the next section that we're going to go over is the middle colonies basically this refers to the colonies that are in between the northern colonies of new england and the southern colonies so not a lot in here of course new york new jersey pennsylvania and delaware so this should be a pretty relatively quick presentation here um and we'll just go into of course the settlement of these uh four colonies as well as the unique aspects which kind of helped differentiate the middle colonies from the new england colonies just some of the differences that you know historians and you know other analysts have noticed between these two regions of colonial america so first is of course new netherlands as it was originally termed when it was first settled uh and the region of new netherlands includes new york and new jersey so when talking about this i'm referring to both regions here so this area of the colonies was explored by an englishman by the name of henry hudson henry hudson was actually hired by the dutch east india company to explore the land looking for what was called the northwest passage basically they were trying to find a sea route to get to the indies by going north instead of sailing south and going around the tip of south america unfortunately they did not find the sea route because it did not exist but hudson did explore much of the region of modern day new york and the hudson river in new york as well as the hudson bay up north in canada are named in his honor so the dutch were able to establish good relations with the native americans for the from this exploratory mission and decided to set up a trading post in uh north america so the reason why the dutch are trying to do this is because of course you know the english are not the only ones that are trying to get in on trade in the new world everybody wants to undermine the spanish as we'll talk about the french are trying to get in on the commodities coming out of the new world so the dutch as well they're trying to undermine spanish wealth and the spanish empire particularly the dutch want to do this even more so uh because certain parts of the land of what is the netherlands uh or you know owned by the dutch uh were actually owned by the spanish empire due to some marriage arrangements and some agreements that had happened so even though they were technically part of it they weren't reaping the same benefits uh that the you know purely spanish empire located in spain was getting uh so they were basically the dutch were trying to find any way they could to settle and trade in the new world to try and find ways to cut off the power of spain and hopefully gain their independence in the process but of course dutch the dutch earned the ability to self-govern they gained kind of their independence if you will as a result of the 30 years war and separated from the spanish in 1648 uh so all this stuff with new amsterdam is going on beforehand but eventually the dutch do get their ability to you know do their own thing so uh the dutch east india company is also important to know about because it was really the the company that was part of the foundation of new netherlands uh and specifically the the capital of new amsterdam so the dutch east india company was a mega corporation which was actually founded by the government uh so it was both a business and a governmental organization the two were intricately connected uh and at its height the dutch east india company was actually the wealthiest company in history it had bases of operation of course in north america but also china india africa the caribbean of course europe brazil as well and it was it dominated trade of goods in uh throughout europe so even though spain is getting a lot of goods from south america as a european power the dutch east india company is getting global worldwide trade and power so so definitely economically they're doing a lot to undermine the spanish just to show you just how much wealth the dutch east india company had i actually have some pictures to show you they're in the next uh the following slides here so this is the overall wealth accumulation of companies over history here this is in the trillions of dollars you can see that apple is right here uh barely scraping into the 1 trillion mark here but the dutch east india company is right here almost reaching uh 8 trillion dollars so definitely you can see a vast difference in just how much wealth uh the dutch east india company had now this data comes from 2017 uh so there may of course be some differences in adjustments and on where apple or microsoft are but this is also accounts for inflation as well uh so you can see that the the dutch east india company was making seven times more the amount of money than apple or microsoft so so this is crazy crazy wealthy in fact uh here's another visual to help you get a comprehension of just how massive uh the dutch east india company was the dutch east india company like i said almost had eight trillion seven point nine trillion according to some estimates at their height in 1637 so here are 20 modern companies who all of their net wealth together combined equal up to the dutch east india company so of course we have apple microsoft amazon uh visa walmart netflix mcdonald's facebook uh and of course you know several banks and uh other companies you can see that all of their net wealth total can equal the wealth that the dutch east india company had at it at its height at its maximum so definitely specifically for the english to have a colony uh in their area kind of getting into their territory it's sandwiched between new england and the colonies of virginia and other southern colonies this is a huge threat economically trading goods with