The First Thanksgiving, reproduction of an oil painting by J.L.G.

Ferris, early 20th century

Colonial Ways of Life

LET 1913 – Literatura e Cultura Norte-Americana: Nação e Identidade
Márcia Lobianco V. Amorim
 1. The Shape of Early America
 During the 17th and 18th centuries, those who colonized
America were part of a massive pattern of social migration
throughout Europe and Africa.
 Most who came to America were young and male.
 Almost half were indentured servants or slaves.
 During the 18th century, England transported some 50,000
convicted felons to the North- American colonies.
 About a third of the settlers came with their families; most
arrived alone.
 This extraordinary mosaic was primarily responsible for
creating America’s enduring institutions and values.
 1.1 Colonial Ecology
 One of the legends of American history: the British settlers
arrived to find a pristine environment, an unspoiled wilderness
little touched by human activity.

 BUT that was not the case...

• The pre-Columbian inhabitants had modified the
environment of the eastern seabord;
• Indian hunting had produced the “greatest known loss of wild
species”;
• Indians had burned woods in order to produce cropland.
 1.1 Colonial Ecology
 Colonists also transformed the physical landscape.
 They brought notions of private property and
altered the ecology of the New World environment.
 Indians contributed to the process of environment
change by trading furs for metal and glass trinkets.
 By 1750, such unintended consequences markedly
changed the physical environment from what it had
been in 1600.
 TV series: “Frontier”

 Tv series Frontier
http://www.adorocinema.com/noticias/series/noticia-126872/
 1.2 Population Growth
 The ocean crossing aboard crowded and disease-
ridden ships and the early settlements were threatening.
 In 1625 – English colonists – little more than 2,000 in
Virginia and Plymouth
 By 1700 – population in colonies – perhaps 250,000
 During the 18th century – the population doubled at
least every 25 years
 “America’s plentiful land beckoned the immigrant and
induced the settlers to replenish the earth with large
families.”
 1.3 Birth and Death Rates
 In England, the average age at marriage for women
was 25 to 26. In America it dropped to 20 or 21. Men also
married younger.
 Given the better economic prospects in the colonies, a
greater proportion of women married, and the birth rate
remained much higher than in Europe.
 Death rate in the New World was much lower. Infants
generally had a better chance to reach maturity and
adults had a better chance to reach old age than their
counterparts in England and Europe.
 1.3 Birth and Death Rates
 This longevity : less the result of a more temperate
climate than a reflection of the character of the
settlement itself.
• The land was more bountiful;
• Famine seldom occurred after a settlement’s first year;
• Winters were more severe than in England, but the
firewood was plentiful;
• Being younger on the whole, Americans were less
susceptible to disease than were Europeans;
• More widely scattered, they were also less exposed to
disease.
 1.3 Birth and Death Rates
 This began to change as population centers grew and
trade and travel increased.
 By the mid-18th the colonies were beginning to
experience levels of contagion much like those in
Europe.
 1.4 Social Status
 Colonists brought to America deeply rooted convictions concerning
the inferiority of women.
 Women were expected to
• be meek and and model housewives;
• joyfully obey and serve their husbands;
• nurture their children;
• maintain their households.

• According to John Winthorp, “A true wife accounts her subjection

[as] her honor and freedom” and would find true contentement
only “in subjection to her husband’s authority.”
 1.4 Social Status
 Both social custom and legal codes ensured that women remained
deferential and powerless.
• They could not vote, preach, hold office, attend public schools or
colleges, bring suits, make contracts, or own property except under
extraordinary conditions.
• The acute shortage of women in the early years made them more
highly valued than in Europe.
• The Puritain emphasis on well-ordered family life led to laws
protecting wives from physical abuse and allowing for divorces.
• BUT the central notion of female subordination and domesticity
remained firmly entrenched in the New World.
 2. Society and Economy in the Southern Colonies

 Crops and Land

 Southern colonies had one unique advantage: the
climate.
 They could grow exotic staples (market crops) that were
prized in by the mother country.
 In Virginia, tobacco. In South Carolina, rice. The southern
woods also provided harvests of lumber and naval stores
(tar, pitch and turpentine).
 One distinctive feature of the South’s staple economy
was a good market in England, another was a trend
toward large-scale production.
 A Southern colony

