Hello everybody. Welcome back to the second part of our chapter 2 video lecture on the Atlantic world. Uh we talked a little bit about privateeers fishing uh in Roto Oak Island as kind of the English origins uh to uh to the new world. Um and we should be clear that Roto Oak Island this first attempt at at permanent settlement uh here in the New World by the English fails fails spectacularly and mysteriously. Um you've perhaps heard the story about how the settlers disappear when people return they find um kind of cryptic messages left and we still today don't know what happens uh to the settlers of Rono. Um but it is impactful in the um sense that it kind of sets the model for how English uh the English are going to pursue empire in the new world and and the way that they're going to do it going to be very very unique uh and very different from the other uh European colonizers and it's going to make the uh the English colonies u which of course become the United States of America. It's going to make them very unique uh from from other parts uh of the new world. So let's take a moment and and kind of try to understand how this development is is different. Okay. And uh I think one of the critical factors is the fact that the English will uh establish what we might call settler colonies. Meaning they send settlers significant numbers of their own people to the new world. Um, this will be very different than than say New France up in Canada or of course the Spanish who we've already talked about down uh to the south uh where they send very minimal numbers of settlers um to their colonies. The English sent a lot of people and there's a couple reasons for this. I mean one of them is is economic developments in England itself. uh during uh kind of this time period there's a movement called the enclosure movement and this kind of cartoon sad cartoon is is really demonstrating what's going on with the enclosure movement but these wealthy land owners we see a fence behind them they're beginning to close off common lands that poor people have relied upon uh to survive and this creates a huge economic um you know struggle for uh the poor of England unemployment starvation hunger and so you have a lot of people that are kind of um really suffering. Um now these wealthy land owners then see an opportunity both to kind of rid themselves of these unwanted poor people but also to to to profit from the new world and they begin to kind of pull their resources into corporations um companies if you will uh the Virginia company being uh you know an important um you know early attempt uh at settling the new world through uh corporate activity. So, we'll call this the Virginia company model, right? Bunch of rich people pulling their monies um recruiting or hiring or forcing in some instances pull the poor to board ships and go to America and set and found colonies like Renault um and and then to profit these corporations. Now, these would be what we call proprietary colonies, right? colonies that are owned by a proprietator um company uh in many instances like Virginia or like Pennsylvania by a family a pen family. Um we will uh sometimes talk about royal colonies. These are colonies directly owned and operated by the crown by the government. Um but the government by and large didn't found colonies and didn't want to. Um, if there are royal colonies, it's generally because it was originally a proprietary colony that fails and then the the crown, the government swoops in um to take it over out of necessity. Um, and that actually happens in Virginia. The Virginia Company fails and then it becomes royal colony governed by the by the government by the crown. Um, the government doesn't want to do that. Uh, it doesn't want oversight. Uh, but it does want to profit from the colonies. So what the the government of England will do during this period is pass a series of laws called the navigation acts. Uh and this cartoon kind of shows what that uh what that all meant. You can pause this or look at the PowerPoint on blackboard more carefully if you want to look this over. Um but in essence the navigation acts funnel all the commerce of English subjects in the Atlantic world through England. So if you were a planter of tobacco or a producer of wheat or an exporter of lumber from the new world in one of these English colonies, if you wanted to send it to say a customer in Portugal, um you couldn't ship directly to Portugal. You were required to ship it to England, pay a duty, and then you could ship it to to Portugal. And then vice versa, right? Portuguese merchants that wanted to to deal with English colonies couldn't go directly to the colonies. they'd have to go pay duties in uh England and then they could come to the colonies. Um if you did it any other way, you were a smuggler, which which was happening, of course, was illegal black market type activity. So to be law-abiding citizen, you had to you had to do this. Um what this meant for England, right, and kind of this develops their philosophy, right? It's that colonies should benefit the mother country but with as little effort regulating it as possible. Meaning that England doesn't want to govern these colonies directly. That takes money, that takes resources. Um, they want to let these colonies do their own thing. They want to skim profits off the top through the navigation acts. That's a very profitable way of of running an empire, right? Zero cost or very minimal cost on high profits. The Spanish, right, as we've already seen, they're extracting incredible amounts of wealth from the new world, gold, and silver and all of that. So, their their profit uh at least their net profits uh excuse me, gross profit is very high. But that takes a lot of government intervention to protect the shipping, right? All these concistadors, these armies, all these forces. So it's a high expense for the profit. So their their margins are maybe fairly fairly small. Whereas the English government because it's got very little cost, other margins are are quite high. So the England are going to very much profit from this uh more so than say the Spanish do from their very very large and at least on paper wealthy empire. All right. So, let's talk about the first uh attempt at uh or the first successful now after Rono uh attempt at settlement in New World. The Virginia Company sends uh settlers to to James Town. Um it's a it's a disaster from the start. Starvation, disease, violence with local natives um results in perhaps 67% of