Hello everybody. Uh this is our chapter 4 video, Rule Bratannia, the English Empire. Uh we're going to begin by talking about that third um colonial region that I introduced to you um in the previous lecture. Uh so we talked at length about the uh the southern uh colonies, right? The southern region and then we talked extensively about New England and the New England region. And so I want to complete kind of constructing the English new world here uh by talking about what the textbook referred to as the restoration colonies uh or the middle colonial middle colonies as I prefer to refer to them as uh and that would be New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. You can see the dates uh here as they will form. Um the the economy of this region is perhaps not quite as uh uniform as maybe in the north and the south. Um, but what I've done here is I've tried to boil it down to at least a couple things you can hang your hat on. Um, but one of the the general uh uh realities of the middle colonies throughout everything is that they are very diverse. They're not quite as neat and clean uh as the north and the south. So, diversity is a word that you can kind of generally think of when you think of the middle colonies. Um, but if we did have to say that they they had a certain economic activities that typified what people in this region are doing, we could boil it down to say these three things, right? So iron um iron production. So very early protoindustry uh more broadly. Um we have a u um we have a fur trade with uh with native peoples um that you know being conducted um in the interior uh of say New York and Pennsylvania in particular as you go into the interior of the continent. And then perhaps the most important thing in this region for its economic stability is the grain trade. Um so if you had cash crop agriculture in the south and then you had subsistence agriculture in the north in the middle colonies you have an exportable grain trade meaning that they are growing uh vast amounts of particularly wheat uh for export. Now they're not exporting it to Europe because the middle colonies have a climate um that is much similar to that of Europe um as the northern colonies did. Um, but the middle colonies have agricultural lands that are very, very productive to an extent that New England didn't. Right? New England is colder, a little colder. It's rocky soil. It's not not, you know, amazing uh farmland. But if you want to think about um, you know, central Pennsylvania and, you know, upstate New York and these, you know, vast uh, agricultural lands, rolling hills, I mean, just really great productive uh, regions. They're producing a lot of grain. Now Europe doesn't necessarily need that grain because Europe can grow its own grain. Um but where this uh grain will largely go is to the Caribbean to many of the sugar plantations uh where sugar is being produced um because the farmers or the plantation owners in those places didn't want to devote. It wasn't really economically meaningful uh to um you know to to grow grain to feed your population most of which was enslaved um because you needed that land to produce sugar. but it was much more economically profitable to to to you know go up to to the middle colonies uh and purchase um grain there. Um so we're going to find that the middle colonies like the north uh they have uh enslaved labor uh in uh in you know in their their colonies uh but it won't be a particularly large part of their their labor structure. Um per certainly like the little industrial uh you know works that they have don't require large amounts of enslaved labor. The fur trade relies on um trade rel relationships with native peoples. Um but you will find some some slavery uh within the grain trade and then uh um notably you'll have slavery really you know prevalent within the the major port cities of the middle colonies, New York City in particular and to a lesser degree Philadelphia. um because you have all this commerce coming out in and out of these ports and and enslaved peoples are used to to load and unload the ships. Um so the middle colonies are kind of a middle, right? uh as far as their their reliance on enslaved labor goes. But they are very very much um connected to this evil institution through the grain trade because they're selling uh their their produce to slave owners in the Caribbean um to to use to feed you know enslaved peoples who are producing sugar. um as far as society goes. Um so we have those same four um categories here um in these first four lines. uh we're going to find that it's somewhere in the middle right of the uh the north and the south right so they're going to have some town-based societies meaning that you have some of the largest cities in the new world in the English new world in the middle colonies New York um Philadelphia is the largest city of all at this time and you know even inland cities like in Pennsylvania um like Lancaster which was the largest interior city in in English North America at the time um so some very large cities um but because of the vastness particularly New York and Pennsylvania um and the the you know reliance on grain agriculture you do have you know a scattered settlement as well similar to the south you see you're going to see a little bit of both and you certainly don't have that kind of puritan uh