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1 BCE
Religious Immigration
- Roman Catholics were the first major religious group to immigrate to the New World
- Settlers in the colonies of Portugal and Spain (and later, France) were required to belong to that faith. -English and Dutch colonies, tended to be more religiously diverse
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Feb 11, 1502
Atlantic Slave Trade
-Captured Africans were sold to European slave traders on the West African coast.
- “Middle Passage” – Millions of Africans were taken in ship, under inhuman conditions, for the voyage across the Atlantic to the New World.
- Treatment – enslaved Africans were auctioned and forced to work under brutal conditions. -
Feb 11, 1520
Disease and Indigenous Population Loss
- The European lifestyle included a long history of sharing close quarters with domesticated animals, which had resulted in epidemic diseases unknown in the Americas.
- The large-scale contact with Europeans after 1492 introduced novel germs to the indigenous people of the Americas. -Epidemics swept the Americas subsequent to European contact
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Jun 2, 1537
The Slavery Question
- In 1537, the papacy definitively recognized that Native Americans possessed souls, thus prohibiting their enslavement, without putting an end to the debate. Some claimed that a native who had rebelled and then been captured could be enslaved nonetheless. -Later, the Valladolid debate between the Dominican priest Bartolomé de Las Casas and another Dominican philosopher -, each took opposing positions to justify enslavement and nothing was resolved.
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Migration to North America
- A strong believer in the notion of rule by divine right, Charles I, King of England and Scotland, persecuted religious dissenters. -Waves of repression led to the migration of about 20,000 Puritans to New England between 1629 and 1642, -they funded multiple colonies.
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Virginia Colonies
-It took strong leaders, like John Smith, to convince the colonists of Jamestown that searching for gold was not taking care of their immediate needs for food and shelter
-the biblical principle that "he who will not work shall not eat.“
-Tobacco later became a cash crop, with the work of John Rolfe and others, for export and the sustaining economic driver of VA and the neighboring colony of MD. -
The Search for Riches
- Inspired by the Spanish riches from colonies founded upon the conquest of the Aztecs, Incas, and other large Native American populations in the 16th century
- the first Englishmen to settle permanently in America hoped for some of the same rich discoveries
- They were sponsored by common stock companies such as the chartered Virginia Company financed by wealthy Englishmen who exaggerated the economic potential of this new land.
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Indentured Servants
- During the 17th century, indentured servants constituted 75% of all European immigrants to the Chesapeake region.
- Most of the indentured servants were teenagers from England with poor economic prospects at home. -Many of the migrants from England died in the first few years.
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Scope of the Slave Trade
- The total slave trade to islands in the Caribbean, North & South America is estimated to have involved 12 million Africans.
- About 600,000 African slaves were imported into the U.S., or 5% of the 12 million slaves brought across from Africa.
- Life expectancy was much higher in the U.S. (because of better conditions) so the numbers grew rapidly by excesses of births over deaths, reaching 4 million by the 1860 Census.
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Forced Immigration & Enslavement
- Slavery existed in the Americas prior to the arrival of Europeans, as different American Indian groups often captured and held other tribes' members as slaves
- Some of these captives were even forced to undergo human sacrifice in certain Amerindian civilizations, such as the Aztecs.
- The Spanish continued this with the enslavement of local aborigines in the Caribbean.
