American Exceptionalism In The 17th Century

The American Revolution resonated with all classes of society, as it stood to divide a nation’s loyalties and recreate the existing fabric of society. During the 1770s to mid 1780s, no group living in the British American colonies was left unaffected. For blacks enslaved in America, the war presented the fleeting possibility of freedom in a nation that was still dependent on an economic structure of oppression and bondage. For those blacks that were free, they chose their alliances wisely in hopes of gaining economic opportunities and improving their status in the American colonies. The American Negroes, whether free or enslaved, could be found on either side of the battlefront. They took on many different roles, some fighting on the

There has been many historians and theorists who have tackled colonial slavery. One of them is Ira Berlin whose book Many Thousands Gone is his take on slavery diversity in American history and how slavery is at the epicenter of economic production, amongst other things. He separates the book into three generations: charter, plantation and revolutionary, across four geographic areas: Chesapeake, New England, the Lower country and the lower Mississippi valley. In this paper, I will discuss the differences between the charter and plantation generations, the changes in work and living conditions, resistance, free blacks and changes in manumission.

While the first two sections of the book provide the historical context of the settling of the Virginia colony, the last two demonstrate Morgan’s theory of how racism was developed to ensure a sustainable workforce. The rise of the labor theory demonstrates how slavery itself became a necessary business venture in Virginia while at the same time justified the Revolutionary concepts of liberty and equality for all white men. The belief that only the men, or white Englishmen

American Revolution. In this book, the author, Gary B. Nash, tells a detailed and engaging story about the issues of race and slavery that these people faced. He brings many facts to the table that seem to have been left out of “the books that commanded library shelves multivolume nineteenth-century histories of the United States by George Bancroft, Richard Hildreth, Edward

As we already noted – in the 1800s expediency of slavery was disputed. While industrial North almost abandoned bondage, by the early 19th century, slavery was almost exclusively confined to the South, home to more than 90 percent of American blacks (Barney W., p. 61). Agrarian South needed free labor force in order to stimulate economic growth. In particular, whites exploited blacks in textile production. This conditioned the differences in economic and social development of the North and South, and opposing viewpoints on the social structure. “Northerners now saw slavery as a barbaric relic from the past, a barrier to secular and Christian progress that contradicted the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and degraded the free-labor aspirations of Northern society” (Barney W., p. 63).

focusing on the narratives of 16th-18th century white Englishmen who laid the groundwork for the

In Peter Kolchin’s widely acclaimed novel, American Slavery, he evaluates the development of slavery in the New World, which is one of the most debated issues in American history. In his novel, he yolks together the work of many historians with conflicting views to form a balanced and precise view of slavery. He researched primary source evidence, such as quotes from masters and slaves in the 1700s, to obtain the roots of enslavement in America. The success of his novel is often credited to the fact that he is one of the first authors to produce a historical synthesis on racial slavery in the United States. Moreover, his book uniquely spans all the way from the origins of slavery to its demise after the civil war.

For example, the authors used, among other materials, the minutes of Council and General Court of colonial Virginia, which reveals laws passed such as one relating to the “punishment of runaway servants”, where following a multi-racial escape, the law drew little distinction between co-conspirators of different races (McIlwaine, 466). It is a very effective research strategy. The authors imply strongly that if we were to look at this culture objectively, without our presupposed notions of race relations in 17th century Virginia, we would assume that wealth, mainly property, was the dividing social characteristic, and not race, as it would be for the next couple centuries. Breen’s and Innes’ research strategy is compelling. By relying more on original source materials, as opposed to others’ summaries and compilations, they are able to achieve that objectivity. Any attempt to find facts or narratives counter to the most recognized ones can only hope to do so by using original sources.