hierarchy and community that you had in the north we'll talk about religion here in a second um but because of that kind of disperate um settlement pattern you're going to have a little bit of both of these legal traditions right the rule of law that we saw in the north, but also rule of man a little bit. So somewhere in the middle, no strong tradition either way. Um there will be very strong religious structures uh in the middle colonies. We'll talk here in a moment about the the Quakers. Um but there are so many different uh religions, right? It's very diverse uh that none of them even the Quakers who will, you know, arguably dominate Pennsylvania for for a time at least politically. Um, but even the Quakers don't have the type of authority in Pennsylvania that the Puritans have uh in New England. Um, so you've got very strong religious faith, very strong religious organizations, but none of them that wield the same amount of power um that you see in New England. All right. And finally, uh, as far as wealth distribution goes in the middle colonies, uh, they were, uh, quote, a m a land of quote middling tradesmen and farmers. um a famous Benjamin Franklin boast who is of course the adopted first son of Philadelphia um very proudly saying essentially that the middle colonies are a land of of of generally equality that there aren't great rich people uh like we saw in the the s southern plantations and there isn't uh great um um poverty either. Now, now that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but what what Franklin is trying to get at by by saying this is that of all the three regions, it's probably fair to say that the greatest degree of tolerance or of equality um exists in the middle colonies economically. And then that that equality also now will extend um to just how people are able to live their lives. The the middle colonies are generally a land of great tolerance. Um there is a lot of ethnic diversity here. That is not true in the north and the south. Um the north and the south are almost predominantly settled at least initially by the English. And you can pause and look at this map more closely here. You can open it up on blackboard um yourself and you can see kind of this teal color uh are um English settlements and New England's almost entirely English. Most of the south is particularly the Chesapeake, right? Um and then you can see a little bit more muddled um settlement you know in other parts particularly in the middle colonies New York and Pennsylvania of various different peoples German ScotsIrish and many many others um so you've got a great ethnic diversity um and you have very very great diversity in religious faith and and and a resultant you know tradition of religious freedom. So you had the Quakers uh who were founding members of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Um the Penn family of Pennsylvania were were prominent Quakers. Um they're going to be here. Um and the Quakers believed like the Puritans very very strongly in their own beliefs, but the Quakers believed um that people were equal. And what you're looking at here is a Quaker meeting. And you can see uh that they are divided in how they're sitting between men here on the right and women here on the left which would suggest right inequality or division at least. But what you're seeing of of course is a woman standing up and speaking um which again de which here demonstrates right the equality of men and women uh in this respect for women uh at this time. Um and here on the right you're seeing a a German faith, right? The idea of um the faith called Moravianism. Um another Protestant faith um that's coming out of Germany. Um and the Moravians believed in kind of the concept of of the inner light that everybody has an inner light. Um everybody's um essentially equal. If you see a Moravian settle of cemetery, which you can in eastern North Pennsylvania, there are a lot of them. There are some in pens uh in North Carolina um and up in Maine as well, areas where Moravians had settled. Um you'll notice that all of the headstones are flat. Cemeteries have nothing that's upright. Everything is flat. And the idea here is that everybody's equal. So you don't want people building great monuments to their families um or to their individual, you know, um to the individual wealthy. Everybody's equal. So this kind of creates a cultural mindset at least initially in the middle colonies of um tolerance and equality. So if you're reflecting back now on the three regions uh that we've talked about and north, south, and the middle, you're going to find that the north and the south don't really live up to a lot of our stereotypes of uh you know the origins of America, a land of religious freedom and tolerance and and a place the great melting pot, a place of of a lot of different peoples coming together. That's not true uh in the north and the south so much, but the middle colonies do have those kind of stereotypical traits. So, a lot of what we like to attribute to these unique American characteristics, we will actually find uh at least a little bit here in the middle colonies. Now because of all of those kind of cultural uh developments, the middle colonies are unique in the three regions that at least initially the middle colonies will have very close and friendly relationships with the native