the dutch east india company is a lot cheaper and easier so that's why there's the navigation x later on is because the english don't want to add money to the dutch east india company they're the biggest economic threat uh at the time as a business as a corporation uh and that's also what leads to smuggling is people don't care they want to trade with the dutch east india company because they like the goods that they have to offer so that just really again shows you just how much this company had as a corporation and so we'll go ahead and go back to our slides here so the ins uh specifically in 1626 the dutch purchased the island of manhattan from local lenape indians for the price equivalent to today of about a thousand dollars uh again this is you know it's highly probable that the people the the dutch took advantage of the native americans lack of understanding of european land ownership uh so that idea also would lead to issues and conflicts in the future some small scale battles over land resulting in the death of about a thousand native americans and settlers combined the settlement of new amsterdam uh was established on manhattan island as the capital of new netherlands so new amsterdam became the trading center for the dutch in the new world uh so you know they had places everywhere else around the world they wanted to try and make their mark in north america so because the settlement was established by the dutch east india company the government was also very strict and controlled all aspects of political life uh of course this included the appointment of governing officials like governors advisory councils and such uh which means that this did not allow for a locally elected body uh the people of new amsterdam did not elect their representatives like like the people in new england or the people down in virginia there was no you know locally uh voted people and the company also had strict control of all trade goods which had to be transported through company ships so of course they want to try and sell and make money with with other people but the dutch that live or the people that live in new netherlands are not allowed to trade with anyone that is not the dutch east india company so those boundaries those regulations are you know very strict and in order to protect new amsterdam uh protect the actual settlement itself the company decided to create what were called patron ships you see the word there uh patroonship basically what they did is they granted tracts of land outside of new amsterdam to very wealthy men was the landowner's job to bring people to this land by providing them with housing tools and other commodities uh so of course that they could farm and in return uh these tenants would pay rent and a portion of their farmed goods would be given to the landlord this was basically an attempt to of course not only create a cushion of land between the native americans and new amsterdam but it was also an attempt to transport the old feudal system to north america although the system had died out throughout much of europe there were still places and pockets in europe specifically eastern europe very strongly but other regions of europe still had the feudal system in place this attempt to transplant feudalism to the americas was unsuccessful however the benefits did not outweigh the costs uh basically people hear about you know north america they hear about the colonies that this is a land of opportunity this is you know more freedom more liberty uh it's very hard to try and force people to obey the rules when they are on the edges of society it's it's very hard to enforce those regulations uh the dutch thought that they might be able to centralize uh authority centralized wealth uh but it just didn't work people didn't respond uh specifically the the tenants didn't respond the way that they were supposed to uh we will talk about this a little bit more later in this lecture but because new amsterdam was a trading outpost uh it was also a very tolerant place for people of diverse religions and in the ethnicities they just wanted people to come there to work they didn't care who you were or what you looked like but there were also some very intrinsic problems within the new netherlands that actually made it very easy for the english to come in and take over uh spoiler alert uh the english do take new netherlands uh the english had been of course attempting to undermine the spanish empire but they were also heavily threatened by the dutch east india company like i said uh and they were very nervous about the success of new amsterdam of a post owned by the dutch and you know kind of encroaching on what they viewed as their territory uh so the king of england at the time was charles ii he decided that he would solve this problem by simply just taking over the colony by force uh the new netherland government officials were generally corrupt and very unliked by the local people uh if again like i said they had not been elected they were appointed so people didn't feel like much loyalty to these government officials because they were just appointed people in in particular the governor of new amsterdam was a man by the name of peter stewie vesant you see his name up there as well he did not try to establish good relations with the native americans as well and the population as i said it was very diverse in new amsterdam so a lot of these people are not even dutch themselves uh they had just come to the area trying to make money they you know the dutchess india company is the wealthiest company in the world so i'm gonna come and i'm going to work for you it doesn't matter if i'm dutch or not you're where the money is so a lot of people did not feel loyalty to the