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• 1 media/Death_of_Father_Sebastian_Rale_of_the_Society_of_Jesus.jpg media/Plymouth 1679.jpg 2016-06-27T13:29:55+00:00 Settler Colonialism 119 image_header 2023-01-05T13:36:51+00:00

  This week's big question

  Why did a major war break out between settlers and Indigenous peoples of colonial New England?

  Video introduction
  
  

  NOTE: In an earlier version of the course, students read Daniel Mandell's interpretation of King Philip's War in a book subtitled Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty (2010). Since making this video a few years ago, we have updated the lesson by replacing Mandell's interpretation with a newer one by Lisa Brooks. With the exception of this change, all parts of the video introduction still apply.

  
  Learning outcomes

  At the end of this week you should:
  • understand some of the basic dimensions of political and social development in colonial North America;
  • know the fundamental contested issues between Indigenous peoples and British settlers in colonial New England;
  • know something of the bases for King Philip’s War and its major outcomes;
  • be able to explain how different forces – notably, religious, military, and economic power – affected the development of colonial North America.

  Questions to consider, and learning activity

  King Phillip's war was one of the worst wars in American history, with heavy losses on both sides. Its particular story is important. But it also helps us to think about the general issue of on-going relations between the Indigenous peoples of America and the increasingly large number of Europeans who were settling in, and thus occupying, what had been Indigenous lands.
  Here are some particular issues and questions that help you break down the big question into smaller parts:
  • Discuss the colonists view of Indigenous peoples. How did they explain war with Indigenous people? Where did they find legitimacy for their views?
  • What does the 1676 map tell us about these colonial societies? There's also a modern map on page 63 of the Mandell text.  Compare the 1676 map with the modern map. What's different?
  • Rowlandson's book was exceptionally popular in its day, and has been republished many times since. You only have a small excerpt, but why do you think it was so important?
  • What changed in 1675? What factors pushed people to take up arms in defence of their views?
  • Read the Wikipedia excerpt on King Philip's War after you've listened to the Lisa Brooks podcast. Look for differences in the ways she tells the story, who she emphassies, and what assumptions she brings to the table. 
  • Villebon's account is later (1690) and further north (in what is today New Brunswick). But it's all related. Can you see how? [The map of the Wabanaki Confederacy can help.]

  Background

  In 1675 a major war broke out in southern New England between English colonists in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and two Indigenous nations, the Wampanoag and Narragansett. King Philip’s War, named for a leader of the Wampanoag people, was the biggest war in colonial history. At a time when the population of the entire region was around 80,000 people almost 9,000 died, two thirds of them Indigenous. This was a period of transition in the North American colonies. Virginia and Massachusetts, in particular, had grown significantly in the past 60 years but were not yet the mature colonies that would rebel one hundred years later; the Wampanoag had lost their dominant place in the region, but were not yet a politically or militarily marginalized people. The colonies were experiencing powerful internal tensions and external pressures. Internally, growth had brought about wealth and expansion. That same growth was adding pressure to surrounding indigenous peoples, many of whom determined to push back more forcefully. The result was one of the bloodiest wars ever fought.
  Not all of New England’s Indigenous peoples rebelled. Many had converted to Christianity and a few of these “praying Indians” joined the attack (although in several instances that distinction was lost on colonial militias who often killed “Indians” on sight); others had long-standing poor relations with the Wampanoag and saw no reason to change that relationship. Indeed, in the later stages of the war, many Indigenous men fought with the colonists. Though the war was undoubtedly a war between colonisers and colonised, the lines were often blurred.
  
  The causes of King Philip's war continue to be debated. Early accounts portrayed the war as civilised Christians in a struggle against primitive pagans. Though sometimes showing some sympathy for the Wampanoag, the main thrust of the story usually portrayed the settlers as defending themselves from hostile "warlike" peoples. Most of the story, too, centres on the Wampanoag leader Metacom (KIng Philip), typically portraying him as having turned his back on the peaceful relationship his father had struck with the settlers, and thus having betrayed an informal treaty. Others focus on the murder of Sassamon, a Wampanoag man who had converted to Christianity, and thus portraying the story as a savage response to Christianity overtaking their culture. More recent studies have offered a more contextual explanation focusing less on the immediate events that resulted in the outbreak of war and more on the longer-term deterioration of relations. The New Englanders, their populations expanding through high birth-rates and continued immigration, had pushed much more deeply and aggressively into Indigenous territory. 
  
