User:Millelacs/Writings

Jamestownplymouth

I believe that the early English colonies at Jamestown and Plymouth had more differences then similarities.

Jamestown

James Stuart. James was King of Scots as James VI, and ruled England and Ireland as James I.

During the reign of James Stuart I, King of England, permanent settlements were established on the North American continent. In 1606, a group of English investors formed the Virginia Company of London, hoping to make money by establishing prosperous colonies in the New World. One of the company's leaders was its treasurer, Sir Thomas Smythe, whose family had a long history of supporting overseas business ventures. Another leader was the aging Edward Maria Wingfield, who was to go on the expedition to North America.

104 settlers chosen by the Virginia Company arrived in Chesapeake Bay on May 13, 1607. They established a Council, with Wingfield as President, and set up camp at a location that they called "James City." Thirteen days later, the Paspahegh Indians attacked the camp and killed a settler. On June 15, a fort was built. Councilor George Kendall played a major part in establishing this safer residence.

In September, there were several disturbances. Unprepared colonists grew hungry, and attacks by the Indians caused them to become frightened and discouraged. The ambitious captain of the Discovery, John Ratcliffe, took this opportunity to seize power. The unhappy settlers were more than willing to assist him, and the takeover occurred rather quickly. First, Councilor Kendall was arrested and removed from the Council. Then, only two days later, Council President Wingfield was removed from office. He was brought before the Council, now led by Ratcliffe, and was accused of several bizarre crimes such as spying for the Spanish and hoarding food and drink while others starved. The colonist John Smith did nothing to help Wingfield, who had supposedly accused him of mutiny. In fact, Smith was one of the men who arrested Wingfield.

Wingfield was returned to England in 1608, far luckier than Councilor Kendall, who was "shott to death." Ratcliffe led the colony, with Smith and a man called John Martin as his assistants. Smith became unhappy with this arrangement, as the colonists began to starve under Ratcliffe's rule. Smith decided to go on an expedition to meet the Indians, and perhaps encounter the mysterious Indian king Powhatan, who had united most of the tribes in the area. The expedition was successful, and became the stuff of legend. Smith, in an encounter that he later glamourized, was taken prisoner by the Indians and brought before Powhatan. The two worked out a compromise, and the Indians allied themselves with the colonists.

Smith returned, but was not greeted as a hero. Since some of the men who had gone with him on his expedition were killed by the Indians, the Council ordered Smith's execution. However, in an unusual rescue, the ships of Christopher Newport arrived just before the execution with more colonists and supplies. In an even more surprising twist, Newport and his men declared Smith President of the Council. Ratcliffe was no doubt infuriated, but remained a prominent leader.

Smith was the type of leader needed by the settlers at "Jamestown," rationing out food and instituting a "no-work no-eat policy." He was supported by King Powhatan and his daughter Pocahontas, whose confederacy kept Jamestown fed throughout Smith's presidency. Smith may have alienated the Indians by manhandling Powhatan's younger half-brother, Opechancanough, out of his residence and forcing the chief to provide the settlers with provisions. In 1609, he was badly injured in a gunpowder explosion that may have been no accident. Smith's archrivals on the Council sent him home to England, and George Percy was chosen as his successor.

Now began a period known as the "Starving Time." The Powhatan Confederacy was ordered by its paramount chief to surround Jamestown, and settlers who dared to venture outside the fort lost their lives. Expeditions were annihilated, and ex-President Ratcliffe was captured and tortured to death by the Powhatans. By 1610, the situation had grown so dire that the colonists decided to abandon the settlement. Their ships were intercepted by a relief expedition, led by Lord Delaware, and the ships turned around.

Though the Starving Times was over, there were still tensions with the Powhatan Indians. In 1622, led by Opachancanough, the Powhatans attacked the now-sprawling English settlements in Virginia. Only Jamestown was saved, due to the just-in-time warnings of an Indian boy, apprenticed to a colonial farmer.

Jamestown boasted the House of Burgesses, America's first legislature.

Plymouth

The Separatists were persecuted in England for decades after the reforms of King Henry VIII. Two of the Separatists' original leaders were executed in 1593, and practicing their religious beliefs meant that Separatists often violated royal laws. This prompted the Separatists to search for a new home.

In 1607, during the reign of King James, a congregation of Separatists decided to travel to Holland, which had won its independence from Spain after a long revolutionary war. Holland was a Protestant country, and friendly to persecuted religious groups. The congregation chartered a ship in the town of Boston, and boarded the ship in high hopes that they were on the way to a new, freer life.

They were mistaken - their captain had betrayed them. As soon as they had boarded the ship, they were arrested by the local authorities and taken to the Boston jail. They were held here for a month, with their leaders imprisoned for a short while longer.

