NHC+1492+Power

NHC 1492 POWER

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/amerbegin/power/power.htm

The items on this wiki page are taken from the following website and are only intended for the use of my students:


 * 5. Colonial Rebellion (English Colonies)**

Virginia: Bacon's Rebellion, Bacon's View, 1675 Virginia: Bacon's Rebellion: A Planter's View, 1676

BACON'S REBELLION—BACON'S VIEW. On one level, Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 was an uprising of backwoods farmers against the ruling class of rich planters in Virginia. On another level, it was a power struggle between two groups of planters, those in the inner circle of economic power and those excluded from it. The men who led the backwoodsmen in their revolt, primarily the young and hot-headed Nathaniel Bacon, were planters excluded from the powered elite led by Governor William Berkeley (bark-lee) and thus from the lucrative Indian trade monopolized by Berkeley's friends. Using the very real grievances of the common farmers—falling tobacco profits, rising taxes, reduced opportunities to buy their own farms, harsh shipping regulations imposed by England, and finally, the outbreak of war between the backwoods farmers and the Susquehannock Indians (with whom Berkeley wanted to maintain trade)—Bacon led the farmers in armed rebellion.

Jamestown was occupied and burned; tidewater plantations were attacked and plundered. When Bacon died suddenly of dysentery, the rebellion ended. Governor Berkeley hanged twenty-three of the rebellion's leaders. At the height of his short-lived power, Bacon released this declaration "in the name of the People of Virginia," listing his followers' grievances against Governor Berkeley and his "pernicious councilors, confederates, aiders, and assisters."

BACON'S REBELLION—A PLANTER'S VIEW. Almost thirty years after Bacon's Rebellion, the son of one of Governor Berkeley's inner circle offered his perspective of the uprising. In The History and Present State of Virginia, Robert Beverley, Jr., presents Bacon as a man "in every way qualified to lead a giddy and unthinking multitude," yet he does not assign all blame to Bacon and the Indians while exonerating the governor and the crown. He methodically lists Virginia's problems in the 1660s and 1670s, from falling tobacco prices to disabling wars with the Dutch to parliamentary actions restricting colonial trade.

The final aggravation of Indian raids made the backwoods settlers who were "already full of discontent . . . ready to vent all their resentment against the poor Indians." Bacon saw in the backwoodsmen's sense of abandonment by the ruling coastal planters a platform for his own struggle with the elite: a class war, perhaps.


 * 8. Africans I: English Colonie**s

Pennsylvania: Anti-slavery petition, 1688 Virginia: Servants and slaves in Virginia, 1705

The power relationships we consider here are categorically different from others in this section. Africans did not come to North America on their own initiative to pursue their own goals. Their status from the outset was subordinate at best, enslaved at worst. There was no peer-to-peer negotiation or warfare as occurred between Europeans and Native Americans and among European rivals in the hemisphere. No traditions or laws were transported from the mother country to be respected or re-interpreted by colonial authorities, as was true in varying degrees for European settlers. Any power Africans would gain in North America would derive from their response to utter powerlessness.

In this section we will focus on enslaved Africans in the English colonies, where the number of slaves varied widely by region. In 1700, 78% of the inhabitants in the English West Indies were slaves, compared to 13% in Virginia and 2% in New England.* The correlation of percentage with the power struggle in each region is apparent in these readings.

PENNSYLVANIA: ANTI-SLAVERY PETITION. The prospect of slave rebellion appears again in this petition, but this time as a challenge to one's conscience: "Have these poor negroes not as much right to fight for their freedom as you have to keep them slaves?" Written in 1688 by four German colonists in Pennsylvania (including Mennonites and Quakers), the petition was distributed to several congregations but did not incite a larger anti-slavery campaign at the time, when even William Penn and other Pennsylvania Quakers owned slaves. (In 1700 ten percent of Philadelphia residents owned slaves, primarily to work in urban manufactures.) Quaker opposition to slavery would appear later, in the 1700s, when a core argument of this petition was resurrected: "Is there any that would be done or handled at this manner? viz., to be sold or made a slave for all the time of his life?"

VIRGINIA SERVANTS AND SLAVES. The marked transition in the Chesapeake colonies from servant to slave labor occurred in these last years of the seventeenth century. Virginia's slave population grew from 150 in 1640, to nearly 3,000 in 1680, and by 1700 to 13,000—one sixth of the colony's population. The transition occurred primarily for two reasons: (1) the supply of indentured servants dropped as England offered more economic opportunities for its poor; and (2) the wealthy planters feared the power of the lower classes in their midst, namely the white backwoods farmers, the white indentured servants, and the black servants and slaves. White-black coalitions were an ever-present threat to the planters—Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 had made that clear (see #5: Colonial Rebellion). As the slave population increased, so did the legal controls on slaves' behavior and power, culminating in the extensive law of 1705. Also appearing in 1705 was a justification of servitude and slavery written by a Virginia planter to rebut criticism from England. "Because I have heard how strangely cruel, and severe [slavery and servitude are] presented in some parts of England," writes Robert Beverley, "I can't forbear affirming that the work of their servants and slaves is no other than what every common Freeman does." Explaining the 1705 law, Beverley cites clauses that buttress his argument and judiciously omits others.