Native American Tobacco cultivation

 2. Society and Economy in the Southern Colonies

 Labor
 The plantation economy was dependent upon manual labor, and
voluntary indentured servitude accounted for probably half the
arrivals of white settlers in all the colonies outside New England.
 “Indentured servitude”: the name derived form indenture (contract)
by which a person could agree to labor in return for transportation
to the New World. Not all went voluntarily...
 On occasion orphans were bound off to the New World, and from
time to time the mother country sent convicts into colonial
servitude.
 Once the indenture had run its course (usually 4 to 7 years), the
servant claimed the freedom dues set by law (some money, tools,
clothing, food) and often took up landowning.
 2. Society and Economy in the Southern Colonies

 Slavery
 Gradually evolved in the Chesapeake after 1619, when a Dutch
vessel dropped off 20 Negroes in Jamestown. Some of the first were
treated as indentured servants, with a limited term, and achieved
freedom and landownership.
 But, with rationalizations based on color difference or heathenism
(barbarism), the practice of perpetual black slavery became the
custom and the law of the land.
 As staple crops became established on the American continent,
the demand for slaves grew.
 By the mid-18th century, over 20% of the American population was
black. In South Carolina, blacks were in the majority.
Slaves working in a Plantation
 2. Society and Economy in the Southern Colonies

 The Gentry
 By the early 18th century, Virginia and South Carolina were moving
into the Golden age of the Tidewater gentry.
 The new aristocracy patterned its provincial lifestyle after that of the
English country gentleman. The great houses became centers of
sumptuous living, and the planters relished their dominance over
the region’s social life.
 “...the planters kept in touch with the latest refinements of London
style and fashion, living on credit extended for the next year’s crop
and the yearts beyond that, to such a degree that in the late
colonial period Thomas Jefferson called the Chesapeake gentry ‘a
species of property annexed to certain English mercantile houses’.”
Tidewater gentry
Tidewater gentry
 2. Society and Economy in the Southern Colonies
 Religion
 Americans during the 17th century took religion more seriously than in any
time since.
 However, one estimate holds that the proportion of church members to
residents in the southerns colonies was less than one in fifteen.
 There, the tone of religious belief and practice was quite different from that
in Puritain New England or Quaker Pennsylvania. Anglicanism
predominated in the region, and it proved especially popular among the
large landholders.
 In the new environment, the Anglican church evolved into somthing quite
unlike the state church of England.
 The Anglican clergy around the Chesapeake became notorious for its
“sporting parsons”, addicted to fox hunting, gambling, drunkenness, and
worse. And few among the conscientious and upright Anglican ministers
preached fire and brimstone sermons.
 Movies/ Songs
 12 YEARS A SLAVE - Official Trailer (HD)
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z02Ie8wKKRg
 12 years a slave - choir song - ''roll jordan roll'' 2013
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oFcFzJT7Tw
 12 years a slave cotton field song
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcJ6Wxdcj-E
 Negro Spirituals
 http://www.negrospirituals.com/index.html
 Slave Songbook : Origin of the negro Spiritual
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zeshN_ummU
 African American Music: From Spirituals to Jazz and the Blues
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9Vk6m6pqt8
 Novel: A Place
Called Freedom
 by Ken Follett (Goodreads Author)
 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Scotland, 1766. Sentenced to a life of misery in
the brutal coal mines, twenty-one-year-old Mack
McAsh hungers for escape. His only ally: the
beautiful, highborn Lizzie Hallim, who is trapped in
her own kind of hell. Though separated by politics
and position, these two restless young people are
bound by their passionate search for a place
called freedom.
From the teeming streets of London to the
infernal hold of a slave ship to a sprawling Virginia
plantation, Ken Follett’s turbulent, unforgettable
novel of liberty and revolution brings together a
vivid cast of heroes and villains, lovers and rebels,
hypocrites and hell-raisers—all propelled by
destiny toward an epic struggle that will change
their lives forever.
New England colonies
 3. Society and Economy in New England

 Townships
 “By contrast to the seabord planters who transformed the English
mannor into the Southern plantation, the Puritains transformed the
English village into the New England town, although there were
many varieties.”
 Land policy in New England had a stronger social and religious
purpose than elsewhere.
 A group of settlers would petition the General Court for a town, then
divide the parcel according to a rough principle of equity – those
who invested more or had larger families or greater status might
receive more land – retaining some pasture and woodland in
common and holding some for later arrivals.
 3. Society and Economy in New England