dutch government to the dutch east india company they were just going to go with whoever gives them the best deal the most money so in 1664 an english flotilla of about 2 000 soldiers sailed into the hudson bay or excuse me sailed up the hudson river and led by james who was the duke of york who was actually the brother to the king and eventually he became king james the second when charles passed away governor stewart vassant actually called upon the colonists to you know come together raise up arms you know defend yourselves defend new amsterdam uh you know let's let's rise up but like i said the people were indifferent they didn't really care about the dutch east india company they they wanted money they wanted the the wealth that could be provided by the company but they weren't going to risk their lives to maintain that so they didn't really do anything so the governor is left kind of with nothing to show nothing to do so he decides that he is going to surrender so the takeover of new amsterdam occurred without any loss of life or even an ammunition uh shot being fired from either the cannons or the guns there was no bloodshed in this takeover so the region was peacefully given to the duke of york and of course it was named in his honor new york uh so that's why there's that name change there uh so not much change as far as the you know the the population that lives there the demographics um and of course it's still a really good trading post it's just the management goes from the duchy cynia company to various english companies and in fact people are actually given more liberties once the english take over and as they shift to an english governor they are allowed to make their own local assemblies where they can elect and vote local representatives and they are even given a constitution so they actually have more political rights than they had before so this is actually really good for the people that were living in what became new york uh when the new when the duke of york became king james ii uh the colony transitioned into a royal province which was owned by the crown so it was not a privately owned charter like a lot of the other regions that we've been talking about so there was continued conflict with the dutch specifically new york would be recaptured uh temporarily in 1673 but it was given back to england shortly afterwards as part of treaty agreements following the end of a minor war a minor skirmish so for much of colonial history new jersey and new york have been connected like i said a lot of the region of what was new amsterdam was new york uh and in fact when king james was given the the when he took over of course before he was king back when he was the the duke of york uh when he gained ownership of new york he actually gave away part of the region which would become new jersey to two lord proprietors named sword george excuse me sir george carter ray and lord berkeley of stratton so james gave them is basically his payment for supporting him and his family during the civil war because these individuals had helped him out in a very difficult time uh they were given land and that's a common trend that we will see here uh now they decided to name the region jersey after the home island of carderay so carterey was from the island of jersey in england so the region was called new jersey a very common trend that you will see new england new york new jersey uh despite being new york and new jersey being two separate colonies they actually shared a governor uh because of the main focus was on really the welfare of new york of course they had taken over a lot of the financial trading ports of new york so really they didn't care too much about new jersey because it just wasn't the financial center that new york was and so because of that the people of new jersey got out got a bit more independence because they were just neglected so they could kind of just do what they wanted and nobody really cared uh there was a great deal of conflict between the settlers themselves concerning the actual border between new york and new jersey of course the borders are very clear on a map but when you're on the ground when you're on the land it's not as strict in fact for over 60 years there was a new york new jersey line war in which there was arguments and even occasional you know scrimmages and fights concerning some of the issues associated with the location of the border you know financial issues legal disputes and such uh people got pretty uppity about where this actual border line was and although new jersey does receive its first governor in 1702 he was a very corrupt individual so he was quickly recalled and new jersey did not get their first permanent governor until 1738. so definitely some interesting history here a lot of flip-flopping in ownership of the land but moving on to our next middle colonies here of course again these are the charts on the duchy sandia company are pennsylvania and delaware uh so a bit of background history is needed of course uh king charles ii had granted part of what was originally new york to william penn so new york was a much larger region that was broken up and sectioned off uh penn was given the charter for the land uh which was basically between maryland and new york uh so it was south of new york to basically repay a debt that was actually owed to penn's father again like i said the king and members of the crown would give off land as part of paying their debts uh because the war the civil war had been very financially burdensome and the war the money came from their own pockets instead of from you know the nation or stuff because people don't want to pay the king unless they have to uh so the king didn't have much wealth