver under the circumstances, was pushed through one of the portholes into the sea…
Indentured servants were bought and sold like slaves. An announcement in the Virginia Gazette, March 28, 1771, read:
Just arrived at Leedstown, the Ship Justitia, with about one Hundred Healthy Servants, Men Women & Boys… The Sale will commence on Tuesday the 2nd of April.
Against the rosy accounts of better living standards in the Americas one must place many others, like one immigrant's letter from America: "Whoever is well off in Europe better remain there. Here is misery and distress, same as everywhere, and for certain persons and conditions incomparably more than in Europe."
Beatings and whippings were common. Servant women were raped. One observer testified: "I have seen an Overseer beat a Servant with a cane about the head till the blood has followed, for a fault that is not worth the speaking of...." The Maryland court records showed many servant suicides. In 1671, Governor Berkeley of Virginia reported that in previous years four of five servants died of disease after their arrival. Many were poor children, gathered up by the hundreds on the streets of English cities and sent to Virginia to work.
The master tried to control completely the sexual lives of the servants. It was in his economic interest to keep women servants from marrying or from having sexual relations, because childbearing would interfere with work. Benjamin Franklin, writing as "Poor Richard" in 1736, gave advice to his readers: "Let thy maidservant be faithful, strong and homely."
Servants could not marry without permission, could be separated from their families, could be whipped for various offenses. Pennsylvania law in the seventeenth century said that marriage of servants "without the consent of the Masters… shall be proceeded against as for Adultery, or fornication, and Children to be reputed as Bastards…"
“…In the 1600s and 1700s, by forced exile, by lures, promises, and lies, by kidnapping, by their urgent need to escape the living conditions of the home country, poor people wanting to go to America became commodities of profit for merchants, traders, ship captains, and eventually their masters in America. Abbot Smith, in his study of indentured servitude, Colonists in Bondage, writes: "From the complex pattern of forces producing emigration to the American colonies one stands out clearly as most powerful in causing the movement of servants. This was the pecuniary profit to be made by shipping them."
After signing the indenture, in which the immigrants agreed to pay their cost of passage by working for a master for five or seven years, they were often imprisoned until the ship sailed, to make sure they did not run away. In the year 1619, the Virginia House of Burgesses, born that year as the first representative assembly in America (it was also the year of the first importation of black slaves), provided for the recording and enforcing of contracts between servants and masters. As in any contract between unequal powers, the parties appeared on paper as equals, but enforcement was far easier for master than for servant.
The voyage to America lasted eight, ten, or twelve weeks, and the servants were packed into ships with the same fanatic concern for profits that marked the slave ships. If the weather was bad, and the trip took too long, they ran out of food. The sloop Sea-Flower, leaving Belfast in 1741, was at sea sixteen weeks, and when it arrived in Boston, forty-six of its 106 passengers were dead of starvation, six of them eaten by the survivors. On another trip, thirty-two children died of hunger and disease and were thrown into the ocean. Goitlieb Mitelberger, a musician, traveling from Germany to America around 1750, wrote about his voyage:
During the journey the ship is full of pitiful signs of distress-smells, fumes, horrors, vomiting, various kinds of sea sickness, fever, dysentery, headaches, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot, and similar afflictions, all of them caused by the age and the high salted state of the food, especially of the meat, as well as by the very bad and filthy water.. .. Add to all that shortage of food, hunger, thirst, frost, heat, dampness, fear, misery, vexation, and lamentation as well as other troubles.... On board our ship, on a day on which we had a great storm, a woman about to give birth and unable to deliver under the circumstances, was pushed through one of the portholes into the sea…
Indentured servants were bought and sold like slaves. An announcement in the Virginia Gazette, March 28, 1771, read:
Just arrived at Leedstown, the Ship Justitia, with about one Hundred Healthy Servants, Men Women & Boys… The Sale will commence on Tuesday the 2nd of April.
Against the rosy accounts of better living standards in the Americas one must place many others, like one immigrant's letter from America: "Whoever is well off in Europe better remain there. Here is misery and distress, same as everywhere, and for certain persons and conditions incomparably more than in Europe."
Beatings and whippings were common. Servant women were raped. One observer testified: "I have seen an Overseer beat a Servant with a cane about the head till the blood has followed, for a fault that is not worth the speaking of...." The Maryland court records showed many servant suicides. In 1671, Governor Berkeley of Virginia reported that in previous years four of five servants died of disease after their arrival. Many were poor children, gathered up by the hundreds on the streets of English cities and sent to Virginia to work.
The master tried to control completely the sexual lives of the servants. It was in his economic interest to keep women servants from marrying or from having sexual relations, because childbearing would interfere with work. Benjamin Franklin, writing as "Poor Richard" in 1736, gave advice to his readers: "Let thy maidservant be faithful, strong and homely."
Servants could not marry without permission, could be separated from their families, could be whipped for various offenses. Pennsylvania law in the seventeenth century said that marriage of servants "without the consent of the Masters… shall be proceeded against as for Adultery, or fornication, and Children to be reputed as Bastards…"
KEY TERMS
ASSIGNMENTS
Forum Discussion #4
- Jamestown
- Anne Hutchinson
- Piracy Part One
- Documented Slavery
- Beaver Wars
- King Phillip's War
- The Business of Slavery
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Colonial Gambling
- Birth of Sport
- Salem Witch Trials
- Prostitution Part One
- Virginia Slave Codes
- New York Slave Revolt
- Stono Rebellion
- Samuel Johnson
- The First Great Awakening
- Music Part 2
- Jonathan Edwards
- Early 18th Century Literature
- 18th Century Philosophy
- Piracy Part 2
ASSIGNMENTS
- Forum Discussion #4
- Quiz #1
Forum Discussion #4
Schoolhouse Rock! is an American interstitial programming series of animated musical educational short films (and later, videos) that aired during the Saturday morning children's programming block on the U.S. television network ABC. The topics covered included grammar, science, economics, history, mathematics, and civics. The series' original run lasted from 1973 to 1985.
Sometimes when simplifying history for children, some of the minutiae is lost. Listen to this rockin’ tune. Then answer the following question:
How accurate is this depiction? Why were the British taxing their colonists? Is this a fair portrayal? Why or why not?
Need help? Remember the Discussion Board Rubric.
LEGAL MUMBO JUMBO
Sometimes when simplifying history for children, some of the minutiae is lost. Listen to this rockin’ tune. Then answer the following question:
How accurate is this depiction? Why were the British taxing their colonists? Is this a fair portrayal? Why or why not?
Need help? Remember the Discussion Board Rubric.
LEGAL MUMBO JUMBO
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