the people dying in first year. Right? Says here 67% mortality rate for the seasoning. you were kind of considered seasoned after one year. If you survived that first year, then then you you know your chances of survival were higher. But but perhaps 67% of people died in that first year from either starvation, disease, or violence. It's really really bad. so bad that we have, you know, we've always had documented evidence that cannibalism was happening here, but we have recently um through the corpse of this young woman here, we have recently discovered um irrefutable physical evidence of um of cannibalism. The skeleton of this young woman who died um bears the very clear marks of of butchering. Um and so so we have you know we have evidence of just how rough Jamestown is at the early years. Now the person credited with turning around um Jamestown and really saving it John Smith who you might know from the the famous Pocahontas movie. He doesn't really look like that. This is what John Smith really looked like. Uh Pocahontas was also real. This is Disney Pocahontas and this is now Pocahontas um in English dress Pocahontas. Um, as the story goes, uh, John Smith is captured by Powatin and he is, um, brought to the village where his head is placed on a rock and he is about to be, uh, executed by Powatin and then Pocahontas famously throws herself on him and begs for mercy. Um, that's the basis of that kind of romance of the the Pocahontas film. Um, this is not um, really accurate. um Pocahontas as a child uh at at this point. Um what we think happens is that John Smith is captured and that this is a very um orchestrated kind of theater put together by Powatin who sees advantage in working with he's the leader of a confederacy that the the English could be the the source of of resources and trade but he needs to make sure that they are subservient to him right that they are not seeing themselves as superior. So he captures John Smith, threatens his life, you know, tells Pocahontas to at the critical moment to do this, and now he's going to allow him to live, but kind of under the understanding that that the the Palatin um people and chief of the same name, they're in charge. They're the people who share the power. Um John Smith uh it's unclear whether he he recognizes this power you know statement that Powatin makes but but what does happen is the two men are able to forge a relationship uh that will allow trade for food that saves the Jamestown colony um and uh and the Jamestown colony will slowly recover from its early challenges and grow the the Powatin and other local native peoples will of course as we saw with the natives in Spanish New World they will suffer um from disease and they will decline as the decades go on and you have that power disparity switch um where the English will now be stronger u as time goes on. Now this power disparity um both in the Spanish new world and the English and in anywhere that the Europeans uh colonize will lead to structures of coerced labor um that become you know uh very prevalent in the new world. Um the Spanish initial uh structure is called encoma and you see kind of an image of that occurring here. Um this is m not excuse me this is not similar to say the plantation slavery that Americans are used to um you know kind of understanding or visualizing from the American south. Comeenda is more of a a labor system where large Spanish land owners own the land, own the resources, and own the people on the land. And so the natives would have been obligated under that arrangement to to labor for these land owners for a certain period of time. It's it's maybe reminiscent, if you've studied feudalism in medieval Europe, something like that. It's not it's not nice, but it's not the cattle plantation slavery that that we might conjure up in our minds if you're and you know if you're thinking about about the American South. But what it does do, and this again is a feature we're going to find throughout the Americas to some degree in some way in all of the European colonies is it does create a a ethnic hierarchy based on one's skin color that tells people immediately upon viewing each other where you stand. So if you are white, white-kinned, you are one of these top two um uh classes in this hierarchy. Either a peninsularari or a creole. Peninsulari meaning uh in the case of the Spanish new world that you were born on the peninsula i.e. Spain and that you now are living in America. Whereas a creole is a white Spaniard that is um born in the new world. And I think that's indicative of the European mindset that it tells that you know that it suggests just being being born in America and tainted by America that you are a lesser person right even if you are also white tells you how little they thought of of you know the Americas and the people in it. Mystos would be the third class. These would be people that are of mixed uh race. Uh so either you know generally a a white father and a and a native mother being the more most common pairing. Uh and there are people that then have kind of a foot in both worlds and a foot out of both worlds. So they kind of live between worlds. And this image here is kind of showing you what a mysto might have done to survive. Um they wouldn't have been able to do the things peninsulararies and creels could do but they could operate in their world maybe as a nanny um of creole children in this case. Um so they have opportunities that are not available to the lowest um group in the hierarchy which are the the native peoples the indos who are subject to these you know slave labor systems in Kumienda. Now as time goes on in Kouienda it will give way in Spanish newora to um the plantation slavery that we are uh uh many of us are more familiar with because the Europeans discover uh that that the Americas are are very prolific in uh sugar production. Right? These little areas here, if we're looking at this map of the old world, are are just some of the small pockets where sugar was being produced in the old world and therefore it's very rare, very expensive, and obviously it's very desirable. But the new world has land that in climates that are very conducive to sugar plant uh production. And so the the Spanish and later on some French and others uh are going to really scramble to establish sugar plantations. And then the the systems of slavery become more reminiscent of what we um see in the American South later on. Plantation slavery, year-long lifelong bondage um to