peoples. Um in our last lecture we talked about the variety of different interactions um between natives and Europeans during this contact period. Um and we talked about how stereotypically we think of violence. Um, and while that is certainly something that happens, the middle colonies prove that it didn't have to be the inevitable reality because for for decades upon the founding of particularly Pennsylvania um you had very very close relationships that were peaceful and that's partly um the result of the mindset of the the founders of Pennsylvania, William Penn and the Quakers who believed as we talked about in the previous slide of equality and so Penn treats the natives very very fairly in comparison to other Europeans, right? The Moravians who come in um the German Moravians, they took um missionary work very seriously uh and they went out and met with and and and got to know uh the native peoples, converted. Many of them, those praying towns I talked to you about earlier in the previous lecture were largely Moravian. Um, and so these foster good relationships, friendly relationships, human beings that see each other as human beings, right? And if you see another group, even if they are a little different than you as a human being, you're much much less likely to be hostile and and and have violence, etc. So, this is this is all, you know, good good modeling of what might have been. Um, the fur trade as well uh led to these closed relationships. You know, I'm going to go back I'll go back real quick to this um economic picture right here. and you see natives bringing furs to trade. Um, if you were to be hostile to the natives and you want to trade furs with them, they're not going to come bring their their, you know, their products to you. They're going to go up to French Canada, um, or somewhere else. Um, so the fur trade itself practically, pragmatically, right, leads to close relationships. You cannot treat the natives hostily like the Puritans did, um, if you want to trade with them. And then settlement patterns, right? As these uh uh middle colonial, you know, settlers move into the interior to build these, you know, big grain uh farms, the natives aren't attacked and killed, which means they don't initially they don't disappear. And so you actually have the mill colonies more than anywhere else in the English New World. you actually have native and and European communities that are kind of existing in the same space side, you know, if not side by side within, you know, regionally the same place and these people are interacting with one one another. They know each other and again that all fosters a much more positive mindset. Now, by the end of this video, we're or this lecture um we're going to see how this all falls apart. Um but this is something worth remembering, right? that the that the violence between Europeans and Native Americans was not an in inevitability. If the middle colonial kind of structure had had been the only one, things might have been very different. All right. Now, back in England, um, as the colonies are now, the three regions that we're going to be concerned with are are now all established. But as that is happening back in England, uh, England is going to be going through the throws of a civil war, which lasts here for, um, over 60 years. The English Civil War 1627 through 1688. Um, and I'll give you a very brief background of this. Um, in 16001, uh, the Stewart dynasty will be established. Um this will be because uh the daughter of of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, right, who you can see here, we talked about her a couple lectures ago briefly. Um, Elizabeth never marries and she therefore never has a legitimate heir to the throne and she as she ages she's going to need to establish a line of succession and that is going to be her relative uh James the f who will become James I of Scotland and and this is him here as a child. This is a I think this is a fantastic painting, right? Because you're showing Elizabeth and James. This is to show that he's her selected successor and he's this little child, you know, baby that's acting in the painting like, you know, a little man. Uh the idea being that you can't show a future monarch as a helpless baby or child. U and this is kind of a propaganda piece saying this is my successor. So when she does die in6001 uh James I becomes the king of England. Now the problem with this is that James I is born um a Catholic and if you can remember back right to the act of supremacy Henry VIII establishes the Anglican church. The monarch of England is now going to be Anglican not Catholic. James the 1 cannot be the king of England the head of the Anglican church and be a Catholic. So to become king he has to convert to Anglicanism which he does. Um but the stewards then uh the family right um this is the dynasty that James the first will lead they are never fully trusted by the English because of their Catholic roots. And so James will will rule and then he will be succeeded by his son who will be Charles I. Um, Charles I does a variety of things to upset the English. Um, messing with parliament, the tradition of Parliament. Um, he still has kind of the the stink of Catholicism on him. Um, he is a, you know, he is arrogance maybe not the wrong word, but he believes strongly in the divine right of