They decided to charter another ship, with a trusted captain. This time, things began well. The men boarded the ship, and made ready for the women and children to follow. Suddenly, a band of armed locals was seen approaching, and the captain panicked. The ship sailed, leaving the women and children behind.

Eventually, a sizeable number of Separatists (at least 150) reached Amsterdam, Holland, including the stranded women and children. Their troubles, though, were not over. Relations between the Separatists and other English exiles in Amsterdam grew tense, and the soon-to-be Pilgrims moved on to the city of Leiden. Here, life was better, but living conditions were still difficult and their English culture was jeopardized. It was decided that the Separatists should move on to a place where they could practice their own customs and celebrate their English heritage. The New World was such a place.

In 1619, Separatist leaders returned to England and received a charter to set up a colony in Virginia. The settlers - both Leiden residents and other Englishmen - left a year later, on two ships called the Speedwell and the Mayflower. The Speedwell experienced trouble, and was forced to turn back, leaving the Mayflower to continue the voyage alone.

The Separatists did not land in Virginia. Instead, they reached New England, a land explored by the doughty John Smith, whom they had refused to hire as a guide. The adult men among the "Pilgrims" signed the Mayflower Compact, allowing for a degree of democracy. They came ashore in present-day Masschusetts, with plenty of supplies, including weapons, and set up a few buildings.

The Pilgrims had a rough go of it in North America, as they had almost everywhere they went. Only half survived the first winter, and the local Indians, the Pokanokets, waited patiently and watched as the colony suffered. Even the colony's governor, John Carver, died of illness.

The Pilgrims managed to set up a plantation, and alliances were eventually forged with the Indians' paramount chief, Massasoit. To celebrate a good harvest, the Pilgrims and Indians had a three-day feast in the autumn of 1621. The Pilgrims coexisted peacefully in the same locale as the Pokanokets for decades, fighting alongside them against other tribes, such as the Pequots. This lasted until 1676, when Massasoit's son, Metacomet (Philip), began King Philip's War, a bloody conflict between the natives and settlers sparked by Pilgrim intolerance.

After the war, the Indian population was effectively decimated, with some being sold as slaves and taken as far as Bermuda.

Comparison

As I mentioned in the article lead, the Jamestown and Plymouth Colonies had more differences than similarities. Here, I shall explain why I think this.

Although both settler groups were authorized to settle in North America by the government of James I, they ventured across the wide blue sea for entirely different reasons. The Anglican Jamestown colonists hoped to make money for both themselves and the Virginia Company. Their efforts were successful, thanks in part to the growing of tobacco after 1613. The Pilgrim Separatists, however, fled England and then left Holland because they wanted freedom of religion, something lacking in those European countries, heavily populated by people with starkly different beliefs.

The Pilgrims were far more prepared than the Jamestown colonists, and had experienced much tougher lives. The upper-class Virginia Company men were taken aback by an Indian assault on their camp, while the Pilgrims had weapons ready and even brought them along to church, an activity immortalized by painters. This did not stop half of each group from dying after only a short time in America.

The Indians met by the Jamestown settlers were far less tolerant of the newcomers than those in New England. Powhatan's alliance with John Smith ended after the council president returned to England, whereupon the Indians besieged James Fort. Massasoit, though, was friendly to the Pilgrims, joining them in both peace and war. Also, in New England, there were Indians who spoke English as a result of earlier (often negative) contact with sailors. In 1676, however, the situation between colonists and Indians escalated into war. In Virginia, the war prompted disgruntled colonists to rise up against Governor William Berkeley.

Both colonies had some elements of a provincial democracy, although Plymouth had more direct representation than Jamestown. It was not until several years after Jamestown's founding that elections were allowed, while the Pilgrims authorized all adult men to vote for their leaders.

The Plymouth colonists had more faith in themselves than those at Jamestown, who attempted to sail away in 1610, after the Starving Time.

Although Virginia's winter climate is milder than New England's, the settlers of the northern colonies did not have to worry about some things that the Jamestown residents did - the more southerly colony sat beside a swamp.

The South gave us George Washington.

The North gave us John Adams.

I think that the "prime" difference, or at least one of the major ones, is that the New England colonies gave rise to one mindset, and the Virginia ones to another. In Virginia, slavery was considered acceptable. This belief spread across the South, and indeed the North for a time, but, over the centuries, more Southerners thought of themselves as slaveowners than Northerners. The northerners, having fled England to find religious freedom, embraced other definitions of liberty in the coming years, while Virginians and other southerners stuck to a semi-rigid class system. The two colonies, opposites in so many ways, gave rise to opposing cultures that would clash more than two hundred years later. I could sum this up in a way - the Pilgrims' handiwork gave us John Adams; that of the Jamestown colonists gave us George Washington.