 Enterprise
 The life of the typical New England farmer was hard.
 The growing season was short, and the strenuous climate precluded
any exotic staples.
 The crops were those familiar to the English countryside: wheat,
barley, oats, some cattle, swine, and sheep.
 With virgin forests, ready for conversion into masts, lumber, and
ships, and abundant fishing grounds, New Englanders turned to the
sea for livelihood.
 New England became America’s most important maritime center.
 Whales too abounded in New England waters and supplied oil for
lighting and lubrication, as well as ambergris, a secretion used in
perfumes.
 3. Society and Economy in New England

 Entreprise
 New England fisheries supplied a staple of export to
Europe.
 Fisheries encouraged the development of shipbuilding
and experience at seafaring spurred commerce . This in
turn led to wider contacts with the Atlantic world and a
degree of materialism and cosmopolitanism which
clashed with the Puritain credo of plain living and high
thinking.
Fishing industry in the New England Colonies

Whale fishing in New England

New England - Shipbuilding
 Movie: “In the Heart of the sea”
 In the Heart of the Sea - Final Trailer [HD](2015) - Chris Hemsworth
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-H35Mpj4uk
 3. Society and Economy in New England

 Trade
 By the end of the 17th century, America had become part of the great
North Atlantic commercial network, trading not only with the British Isles and
the British West Indies, but also – and often illegally – with Spain, France,
Portugal, Holland and their colonies.
 The mechanism of trade in New England and the Middle Colonies differed
from that in the South in two respects:
• the northern colonies were at a disadvantage in their lack of staples to
exchange for English goods,
• BUT the abundance of their own shipping and mercantile enterprise
worked in their favor.
 3. Society and Economy in New England

 After 1660, to protect English agriculture and fisheries, the English

government raised prohibitive duties against certain major imports from the
northern colonies: fish, flour, wheat, and meat, while leaving the door open
to timber, furs, and whale oil.
 In the early 18th century, New York and New England bought more from
England than they sold there, incurring an unfavorable trade balance.
 “Triangular trade”
 New Englanders shipped rum to the West coast of Africa and bartered for
slaves, took the slaves on the “Middle Passage” to the West Indies, and
returned home with various commodities including molasses, from which
they manufactured rum.
 In another version, they shipped provisions to the West Indies, carried sugar
and molasses to England, and returned with manufactured goods from
Europe.
 3. Society and Economy in New England

 Religion
 For many years the Puritains had a bad press. By the standards of the later
ages they were judged prudes and bigots, BUT they had come to America
to escape error, not to tolerate it in their New Zion.
 The picture of the dour Puritain, hostile to all pleasures, is false. Upper-class
Puritains wore colorful clothing, enjoyed secular music and drank
prodigious quantities of rum.
 The Puritain guideline: “Moderation in all things except piety.”
 Sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage was strictly forbidden but,
like most prohibitions, it seemed to provoke transgressions.
 In part, the abundance of sexual offenses reflected the disproportionate
number of men in the colonies. Many were unable to find a wife and were
therefore tempted to satisfy their sexual desires outside of marriage.
 3. Society and Economy in New England

 Puritains who settled in Massachusetts proposed only to form a purified

version of the Anglican Church.
 In the Puritain version of Calvin’s theology, God had voluntarily entered in a
convenant, or contract, with people through which his creatures could
secure salvation.
 The convenant theory contained certain kernels of democracy, but
democracy was no part of Puritain political science.
 “If people be governors”, asked the Rev. John Cotton, “who shall be
governed?”
 The puritain was dedicated to seeking not the will of the people, but the
will of God. The ultimate source of authority was the Bible. BUT the Bible had
to be known by right reason, which was best applied by those trained to
the purpose.
 3. Society and Economy in New England

 Church and State were but two aspects of the same unit, the purpose of
which was to carry out God’s will on earth.
 The New England way might be summarized in one historian’s phrase as a
kind of “dictatorship of the regenerate”, or of those who had undergone
the conversion experience required for church membership.
 The church exercised a pervasive influence over the life of the town, but
unlike the Church of England it technically had no temporal power.
 While Puritain New England has often been called a theocracy, the church
technically was entirely separated from the state – except that town
residents were taxed for its support.
 The closely knit communities of New England have been called peaceable
kingdoms. Life in the small rural townships was intimate and essentially
cooperative.
Novel: The
Scarlet Letter
 Gary Oldman, Demi Moore
- The Scarlet Letter trailer
https://www.youtube.com/wa
tch?v=NlUetVd4rsw
 Video SparkNotes:
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The
Scarlet Letter summary
https://www.youtube.com/wa
tch?v=uen92KjCSsg
 3. Society and Economy in New England