kings, right? That he's chosen by God and that his right to do basically whatever he wants. So for a variety of reasons the the English will turn against uh Charles the English civil wars will be launched right 1627 by 1649 uh the supporters of Charles are defeated he's captured and he's ultimately executed by beheading which you see here in the woodcut from 1649 to 1660 uh English will operate without a monarch uh so this is the phase uh called the English commonwealth which will be ruled over by Oliver Cromwell who you see here. Not a super friendly looking individual. He's a Puritan. Um so this is kind of the era of Puritan um rule of England and they of course have a beef with the Anglicans um who had persecuted them. Think back to our discussion last lecture of Puritan great migration to the new world. So they do a lot of bad stuff. Um and they're doing really bad stuff in Ireland too. If you have Irish heritage, you may know about that. there. It's pretty ugly rule. Even though the monarch is gone, doesn't mean that this commonwealth is particularly a kindly, friendly um um government. And so in 1660, Oliver Cromwell dies. He tries to set up succession to his own son, right? Which is kind of ironic. Um that doesn't really take. And then you have what's called the restoration. The restoration being uh the restoration of the Steuart monarchy. Um, and that will then be um the crowning of Charles's son, Charles II. Charles II rules briefly. He he passes away without an heir, and it then passes to his younger brother, who is James II. Now, James II will be um he will be dethroned in 1688 in what's called the Glorious Revolution. He will avoid his father's fate. uh he manages to escape ultimately to France uh where the Steuart uh monarchy will exist uh in exile. Always a thorn in the side to the English though, right? That this Steuart Stewart line uh is um existing and supported by their ancient enemy France and they will emerge time and again as as you know a potential uh threat to the stability of England moving forward. If you like Scottish history, right, the Stewarts are are Scottish um uh not English. If you like Scottish history, you can read into these Stewarts. They emerge multiple rebellions in Scotland to restore the Steuart monarchy, Bonnie, Prince Charlie, Battle of Culladin. A lot of interesting stuff as we get as you move into the 18th century. Um but the glorious revolution then leads to some very very important developments in England that will have ramifications on the new world. All right. The results of the uh the glorious revolution then are the extension of the uh new uh uh rulers who are William and Mary uh a joint monarchy. Mary is related um to the Steuart family. William is the head of the leading family in the Dutch Republic, the House of Orange. Um they're married, but uh what's critical here is that they are um reliably Protestant, right? None of that kind of taint of Catholicism uh with the stewards. Uh but also they agree to this concept here, the the idea of constitutional monarchy. And that is the idea that they will no longer as monarchs, the monarchs of England will no longer have absolute rule over the nation. Parliament now will officially share power uh with with England or with the monarchy in England. Um Parliament had been a kind of unofficial right traditional body uh that monarchs were to confer with. Um but now it's going to be officially shared governance between an elective parliament uh and a a monarchy. Um a bill of rights is instituted etc. And so that's kind of the situation today, right? You have the royal family. I probably should update this because two of these members are no longer with us. Um, so Queen Elizabeth is now gone and you have King Charles. Um, and then the heirs here um, King William and now they have children, right? Future King George is now in the picture which will be interesting. Um, so they are the heirs now um, of this uh, new new line and um, and they practice constitutional monarchy to the present. in uh America. Uh the colonists are not just bystanders that are following uh what's going on. They are actively involved in the English Civil War. Um there had been what historians called a situation called salutoy neglect that kind of reigned over the colonies. Um meaning that as we discussed previously, the colonies are kind of left to their own devices as long as they are paying um you know duties through the navigation acts that we discussed. um they're left to their own devices and the and the English government wants it that way. Uh they want um nothing to do with the colonies as long as they're making money off of them. So this is called salentatory neglect meaning they're neglected but saludatory it's a good thing, right? Um the colonies are able to develop uh without oversight and without control and they they they um you know they blossom as a result. But during that civil war, right, the Steuart monarchy struggling to to maintain power, they they want to take more direct control of the colonies and they're going to send their representative named Sir Edmund Andros. And he's able to put together a kind of royally controlled territory here. He calls the Dominion of New England. And that contains, of course, the New England colonies of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, along with two of the