  What marks almost all these accounts, whether sympathetic to the settler or Indigenous perspectives, is that they assume Metacom was the leader of the Wampanoag, and it was his leadership defining the war. That he played a major part, no one disputes. But one recent book by historian Lisa Brooks has uncovered new research that casts wholly new light not only on another leader, but also on a leader who was female. Weetamoo was Metacom's aunt, but more importantly she was a respected leader among a broad group of kin-related Wampanoag peoples. Brooks's examination is grounded in rigorously detailed archival research, and urges us not only to reexamine our assumptions of settlers versus Indigenous cultures, but also to question our assumptions about leadership when the documents so often focus on men. As we've seen in a number of cases already, it's very difficult to see the history of preliterate peoples. Brooks offers us a first glimpse of what it might mean to more effectively assume an Indigenous perspective on settler-colonial stories - a perspective where settler assumptions might actually block us from seeing what really happened. 
  
  Most of King Philip’s War was fought within 50 miles of , but it also spilled over onto northern and western frontiers. This brought in other Indigenous peoples, most of whom were allied with the French in Canada and Acadia. New France has a smaller population than the British colonies, but dominated trade (and therefore military alliances) with many Indigenous peoples in what is now the US northeast and mid-west (Maine, Vermont, western New York, Michigan, and Ohio). Though not direct players in the early phases of King Philip’s War, the field of battle moved into northern New England in 1677 and 1678, and it began to draw in French allies such as the Abenaki and Mi’kmaq (in what is today Nova Scotia and northern New England). The result was a decades-long frontier battle between French and English colonists and Iroquoian and Algonquian nations. Those continued tension - often small-scale wars - was very much part of the build up to the Seven Years War.
  
  The endless cycle of attack and counterattack is evident in some of our French readings this week. French colonization strategies were quite different than the English. Where the English brought in many settlers to “plant” colonies in the New World, the French strategy was based on trade much more than settlement. Thus, while the English strategy invariably put pressure on Indigenous communities, this was much less so the case with the French.  One major result of these different strategies was that by the late 1600s the English greatly outnumbered the French. Nevertheless, both groups pushed against the frontier, and both were compelled to negotiate, or resist, the complex politics of Indigenous peoples in the interior. The general result was one of tension between the colonies of the two major European powers and among and between their Indigenous allies in America.  While our readings focus on only one region in the late 17th century, those differences and their resulting conflicts, nevertheless, mirror much of the larger story of North American colonization. The defeat of the Wampanoag and their allies would come at a high cost for New England, both in terms of lives lost and the impact on their society and politics. It improved the colonists' security, establishing a base for the colonies' expansion through the 18th century (which we will examine in the next term). It would also, however, bring them into greater conflict with most northern and western Indigenous peoples such as the Abenaki and Mi'kmaq, and eventually with the Iroquois (Haudensaunee) - the dominant Indigenous nation of central North America. In northern New England, the Wabanaki Confederacy - an alliance of Mi'kmaq, Abenaki, Penobscot, and Maliseet peoples, with occasional French support - fought four wars with the Anglo-American settlers of what is now northern Maine and the southern Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Over the next seventy years a series of smaller wars would be fought along the northern and western frontiers of New England. Of course, the Indigenous peoples of these regions didn't see this territory as English, but as their own. Further to the north, in the French colonies of Canada and Acadia, French colonial forces allied with these Indigenous peoples both for trading purposes and to weaken English efforts to push further inland. These protracted conflicts would culminate in an even larger war, the Seven Years War (1756-83), which would fundamentally reshape colonial and Indigenous North America.
  