at this time so land in the colonies was a way that they could pay debts give thanks give some status and prominence to people without having to actually spend anything financially so that is what charles did for william penn as i said it was actually because penn's father had supported the king but his father had passed so the payment went to his son now william penn was a noble he was a high-class individual uh but he completely shocked english aristocracy when he converted to the quaker faith uh so quaker you've probably heard that term quite a bit especially if you're a person who enjoys oatmeal uh the the formal name of this religious group is the religious society of friends uh the quakers were a protestant uh evangelical group so a lot of preaching uh they would often shake and tremble during their meetings as outward signs of feeling the holy spirit uh and that's where they get the name quaker from was because of that shaking uh now they were a newer religious group formed in 1647 but they were much more extreme than the puritans uh as i'll explain here uh they were anti-authority and they believed that everyone could experience personal revelation from god if you remember from our lecture on the puritans that was a huge no-no that was not acceptable uh the quakers also promoted equality they were strongly against slavery they were some of the first abolitionists uh they were pacifists who also refused to participate in any sort of physical fighting or you know war and defense of the country no no fighting allowed at all and they also strongly advocated for plain dress you know very neutral colors not exciting or extravagant clothing so they were particularly disliked in england of course not only by the people who found them very strange and very radical but by the king himself because they are anti-authoritarian so of course england has just had a civil war threats to the king and his crown are taken very seriously so despite his best efforts penn could not get acceptance for the quakers in england so he decides that he is going to take the land that he has been gifted by the king to create what he calls a holy experiment uh very similar to john winthrop's idea of a city on a hill uh penn wanted to believe this this utopian uh colony he wanted to create it uh he believed or he wanted for his colony to be a refuge for all people who were not accepted uh he believed that it would be possible specifically that what makes this a holy experiment is he wanted to create a colony that had a very high strict morality but also economic prosperity uh there they had seen that for whatever reason that those two never seemed to mesh so he was hoping to create a society that was strictly religious highly moral um of course you could be whatever religion you wanted but one that was had a strong morality as well as strong economic prosperity and so he was hoping to create that colony that holy experiment so even though the colony was established by quakers it allowed people of all religious backgrounds and of course like i said the king highly and strongly encouraged the quakers to leave uh of course as a way to get england you know get get rid of these these rebels that are in england uh and kind of just distance himself from them physically with an ocean uh so by the end of the year penn had established the town of philadelphia as the capital of pennsylvania uh that actually translates to city of brotherly love so again he wants to express this highly moral accepting community penn was also able to maintain good relations with the local native americans because he instituted a strict policy of purchasing land from the lenape as opposed to just settling without permission he also wanted people to pay fair rates for the land paying what the land was actually worth the people of pennsylvania because of these positive relations actually had good interactions and relations with the local native americans for 50 years so that's definitely a prominent aspect of pennsylvania is a land of peace for a while at least penn does decide to draft what is called the three frames of government uh it's basically rules that the colony would live by and he actually writes these rules down before he even arrives in pennsylvania uh despite his attempt to create a perfect colony there were going to be some issues first off they had six different governors over the course of 10 years they just for whatever reason they just couldn't hold on to a governor just wasn't working pennsylvania did prosper as a farming colony as it had quite a great deal of rich soil in fact it was it was considered the middle colonies were definitely considered some of the more rich land areas of the colonies kind of the bread basket if you will uh and uh definitely drew in a lot of people because of you know the prosperity as well as the freedom to practice whatever religion they wanted uh also because there's more people coming in uh there's expansion westward by these colonists and this is going to upset some of the peaceful relationships with the native american people uh and they're also encroaching on what was territory that was claimed by the french so this is actually going to come into play with part of the conflicts leading to the french and indian war as we'll discuss uh later on uh also a huge problem uh for for penn himself was of course his colony he wanted it to be diverse but the diversity really caused the experiment to kind of fail in a way they did prosper economically which was one part of his holy experiment but they were not a highly moral community and it was not a you know strictly quaker community uh basically wealth in general you know sociologists tend to agree that wealth leads to a less