In the seventeenth century, European people begin to settle in the North America. They started to invest in the natural resources in the eastern America using the best resource they found in the land, captured Native Indians. Many poor European people migrated to North America for opportunity to earn money and rise of their social status. They came to the America as indentured or contracted servants because the passage aboard was too expensive for them. By the time many Native Indians and indentured servants die from the hard labor and low morality rate, masters of the plantation purchased more slaves from Africa to profit themselves. The “Virginia Servant and Slave Laws” reveal the dominant efforts of masters to profit from their servants and slaves by passing laws to treat slaves as their properties and to control servants and slaves by suppressing the rebellion using brutal force. Masters and rich planters sought to earn more profit from mercantilism, or trade, economic system by violating the civil rights of Native Indian, African, and poor European people and this thought and practice still exist today as a form of racism and segregation in America.

Whether by land or by sea, eighteenth century colonial travel was arduous, expensive, and many times dangerous. Because of this, few people traveled very far from their homes. Transportation has changed dramatically since the late 1700’s. It was during this time that Colonial America was budding as a new country. This was before airplanes, which appeared in the very early stages of the 1900’s. Cars showed up about the same time, so rewind about 200 plus years and we’re back in colonial America. It wasn’t civilized like it is today. The dirt roads were bumpy, grimy, and when the rains came, they were mud baths. So how did people during this time get around? Often, they didn’t. Not many people could afford the cost of travel back then. Daily American Colonial Life was extremely harsh for the first settlers and colonists. They were faced with a new country, unknown territory and no friends, relatives or neighbors to help them “In those days, it was fairly expensive to travel. Because of this, generally only government officials, merchants, and planters took the risk (Constitution Facts).” Women were supposed to stay home and look after the children while the husband went off to do business. America was still a budding country, so there were not as many cities as there are now and they were more spread out. If the man wanted to travel, it would require several hours, or even several days to ride on horseback. Often the husband wouldn’t return for a couple of days, and when he

f North America in the 1500s. Before that time, the continent was an unknown place to them. These adventurers saw it as an entirely new land, with animals and plants to discover. They also met new people in this exciting New World—people with fascinating lifeways that the Europeans had never seen and languages they had never heard. This New World for Europeans was actually a very old world for the various people they met in North America. Today we call those people American Indians.

Edmund S. Morgan’s famous novel American Slavery, American Freedom was published by Norton in 1975, and since then has been a compelling scholarship in which he portrays how the first stages of America began to develop and prosper. Within his researched narrative, Morgan displays the question of how society with the influence of the leaders of the American Revolution, could have grown so devoted to human freedom while at the same time conformed to a system of labor that fully revoked human dignity and liberty. Using colonial Virginia, Morgan endeavors how American perceptions of independence gave way to the upswing of slavery. At such a time of underdevelopment and exiguity, cultivation and production of commodities were at a high demand. Resources were of monumental importance not just in Virginia, but all over North America, for they helped immensely in maintaining and enriching individuals and families lives. In different ways, people in colonies like Virginia’s took advantage of these commodities to ultimately establish or reestablish their societies.

The introduction of this book is very unique in that it gives a brief overview of American history that not many Americans were taught. The book fills in the blanks about how exactly our country started out being a small trading partner with European countries and in a few decades became the world’s largest economy. “For some fundamental assumptions about the history of slavery and the history of the United States remain strangely unchanged. The first major assumption is that, as an economic system a way of producing and trading commodities American slavery was fundamentally different from the rest of

In the years from 1600 to 1783 the thirteen colonies in North America were introduced to slavery and underwent the American Revolutionary War. Colonization of the New World by Europeans during the seventeenth century resulted in a great expansion of slavery, which later became the most common form of labor in the colonies. According to Peter Kolchin, modern Western slavery was a product of European expansion and was predominantly a system of labor. Even with the introduction of slavery to the New World, life still wasn’t as smooth as we may presume. Although the early American colonists found it perfectly fine to enslave an entire race of people, they

In American history, every event and person plays a part in the future. For example, rich plantation owners helped America advance their economy. However, that would not have been at all possible without the help of their slaves. The time and institution of slavery is a time of historical remembrance. It played a primary role during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The treatment, labor conditions, and personal stories of these slaves’ treatment and labor conditions are all widely discussed around the world to this day.