Chapter Overview

Just as the English established their first outpost on Chesapeake Bay with a set of goals and strategies in mind, so too the native Indians, under their leader Powhatan, pursued their own aims and interests. Powhatan used the "inferior" English newcomers to advance his own longstanding objectives of consolidating his political authority and fending off challenges from the Piedmont tribes.

English Society on the Chesapeake

But after Powhatan's death, the English presence proved more likely to threaten than to support these objectives. The European theory of mercantilism encouraged colonies as a means to achieving national self-sufficiency through international trade. If a colony could produce a commodity that would enrich investors and enhance royal revenues, it was highly prized. With the beginning of a boom in tobacco, an increasing number of white settlers came to Virginia, the vast majority as indentured servants.

The spread of English plantations encroached on tribal lands. Hostilities erupted between whites and Indians. Appalling casualties resulted, as well as a determination, on the part of the English, to destroy the "savage" Indians. Another casualty of the conflict was the Virginia Company itself.

When the price of tobacco leveled off, a more coherent social and political order took shape in Virginia and its neighbor and rival, Maryland. England did little to direct the development in the Chesapeake region because it became distracted by domestic political upheavals that culminated in a Civil War. With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, however, Charles II launched a more consistent colonial policy.

Chesapeake Society in Crisis

The Navigation Acts, designed to regulate colonial trade in ways that, following mercantilist theory, benefited England, only made worse the forces already shaking Chesapeake society. Freed servants and small planters found their opportunities shrinking. Hostilities with the Indians resumed. Political and religious rivalries deepened tensions. Two uprisings resulted.

A shift to using and exploiting African slave labor finally eased the strife within white society. The presence of imported Africans - legally coerced and distinct - unified whites of all classes and religions. Improved economic prospects for whites strengthened this consensus based on race. A new Chesapeake "gentry" encouraged the development of a subordinate and deferential (but prosperous) small-planter class.

From the Caribbean to the Carolinas

A booming sugar economy also transformed the Caribbean into a slave-based plantation society. Land scarcity on English Barbados fostered settlement of South Carolina.

Much like other proprietary colonies, South Carolina suffered from chronic political factions. Social instability, the result of ethnic and religious diversity, and high mortality rates compounded the unrest. Worsening Indian relations resulted in the devastating Yamasee War in 1715, which brought the colony to the brink of dissolution and ended proprietary rule.

Now a royal colony, South Carolina prospered by exporting rice and indigo. Greater social and political harmony ensued, mainly because whites unified against the threat posed by the black slave majority. The founding of Georgia formed a buffer between South Carolina and Spanish Florida.

The Spanish Borderlands

While the English colonies in southern North America were taking shape, the Spanish pushed northward into the American Southwest, scattering military garrisons and cattle ranches throughout the region. To incorporate Indians into colonial society as docile servants and pious farmers and artisans, the Spanish relied on missions staffed by Dominican and Franciscan priests. Like the English in the Chesapeake and the Carolinas, the Spanish in the Southwest encountered sustained resistance to their expansionism from Indian cultures.

In sum, dreams of empire or independence cherished by red, white, and black inhabitants suffered disappointment and sometimes disaster during the 17th century.