religious society uh so unfortunately despite his experiment he couldn't get the two things to work together morality and wealth he just couldn't make it work so the year after the establishment of pennsylvania penn was actually given more land he was given an additional land grant the region which would now be known today as delaware uh but by this point in time people were not um or people were living in the this area uh so it wasn't completely unoccupied land of of course there were native americans that were living there but there were european settlers who were living in the region of delaware uh some of them had moved north from virginia and maryland and others had come down south from uh new netherlands new england uh also the swedish had actually tried to create a settlement but it was taken over by the dutch and they were kicked out uh so penn was given uh the land as a means for his colony to have access to the ocean uh his colony was very profitable uh but they didn't have any ports to you know ship their goods out uh so that's why he was given the land so that he could have a c route a sea trade uh but of course the people that are living in the region are not happy about just being kind of granted to penn they view him as a radical they don't like the quaker faith and so they really don't like being under his authority penn tries to keep the peace with the people of delaware by allowing the three counties in the colony to have equal representation in pennsylvania's colonial assembly so he says you know what i know you're upset i know you don't like me but here's what we're going to do even though you're smaller we're going to give you the same number of representatives that pennsylvania has this does pacify them for a little bit but as pennsylvania continues to grow continues to expand it just threatens to overshadow the much smaller region of delaware so in order to de-escalate the tensions pen pen decides to grant them their own charter in 1701 which allows them to have their own assembly and basically govern themselves uh the colony would share its governor with that of pennsylvania but they were essentially their own governing body delaware would not finalize their separation with their own governor until the american revolution in 1776 but they were because they were kind of owning and operating themselves they are considered one of the original 13 colonies uh and despite being connected to pennsylvania the region had actually been known as delaware since the first settlements uh had actually been named after the explorer thomas west the 12th baron de la here or the baron delaware who we talked about actually in our jamestown lecture now concerning warfare in the middle colonies uh there's not even a sideshow presentation on that because there just wasn't a lot of course there's a lot less land uh than new england or you know virginia and the southern colonies as we're going to talk about so there just aren't as many people to argue uh the more of the military conflict really just comes between the english and the dutch also the quakers are pacifists they are anti-violence anti-war so they're not going to enter any conflicts with native americans even if native americans come and attack them they're not going to respond with violence that's not what quakers do most like i said most of the fighting actually comes from the europeans themselves fighting over the land in the middle colonies so moving on uh to our next slide here we're going to talk about what are some of the unique aspects of the middle colonies especially kind of a compare and contrast to the new england colony so first off is our demographics the people that live in the areas overall there's going to be a vastly diverse demographic throughout most of the middle colonies uh of course this is due in part to the diversity of new york as promoted by the dutch east india company as well as the quakers who come in later on but the middle colonies in general are just the most accepting so people really flock to them and of course they start they start to become commercial centers and we'll talk about that uh in a minute as well but a distinct group of settlers that came uh are called today the pennsylvania dutch uh there was a surprisingly large number of germans who came to settle in pennsylvania and actually the term dutch is is a misnomer it's a mis uh incorrect naming uh actually these people were german it comes actually from the german word for its own people deutsch the deutsche so um many of these pennsylvania dutch or pennsylvania deutsche were actually anabaptists so they were mennonites and amish so that's why a lot of people or not a lot of people but a lot of the amish can be found in pennsylvania the german culture was very prominent in these regions that the pennsylvania dutch settled and really left a permanent impact there are people that of course still consider themselves pennsylvania dutch and there are some people that grow up speaking german along with english because of their strong cultural heritage if you think of dwight schrute from the office it's a bit of an obnoxious example but it's a good one the german culture was still very strong for a lot of these people now of course over the colonial era there's going to be a flood of immigrants who come to the middle colonies because like i said they want to get involved in an economic center whether it was back when it was the dutch east india company or when it's new york and they're wanting to get involved on the english trade so of course this includes the irish the scottish french spanish uh but of course there were people who involuntarily came uh people who were indentured servants from ireland and other parts of