  In the historical memory of New England, the war shaped how generations of settlers would understand "the savages" who surrounded them. If some would convert to Christianity and show signs of accommodating to the colonists' ways, others seemed all the more intent to resist and the drive the invaders back into the sea upon which they arrived.  There were several Anglo-Indigenous wars in the 17th and 18th centuries, though none were bigger, and none loomed larger in subsequent generations for what it taught them about Indigenous peoples. In the colonists' histories, Indigenous people were savages that needed to be contained, or crushed. Few stories caught this spirit more powerfully than the captivity narrative of Mary Rowlandson. Her story, published as a book shortly after the war and republished several times since, illustrated exactly what New England settlers thought about their Indian foes, and about themselves. The Indigenous captors were cruel and primitive; they ate barbarous foods; they engaged in horrendous practices. Mary Rowlandson, on the other hand, was a model of Christian womanhood: an innocent who lost her husband and child in an attack, suffering at the hands of cruel Indians, but kept strong by her Christian faith and noble demeanour. The story, as we'll see, also shows indications of Indigenous kindness, and New England barbarism, but the main elements of the story highlight a just fight against a cruel opponent. The narrative never considers the plight of the Wampanoag, that their people were dying of Europeans diseases, that their land was being taken away, and that New England officials continued to push back after every concession.  For generations afterward, this message for the colonists remained powerful, a clear story of the justice of their actions.
  
  We can see it very differently today, but we should also strive to understand that worldview - to understand what allowed people to believe so firmly in the correctness of their ways. But the war surely does contain in miniature a view of the larger state of settler-Indigenous stories. Not all were so violent, not all so clearly captured the naked ambition of New England colonization, not all were so powerfully and effectively narrated. But no story illuminates more effectively the broader pattern of warfare in securing European holds on the so-called New World.

  Toolbox

  This week you will practice analyzing the causes of a major set of conflicts. The details will matter here, but the general objective of thinking about causes and consequences in research applies to almost every historical question. Spend a few minutes reading about the general principles of thinking about this aspect of historical thinking by clicking here. The linked page from The Historical Thinking Project is not long, but it is helpful.
  

  Secondary sources

  Lisa Brooks, "A New History of King Philip's War", episode 191 of Ben Franklin's World podcast. (2018).
  
  King Philip's War, Wikipedia.
  
  You may wish to peruse Lisa Brooks's book, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2018).

  Primary sources

  Read at least three or four of these primary documents. Note the final text is from French territory in what is now northern New England, but it offers a reminder that the war didn't simply end in 1678 and that in many ways it continued further north. 
  
  Pay attention to when each document was written! They can all tell us things about how to understand King Philip's War, but from different contexts. 
  • Increase Mather, A Brief History of Warr with the Indians of New-England (1676), pp. 9-15. (Note: Read up until the last full paragraph in the middle of p. 15).
  • Boston trader Sarah Knight on her travels in Connecticut, 1704
  • John Easton, “A Relation of the Indian War” (1676).
  • Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings, and Removes of Mrs Mary Rowlandson (Boston, 1791 [orig. 1685], 14-18.
  • Report of Governor Joseph Robineau de Villebon, 1691-2 in John Clarence Webster, ed., Acadia at the End of the 17th Century: Letters, Journals, and Memoirs of Joseph Robineau de Viillebon, Commandant in Acadia, 1690-1700 (Saint John, NB, New Brunswick Museum, 1979 [1934]), 57–66 [account of an attack against an English settlement, 1694] and 89–94 [account of an English attack on Fort Nashwaak – near modern-day Fredericton New Brunswick in October 1696].

  If you're doing the Captivity Narratives assignment, you'll recognise Rowlandson as one of your two titles. You should also note that Robineau's report was written while he was organising an attack with the Malecite Indigenous peoples from Nashwaak (near modern-day Fredericton) on Pentagoet (just north of modern-day Portland Maine). John Gyles, the author of your other title, was being held captive by the Malecite at that time. It's part of how King Philip's War extended north and east into Canada and Acadia/Nova Scotia. That this is twenty years later is a good indication that in some ways the war had never ended.