middle colonies, New York, and New Jersey. calls it the the Dominion of New England. It's designed to raise funds and and support the Steuart fight for survival in England. Obviously, as you can imagine, the colonists do not like this. Um, and in 1688, the very same year that the Steuart monarchy is chased off the throne in England for good, uh, Sir Edmond Andros is chased out of New England by the colonists where they can then restore their traditional independent colonial governments. And so they feel that they are part of this tradition that's going that the English are going to possess moving forward that they are a people that will not tolerate oppression and they will not tolerate desperatism right they are a people of free will and a people with rights. The English believe this right because of the glorious revolution and the colonists believe not only as Englishmen that they possess these but because of what they do uh with Sir Edman Andrew in the Dominion of New England that they are active active heirs of this tradition. All right. So, as we move into the 18th century, then let's start um trying to think about the 18th century being the 1700s, let's start trying to think about how these colonists perceived themselves, right? Building off that development of 1688. And one of the questions we have to ask ourselves is, are they considering themselves a Britain, meaning a British person, uh an English person, would they call themselves a colonist or would they call themselves an American? And maybe you can pause the video and think about this and write down your answer um before I give you my answer. Um if you've done that and you then pretended to walk into this parlor and met these people, let's say sitting in Philadelphia, and you asked them who they are, right? Um, I think that you would be pretty it'd be pretty clear that they would answer uh one of the first two, either English or British, and they would very much not like to be called a colonist or an American. Um, English, if they were uh, you know, from England, they might be Scotch-Irish, uh, and therefore they would not consider that. But if that's the case, they would probably refer themselves as as a British person, right? And these would have been considered perhaps negative terms. In fact, the term American um as it emerges in the mid- 18th century is a denigrating term um that British people are using to describe the colonists um uh to kind of put them put them down. Um and they would not have liked that. Um so I want to really explore then the development of this identity here that of being British um which is going to emerge after the year 1707 when the British what not but what becomes the British government um issues what's called the active union and the active union will bind together uh the major nations of the British Isles. So the active union makes Great Britain then um the states of uh England, Wales, Scotland uh and Northern Ireland or Ireland at that point all would have been part of it right the active union it creates then right but Northern Ireland will be uh important here um it uh creates then a a new nation right which we call Great Britain previously that had been England right as you know separate entity that sometimes ruled over these other places. But now we're kind of creating a joint government even if it is still dominated by the ethnic English if that makes sense. But what it does is it tries to create a a unity um uh that is built upon various features and characteristics that all of these people uh jointly possess. So if you look at these images here, this is just an example of kind of the the diversity of the people that would have made up Great Britain and seen themselves as British in the 18th century. So here I just I've picked an image of, you know, what might be an a fairly wealthy merchant, right? English, right? Proper, i.e. right? And then down here, very iconically, you have a Scottish Highlander dressed in the kilt, right? In the high socks. And here we have what a colonist uh might American colonist might have looked like uh in the 18th century, right? Living on a farm in Pennsylvania or New York. Now, do these people look the same to you? Do they look like they're the same people? And I think the answer would generally be no, right? They look pretty pretty different. You know, very different cultural things going on in each of these images. But all three of these people, if you would ask them who you are, they they would likely have answered that they are British because they carry three similar characteristics um that make them identify this way. I call it the three P's of Britishness to help you remember it. Two of the three words actually start with a P. The third one, if we do a little play on spelling, we can make it start with a P. So this is kind of silly here but I I think it's fun to to do this to try to remember the three things. Okay. Uh those three things are first and foremost you are Protestant. If you were British you are Protestant. You know you might be an Anglican Englishman. You might be uh the Scottish people were predominantly Presbyterian. So you might be a Presbyterian Scott. Um and you might be a Puritan colonist. But all three of you are Protestant. I.e. you're not Catholic. or you're not pagan uh as they would see the Native Americans as. We talked