england as well as enslaved individuals from africa so um that's definitely going to be an aspect here uh in fact uh when talking about uh the the slaves in the region of the middle colonies there's also going to be some differences on how slavery works all of the colonies do have slaves of course the quakers are abolitionists they are anti-slavery but that does not mean of course the people that are not quakers are going to purchase and acquire slaves but in specifically in the middle colonies a lot of the slaves were working class slaves as you would consider them they were ship builders artisans carpenters blacksmiths so because of this it actually made it easier for them to be freed first off there's more money coming into these regions and a lot of them will get paid on the side for the work that they do of course whenever they do a job the money goes to the master but if they're very good at what they do then a portion of the payment goes to themselves so it's a little easier for them to afford their freedom and once they are free they have skills they have abilities that they can use to work after they are freed so they kind of have a jumping off point so it's a little easier for them to be freed so because of that that that definitely is very different than the slave system that we will talk about in the south uh where it's strictly rural very hard to obtain your freedom and if you are freed your only skill is working on a farm so it's very hard to improve your situation but we will talk about that when we talk about the southern colonies uh so so it's definitely a more distinct form of slavery uh but of course uh this flood of settlers also includes people from various religious backgrounds especially since pennsylvania has dubbed itself a religious haven uh new york doesn't really care who comes in there they just want people to work it's an economic center it's starting to come up as an urban city so so they just want people to work they don't care what religion you are uh so of course this includes a lot of people with various religious backgrounds um of course anglicans are going to be the main one english uh people who belong to the the church of england uh but there's even going to be french huguenots catholics from both spain and ireland as well as scottish protestants puritans who either come from england or move south from new england uh and even the first jews and muslims in the colonies come to new york in the mid 1700s so america's history for religious diversity starts pretty far back it's definitely before a lot of us tend to think and and by far you know whether compared to new england or the southern colonies the middle colonies were by far the most diverse in um in demographics and peop the cultural background of individuals as well as the religious background so there's there's a lot of diversity here uh now economically the middle colonies are also going to be very distinct here uh in fact you kind of see the the compare and contrast i've got built up here the new england colonies really focus on two main things they have lumber and they have fishing any farming that they do is for subsistence it's i have a little plot on my land to help feed me and my family the soil just wasn't very good it was very rocky so large scale farming just really wasn't possible so the middle colonies by comparison of course they have lumber they have fishing but they have a lot of good land for farming and this is specifically farming for food a lot of the southern commodities a lot of the southern plantations and southern farms are for cash crops so that's another difference so the farming in the middle colonies is for food again like i said the middle colonies were considered you know the bread basket of the colonies they also are involved in a lot of merchant shipping some ship building textile industries they even start to get involved in the fur trade with the french and the native americans uh so there's definitely a lot more diversity in their economics uh all of this you know numerous uh economic incomes also makes the middle colonies wealthier there's more wealth because there's just more going out more resources being sent over to england this wealth also creates a phenomenon of urbanization because you know you have a lot of people trying to get it on the trade and then on the money and you have main port cities where these goods are sent out uh there's a lot more creation of cities there are a lot of cities in new england as well but this is really in comparison to the southern colonies new england and the middle colonies are much more urbanized than the southern colonies and we'll get into the details of why that's different later on but also that urbanization is what makes slavery different in the middle colonies is because again your focus is on the cities your focus is on economics and the port whereas in the south your focus is on those cash crops so that's an aspect of what makes slavery different so that is pretty much all we have for the middle colonies here and just again just really expressing how each section of the colonies even though this is all you know part of england this is you know starting to slowly build up and lead its way to what would become the american revolution each region and each colony was was very different and so you know recognizing those differences between new england middle colonies and southern colonies can definitely help us understand not only colonial history but some of the conflicts that arise following the american revolution with you know some of the other issues with the constitution with you know even to the lead-up to the civil war they have their roots in these differences found in the colonial history