 Diversity and Social Strains

 But increasing diversity and powerful disruptive forces combined to
erode the idyllic consensual society envisioned by the founding
settlers.
 New England towns were not always pious, harmonious, static, and
self-sufficient rural utopias populated by praying Puritains.
 Many communities were founded as centers of fishing trade, and
commerce rather than farming, religion, and morality.
 Sectarian disputes and religious indifference were also on the rise in
many communities. The emphasis on a direct accountability to
God, which lay at the base of all Protestant theology, caused a
persistent tension and led believers to challenge authority in the
name of private conscience.
 3. Society and Economy in New England
 New England Witchcraft
 The strains accompanying Massachusetts’s transition from Puritain utopia to
royal colony reached an unhappy climax in the witchcraft hysteria at
Salem village in 1692.
 Seething insecurities and family conflicts within the community apparently
made many residents receptive to accusations by adolescent girls that
they had been bewitched.
 The episode began when a few teenage girsl became entranced listeners
to voodoo stories told by Tituba, a West Indian slave, and began acting
strangely.
 The town doctor concluded that they had been bewitched, and the girls
pointed to Tituba and two white women as the culprits.
 Soon, town dwellers were seized with panic as word spread that the devil
was in their midst and wreaking havoc.
 3. Society and Economy in New England

 At a hearing before the magistrates the “afflicted” girls rolled on the floor in
convulsive fits as the three women were questioned by the magistrates.
 Tituba shocked her listeners by not only confessing to the charge but also
divulging that many others in the community were performing the devil’s
work as well.
 The crazed girls began pointing accusing fingers at dozens of residents,
including several of the most respected members of the community.
 Within a few months the Salem jail was filled with townspeople.
 That the accusing girls were so readily believed illustrates how overwrought
the community had become.
 Nearly everybody responsible for the Salem executions later recanted, and
nothing quite like it happened in the colonies again.
 Play : The Crucible
 The Crucible Trailer (1996)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUIAxTxrnCc
 Video SparkNotes: Arthur Miller's The Crucible
summary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLpxwzlEzeE
 4. Society and Economy in the Middle Colonies

 An Economic Mix
 Both geographically and culturally the Middle Colonies stood
between New England and the South, blending their own
influences with elements derived from the older regions on either
side.
 They more completely reflected the diversity of colonial life and
more fully foreshadowed the pluralism of the later American nation.
 Their crops were those of New England but bountiful. They
developed surpluses of foodstuffs for exports to the plantations of
the South and the West Indies.
 The region’s commerce rivaled that of New England, and indeed
Philadelphia in time supplanted Boston as the largest city in the
colonies.
 4. Society and Economy in the Middle Colonies
 An Ethnic Mix
 In the make-up of their population the Middle Colonies stood apart from
both the mostly English Puritain settlements and the plantation colonies to
the South.
 In New York and New Jersey – Dutch culture and language lingered for
some time, along with the Dutch Reformed Church.
 Up and down the Delaware River – the few Swedes and Finns, the first
settlers, were overwhelmed by the influx of English and Welsh Quakers,
followed in turn by the Germans and Scotch-Irish.
 The Germans and the Scotch-Irish became the most numerous of the non-
English groups in the colonies, but others also enriched the diversity of
population in New York and the Quaker colonies: French Huguenots, Irish,
Welsh, Swiss, Jews, and others.
 By 1790 little more than half the the populace, and perhaps fewer, could
trace their origins to England.
Major immigrant groups
in colonial America
 5. Colonial Cities

 Never holding more than 10 percent of the colonial population, they

exerted an influence in commerce, politics, and civilization generally out of
proportion to their size.
 By the end of the colonial period, five major port cities outdistanced the
rest:
• Philadelphia (30,000 people) – the largest city in the colonies, second only
to London;
• New York (25,000 people)
• Boston (16,000 people)
• Charles Town (12,000 people)
• Newport (11,000 people)
Colonial Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Colonial New York, New York
Colonial Boston, Massachusetts
Colonial Charles Town, South Carolina
Colonial Newport, Rhode Island