   

• 1 media/Moll West Indies 1702 DETAIL Raremaps.jpg 2022-10-04T14:09:32+00:00 Europe's Empires Expand 25 (2022-23) image_header 2022-10-18T11:38:51+00:00

  This week's big question

  What were the motivations of the private adventurers who claimed land for European countries?

  Video Introduction
  
  

  Learning outcomes

  At the end of this week you should be able to:
  • describe some of the major locations and bases for European overseas expansion in the 15th through 17th centuries;
  • explain something of the different motivations for overseas expansion;
  • explain the basis for the integration of the New World into the emerging Atlantic economy;
  • outline some of the major economic, political, and cultural reasons for overseas exploration and colonization.

  Questions to consider, and learning activity

  Remember what you've learned about secondary sources and "historiographical thinking" from the Lessons just before Reading Week on Agricultural Revolutions. Once you've read over this page, begin your preparation for the Week's Forum by reading the chapter by Klooster for historical context and a deeper explanation of some of the motivating factors for European Expansion. Use this context to help you  read and analyze 3 of the primary sources plus one of the maps in order to answer one or more of the questions below.
  • How would you characterize the motives of these writers for colonizing the New World? Drawing on the cultural, political, or economic ideas you’ve seen in the first module (e.g., the Great Chain of Being, or Catholic vs Protestant views about authority), do you see some of those influences at work in the discussions of colonization? Do you see patterns of similarity among the different writers? Differences?
  • What can the images included on this page tell us about early modern understandings of the New World? What did early modern viewers “see” when they looked at these images? Discuss different ways the maps can help us understand the process of imperial expansion. Do the maps speak to the same motivations as the texts?
  • How did these authors justify their plans to take over these newly discovered lands?
  • Why did Parkhurst urge English colonization of Newfoundland?  Was Newfoundland different than the other cases?
  • Biard was a Jesuit missionary -- how does that influence how we should interpret this document?
  • How was America drawn into the Atlantic world?

  Background

  Paralleling the development of the centralized state and the agricultural revolution, western European states also began utilizing improvements in map-making, navigation devices, and ship construction that allowed them to explore further along the coasts of Africa and ultimately to venture further to the west. We will not, in this course, pursue these technological questions relating to navigation. Instead we will focus on the question of what encouraged Europeans to venture further afield, and what motivated them to colonize the Americas.  An interesting dimension of this early exploration is who was leading these expansive movements.  While we often speak of states as actors –- that is, that England (or France, or whatever) did things (explored, colonized, whatever) –- it was not the states themselves leading the way but private adventurers acting in the name of these states.  This in part explains why some of the most famous “explorers” were Italian seamen such as Cristoforo Columbo (who in English we call Christopher Columbus) and Giovanni Caboto (who we call John Cabot) sailing for Spain and England respectively.  ​Our questions this week focus on these adventurers’ motivations for exploring, what value they saw in the new lands, how they encouraged their sponsoring states to continue to support their endeavours, and ultimately what motivated the states to support expansion.
  
  In other words, our topic this week is the rise of European colonialism, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries.  This is very much one of those longer-term stories that we discussed in past weeks. But the exact parameters aren’t clear.  We might be tempted to say this story began with Columbus arriving in the Caribbean in 1492 –- and certainly in many ways it did –- but of course all that really happened on those voyages was that Europeans learned that there was another continent across the ocean, what they came to call the New World.  And while significant consequences began very quickly in places like Mexico and the Caribbean, the emergence of European power in the Americas, Africa, and Asia did not begin that day.  It took centuries to reach the point that we might now recognize as the colonial world being under the control, or domination, of Europe.  When we can begin to speak of a European dominance of the Americas is not clear.
  
  This raises several big questions: Why did the European empires form outside of Europe?  Why did European colonization take place? Why did it take so long? And if it took so long, and is not especially clear as to why it happened, how can we even understand it as a story?  We won’t answer that question this week.  Indeed, historians don't completely agree on the answers anyhow, but as we proceed over the next few weeks we’ll begin to see some patterns.
  
