CREATING ANGLO-AMERICA

1660-1750

METACOM'S WAR• The Wampanoag and other native New England tribes

were being pressured off of their lands

• Metacom (“King Philip”) began negotiating against Plymouth's interests in 1662

• Spark: report from John Sassamon (a “Praying Indian”)

• Metacom launched an attack on Swansea in June 1675

• War officially declared in September 1675

• War effectively ends with Metacom's death in August 1676: beheaded, drawn, and quartered, and his head is displayed outside of Plymouth for 20 years

METACOM'S WAR• Reactions

• Counterattack in 1676 marked the end of Indian power in Massachusetts Bay

• Indians in area no longer trusted English colonists

• Small, insignificant Indian raids would often set off waves of paranoia in English settlements

• Marks the beginning of a greater American identity– in New England, at least

• Separate and distinct from subjects of Parliament and the Crown

•The memory of war

• “How does someone far from the scene of battle image “savage cruelty” except by thinking the worst?” -- Jill LaPore

PENN’S WOODS

PENNSYLVANIA• The last colony established in the 1600s

• Pennsylvania was established to alleviate a 16,000 pound debt owed by the Stuarts (Charles II’s family) to William Penn’s late father

• Penn got the land as a result

• Penn envisioned a colony of harmony between colonists and Indians

• Haven for spiritual freedom

• Penn was a member of the Quakers and Society of Friends (SoF)

• One of his primary motives was to establish a haven for those trying to escape religious persecution in Europe

• Penn owned all of Pennsylvania’s land and sold it at very low prices

• Very different because he did not grant land outright

QUAKERS• Known also as the Society of

Friends

• Principles

• Each man and woman could communicate directly with God

• Rejected the concept of predestination

• Believers emitted an ‘inner light’

• Regarding Liberty

• Believed that whites, blacks, and Indians were all entitled to liberty

• Religious freedom was a fundamental principle

• Strict moral code

• William Penn attempted to use this as the foundation for his first government in Pennsylvania

WILLIAM PENN

PENNSYLVANIA

• Land Owners

• 600 people initially bought land from Penn (roughly ¾ of a million acres)

• Most of the buyers were Quakers

• Penn recruited immigrants from England, Ireland, Germany, and Wales

• Government

• A majority of the male population could vote

• Males only had to own 50 acres of land to be eligible

• Criminal laws were lax

• Capital punishment for murder and treason only

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BACKCOUNTRYStretched 800 miles

from PA to GA

Migrants spread south and west-- Encouraged by colonial governments

Buffer population

90% of backcountry settlers were British

Nearly 10% German

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BACKCOUNTRYA quarter of a million people from Britain alone

Not a single migration, but waves

2/3 arrive between 1765 and1775

Motives: search for material betterment

Concerns of high rents, low wages, heavy taxes, and short leases given as causes for migration

– No. Ireland conditions so harsh, famine and starvation mentioned as leading causes

A movement of families

Migration organized by profit-seeking agents

Faced intense prejudice upon arrival

Some gentry (1%) and yeoman, but most farmers and laborers

Remarkably few came as servants

Different contemporary descriptions:

“Paying passenger of the middle class”

“Scum of two nations”/ “scum of the universe”

“Very poor”

Three forms of family-- nuclear, extended, and clan

Gender relationships-- decidedly male dominant

“STRANGERS WITHIN THE REALM”

• Germans

• Over 110,000 migrated

• Represented the largest group of non-British immigrants

• Tended to travel in families and greatly enhanced the ethnic and religious diversity of the colonies