about how that all developed with Henry VIII, etc. All right. Uh the next P is that of being prosperous. If you are British, it meant that you were prosperous. What you're looking at here is the port of uh Boston uh in the 18th century. Uh it is a vibrant port with ships coming and going from all over the world. New York would have been similar. Philadelphia would have been similar. Charleston, South Carolina would have been similar. To be British meant that you had a unique opportunity to become prosperous. Now, why is that? Um well, one of the reasons is because you had this here. You had the British Royal Navy. Um as the 18th century goes on, Britain will invest more and more and more uh into uh the um the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy is sailing throughout the world. It's attacking pirates during wartime. It's attacking ships of opposing nations at all times, if not in reality. Uh it is in theory, it is protecting the shipping of people who fly a British flag. And so British people feel safe sending their wares and their their goods, right, and their resources abroad on ships because they believe that they are protected by the Royal Navy because their government is investing in this. If you're the if you're a French merchant in Canada, if you're a Spanish merchant in Mexico, you don't have that same security because your nation hasn't made that commitment uh to maritime trade. And so it's much riskier. People are still doing it, but not as many. So that's going to hold back the commerce uh of other other nations uh empires whereas the British Empire the people are extremely active and that's building wealth for everybody. Uh the other element here to the prosperity is rooted in that kind of corporate model of coloni colonizing that we talked about uh previously as well. um because the British government isn't super involved that means that people are kind of filling the void and corp companies and individuals right are doing all types of things because there isn't really government um control and oversight whereas in the Spanish and the French empires the government is very much involved and that has a tendency to suppress free enterprise not you know so the British people are going to outstrip their colonial rivals in uh prosperity because of those two major factors. All right. Uh the third P and this is where we get into a little play on spelling uh is that of freedom. To be British meant that you were free. P H R E E. Silly, I know. Um but it's properly spelled of course. F R E. This is a direct um results of that glorious revolution that we talked about, right? The English people in England overthrew what they considered to be a despotic Stewart monarchy. And the colonists had overthrown Sir Edmund Andros, a a a despotic governor sent by that despotic monarch. And so they believed when they um you know looked around them at other peoples who were living under absolutist kings who had absolutist power and no no parliament, no legislature, right? They believed that those people were enslaved to their rulers and they believed that that they as British people were uniquely free and that meant that they were special. And so to be a colonist meant that you were part of this. That's going to be really important to understand how they react by the midentury as we approach the American Revolution. They believe in these three things and they believe that they are special. and we talked about William and Mary and we talked about Sir Edund Andrews. All right. Um I'm going to do one more slide and then I'm going to end this video um because it's getting long and we'll do the second half of the chapter 4 lecture in in another video. But just to kind of close this out, right, I just want to to point out that now to be British and to be those three things is all buttressed. uh you know it's just all supported uh by the fact that there are very very obvious others quote unquote you see in quotation marks up there right people that are not British uh that surround them people they can point to and say hey we're all the same even though we're different right a Scottish Highlander an English merchant a colonial farmer we're all different but because we have those core similarities we are one people and we can also support that by saying we're not one of these people which to them they would have considered lesser or weird or bad in some way, right? People that were not Protestant, right? A French Canadian trader, right? Or this is the French monarch, right? Or a pagan native American, not prosperous. They don't have access to that great commercial network that being British meant that you had. They're not free, right? French people are enslaved to the most powerful monarch in Europe. Native Americans who are actually probably the freest people in the whole equation are not free in the minds of the colonists because they are slaves to their savagery, right? Which is incorrect, but that's their perception. And so they look at the French Canadians and they look at the natives and they look at the French and the Spanish, right? I'm just leaving out of this um example. and they look at those people and they say, "Wow, right, that's not us." Because we are Protestant prosperous and free and we're uniquely those things. All right. Uh we'll stop here and I will resume in the next video.