  This week, we’ll emphasize two features of this story. First, that much of the “imperial expansion” of Europe looked quite different on the ground than it did in the minds of (and as seen on the maps of) the European powers.  There are five early modern European powers that we should keep in mind: England, France, Holland, Spain, and Portugal.  While the Spanish and Portuguese did make significant inroads in terms of conquering and controlling territory in the Caribbean and South America, France, Holland, and England’s place on the ground in North America was much less impressive –- especially much less impressive than its cartographers imagined.  As we’ll see in a few weeks, New England and the other British colonies would grow quickly, but even by the time of the American revolution -– almost 300 years after Columbus! -– they remained tightly enclosed along the Atlantic seaboard.  Similarly, French maps depicted their control of much of eastern North America, but the actual place of French power was limited to a few enclaves along the St. Lawrence River.  
  
  Second, what the European states and their private adventurer-proxies thought the best actions on the ground were not always the same things, and often not at all compatible.  While private adventurers had to maintain the good graces of their Old World political supporters, in the New World they had a lot of latitude on the ground. There was no army –- i.e., no state force -– there in the New World or in Africa to enforce the expectations of Kings or legislators. Thus, these merchant-adventurers were taking risks if they tested their rulers' authority, but the lure of profit –- and power –- could be great.  Moreover, again as will become clear in future weeks, even that limited presence could have profound consequences.

  Toolbox

  In the First Module you practiced the effective analysis of primary and secondary sources, were introduced to historiographical debates in our lesson on Agricultural Revolutions, and practiced the slow reading of documents by transcribing them. These early lessons will provide a solid base upon which to build your skills throughout the course. You may wish to review the skills of "sourcing" that you learned about in Module 1.
  
  In your Forum entries for this week's Lesson, you will continue to practice the analysis of primary sources. Pay particular attention to the perspectives in each document. In a way similar to historians having different interpretations of the same questions, so too did people in the past have different interpretations of their worlds. You can consider questions such as:

  • Who was the author and what economic or social or religious or political interests did that person have?
  • When did he or she create the source?
  • What is the source about and what did the author think about that subject?

  To find out more about the general kinds of questions you should always have in mind when you consider a source's perspective, see the Historical Thinking worksheets available through the link. 
  
  In addition, this week we will spend some time thinking about maps!  You will notice that many of our lessons include images and maps as both tell us much about the imaginations, motivations, and ideologies of their creators.  Choose one map, and spend some time analyzing it in your forum post.

  • Observe the map, in other words, describe what you see. What area does the map describe? What do you notice first? What size and shape is the map? Does anything look strange or unfamiliar? Does the map offer any textual descriptions?
  • Analyze the map, using the same questions you might ask of any primary source. Who created the map? When? For what purpose? For whom (intended audience rather than a specific individual, although that may also be applicable)?  What does this map tell you about how much the creator understood the subject? Did they have first hand knowledge of the area?
  • Finally, can you connect the map to at least one of our primary sources? How might they support the interests of European Expansion described in the document?

  Primary sources

  Read and analyze any 3 of the primary sources plus one of the maps.
  • Richard Hakluyt, the elder, “Inducements to the Liking of the Voyage Intended towards Virginia [1585]”, in David B. Quinn, ed., New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612, volume III (London, Macmillan, 1979), 64-69.
  • John Cotton, God’s Promise to his Plantation (1630).
  • “Petition of Merchants of London and Bristol for a Newfoundland Charter, 1610”, in David B. Quinn, ed., New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612, volume IV (London, Macmillan, 1979), 131-2.
  • Pierre Biard, “Reasons why the Cultivation of New France ought to be Undertaken in Earnest”, Rueben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, volume IV (Cleveland, 1894), 111-7.
  • John Brereton, A Briefe Relation of the Description of Elizabeth's Ile [Cape Cod] (London, 1602).

  Secondary sources

  Klooster, Wim,' The Northern European Atlantic World', in Nicholas Canny, and Philip Morgan (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World: 1450-1850 (2011; online edn, Oxford Academic,18 Sept. 2012).