constantly be to you know producing crops. All right, let's uh finish this section by talking about the Colombian exchange. You read about this in your chapter. Um, so you're aware that this is kind of the concept of all the things that happen when the Atlantic world binds these new worlds together. You know, uh, Europeans and Africans send certain things to the Americas and certain things are sent back the other way. Um, I have this in quotation marks here because I I do not believe that this is really an appropriate terminology because the exchange is unfair, right? The things that are sent to the old world are generally like crops that are valuable, things like potatoes and mazize, corn, right? uh tomatoes, um so many things that that make fine cuisine, right, that are native to the new world. Um the natives, so the Europeans get good things, right? The indigenous peoples of of North America will only suffer as a result of this exchange, right? We've talked at length about the disease that will eradicate their populations. We haven't really talked about technology, but as this painting shows, right, natives will adopt all the trappings of European technology, even though they they incorporate it into their traditional kind of ways, right? So, you see, you know, they're they're still painting their faces, but now they're going to use industrialized paints from Europe instead of making stuff out of natural substances, right? They are dressed the way that they would have traditionally dressed, but they're wearing sloth, right? Instead of their own indigenous textiles. And you can go on and on. Metal, right? instead of stone. Um so they they adopt these technologies um which might initially seem like a good thing because they're generally less labor intensive to make. Um but what happens over time is that it undermines traditional culture that these peoples will lose their ability to make their own stuff and and you know over a generation or two if you don't if you lose that ability that knowledge it's gone forever. And so over time, right, natives become um really dependent on Europeans uh for for, you know, all of their stuff. It's very very dangerous uh development. Um the arrival of Europeans will also renegotiate native power structures. So if you want to think about these two waring, you know, native peoples prior to the arrival of Europeans, they're roughly equal. They have the same weapons, they have the same, you know, abilities. And so their their conflicts are generally pretty static, if you will. But when Europeans arrive with firearms and steel weapons, they're able to tilt power in favor of of certain groups. And it then creates a lot of violence and suffering on the part of of the the losers, if you will. And so we have increased intern. It's conflict amongst native peoples as the result of the arrival of Europeans. You know, we think about the arrival of Europeans, of course, as one of conflict between natives and the Europeans, but as we already saw with the Aztecs, right, in the in the Spanish conquest of it, native on native violence also increase as a result um of the arrival of Europeans. So, more suffering is the reality for native peoples. A clear example in our region of this are is the Uriccoy Confederacy. Uh who initially the Uriccoy are going to really suffer because their northern neighborh neighbors and rivals the Hirons will acquire weapons you know uh from the French up here in Canada. But then later on the Uricway will gain an advantage from uh an alliance with first the Dutch out of Albany and New York and then later on the English. and the Eric are able to use those connections and the new weapons to to dominate their neighbors and in many cases destroy them. Right? We're in Erie right now and the peoples around us with the Eerie Indians uh and they're eradicated by the Iricquay as were the Suscohanic um because of power that I are able to wield once they get firearms and steel weapons. Um so this is this technological exchange is not not a good thing for the natives. Um and then there's ecological changes. um old world plants and animals are going to rapidly flourish, replacing uh native plants and and and really threatening uh natives uh native food ways. So, what we're looking at here destroys uh traditional food production. You know, these are the Grand Banks that we talked about earlier, English fishing, and they're coming onto shore of it to to process those fish. And what they actually would do early on here is that they would bring pigs with them and they would leave the pigs on islands in the Atlantic so that when they would come back the next year, process the fish, they could basically hunt the the pigs, harvest them, and they'd have food to eat, which is kind of a unique idea, right? Solution to to a problem. But the pigs were getting off these islands and making it onto the mainland. And pigs were very destructive. They were finding native farm fields and and just destroying them and following them and native clam beds along the Atlantic were being destroyed by the pigs and storage pits. But then there were rats that were getting off the ships and rats were of course were pernicious pests. all types of things. Um, and plants, um, weeds from Europe and seeds stuck in people's clothes, uh, came and they replaced up to 75% of the weed species in North America to at present were replaced by Europeans. You may not think that's really that big of a deal. Who cares about weeds? Well, this undermines the social stability of the the native communities, right? which who had had understood the entire world around them um and was knowledge passed from generation to generation. Well, now those truths are no longer true, right? Plants are are changing and disappearing and new things are emerging and animals like rats and pigs are are wreaking havoc and there's no explanation for this stuff. And then compound that with the fact that the diseases that are spreading are taking out uh the young and the old, right? the most susceptible to disease. And so these societies are being racked by change, bad change, negative change, and their very underpinnings of stability, their youth, the future, and the elderly, their past are being are being uh removed. This is a very traumatic development. This is not an exchange, right? Uh at least not one that we should even cons, you know, close to consider being a an equal exchange. All right, we're going to stop there. Um, and I'll see you again in our next chapter.