Atlantic Revolution

The Atlantic Revolutions were loosely-connected periods of political upheaval around the Atlantic world between 1755 and 1821, occurring toward the end of the Age of Enlightenment. The Atlantic Revolutions included the Corsican Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Latin American Wars of Independence. Other revolts occurred in Haiti and in the Low Countries of Europe.

The Age of Enlightenment

The Atlantic Revolutions were inspired by the political philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment, such as those of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, inspired political philosophies that criticized the status quo of 18th-century European kingdoms, often ruled autocratically. Instead, the philosophes of the Enlightenment praised the republic, although historians have claimed that leaders of the Enlightenment still chose to associate themselves with the rulers of France and Prussia. These historians have noted that the philosophes criticized autocratic rule, but did nothing to prevent its continuation.

The Enlightenment reached Great Britain's thirteen colonies along the North American seabord, where intellectuals, including Benjamin Franklin, embraced it. Other leading American politicians followed Franklin's example, especially in the years after the French and Indian War, when it became evident that many colonists desired independence from the British monarchy.

The Corsican Revolution

By the year 1755, the Genoese rule over the Mediterranean island of Corsica had become unpopular, and its hold over the Corsican populace was tenuous, with occupying forces effectively confined to their forts. Earlier threats to Genoese control, including the efforts by Baron Theodore of Neuhoff to establish a monarchy, had been dealt with, often after French intervention, but Corsica remained very unstable and a hotbed of rebellion. In 1755, Corsican welcomed the return of the popular leader Pasquale Paoli, at the time a decorated officer in the Neapolitan army. Paoli's father, Hyacinth, had been appointed as one of the chief ministers of the "king" Theodore, and Paoli had departed Corsica amidst the chaos.

Paoli returned, coming ashore at Aleria, and was appointed the "sole general" of Corsica by the other leaders of the resistance to Genoese rule. He imposed measures that restricted the use of the vendetta, common at the time between opposing factions, and defeated an armed challenge from his rival, Emanuel Matra, who was supported by Genoese forces. Several further attempts, by Genoa and by the allied Matra family, to restore the island to their control, failed disastrously, and Genoa eventually concluded a treaty with France that resulted in the 1764 takeover of a part of the island by the government of Louis XVI. By 1768, the entire isle had been ceded to France. Paoli attempted to wage a guerilla resistance, but failed, and went into exile. He remained the dominant Corsican politician, and was given leadership positions on Corsica twice in the 1790s, during the French Revolution, the which saw him first as a hero and then as a royalist enemy and ally of Britain.

The American Revolution

The American Revolution, and the simultaneous, interconnected war of independence caused by it was a conflict between independence-seeking English colonists and the British government, headed by Parliament and by King George III. The revolution arguably began around 1763 , after the Treaty of Paris was signed, concluding hostilities in the French and Indian War, which had lasting effects on Americans, who had been active participants in the war. Duties imposed on the colonists included the Stamp Act and the Sugar Act were meant to raise funds for the British government, but resulted in a major rift between pro-independence colonists, called Patriots, and the government and its supporters, called Loyalists. During the 1760s, major cities in the colonies, including Boston, were plagued by riots and civil disturbances, often instigated by Patriot opponents of the king.

Fighting between the two factions broke out in April of 1775, when colonial militia engaged in an armed confrontation with British regulars near the towns of Lexington and Concord. Boston was soon besieged by Patriot forces, who formed a military force called the Continental Army, established the Second Continental Congress as their legislature. Members of the Congress included Patriot leaders such as Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, and Thomas Jefferson. George Washington, a colonel of Virginia militia during the Seven Years' War, was appointed commander of the Continental Army.

In the summer of 1776, after the evacuation of Boston by British forces, who then successfully waged a campaign against Washington's army near New York City, the members of the Continental Congress convened and confirmed their intent to secede from British control by signing the Declaration of Independence. Even after the passage and signing of the Declaration, fighting continued. The fall of New York was a major setback to the Patriot cause, but a surprise attack on the city of Trenton, New Jersey, guarded by Hessian mercenaries hired by the British, improved the morale of the Continental Army, which continued fighting. After the Patriot victory in the Battle of Saratoga, in northern New York, the Kingdom of France joined the war, sending troops to help the Continental Army. This proved to be the major turning point in the revolution, and the British were ultimately confined to New York City in the north and were forced to retreat to Yorktown, Virginia in the south. With French assistance, the Continental Army defeated Lord Charles Cornwallis's army of British, Hessian, and Loyalist troops in the Siege of Yorktown. The 1783 Treaty of Paris confirmed American independence.