Part Two: America – A Country for One Another and Othering

Part Two: America – A Country for One Another and Othering

By: Jeanne Gostling

After successfully crossing the ocean and returning with riches and stories of abundance, European rulers directed their proxies to colonize the “New World.” Colonization refers to the groups who established control of an area. Other groups migrated to America during the era of colonization but didn’t achieve the status of ruling entity.

   The 1600’s through the 1700’s are regarded as our age of colonization. The Spanish colonized most of South and Central America and spread their influence into the southwestern and middle regions of North America. The French focused on New Quebec, Newfoundland, Acadia, the Mississippi Delta and parts of the southern coast near present day Georgia and South Carolina. The British sought control of all of the region known now as New England and the mid-Atlantic states which put them in direct conflict with the Dutch who colonized the areas we call New York, parts of New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

   All European magistrates were ingrained with three key belief systems, and they carried out their duties using varying degrees of each:

The Doctrine of Discovery which granted them God’s permission to subjugate non-Christians.

Ordained Authority which extended God’s permission from rulers onto their surrogates

Mercantilism – which saw the accumulation of wealth and establishment of trade as vital to national interests

   The new colonies needed settlers to inhabit them. The era of colonization in the America’s is marked by growing discontent in Europe brought about by the ruling class, the Church and the evolving role of social institutions wielding power and aiming to control peoples’ lives. Despite the hardship of trans-Atlantic travel, European settlers came to the respective colonies to escape excessive taxation, persecution and the strict edicts of the Church. They sought economic opportunity and freedom of political expression as well.  Receiving less attention, however, was the practice of sending “undesirables” to the New World as a means of freeing nations like Great Britain from the burden of having those as lower class people in their cities and countryside.

   The Dutch, following the Union of Utrecht (1579) formulated in the Netherlands, believed everyone should be free to follow their own religion. Despite the reformed church being the official religion of the Netherlands, officials employed the practice of connivance, essentially, looking the other way on bad behavior.

   The Museum of the City of New York explains: “In 1664 the village of New Amsterdam was a settlement of 1,500 people who reportedly spoke 18 different languages”. Economics was the primary motive behind the posture of connivance. The Dutch recognized the financial benefits of focusing on trade expansion, developing shipping ports and shipping routes through cooperation along with patroonships – land leasing.

   The fur trade, especially in the hinterlands of New York State, put them in contact with Indigenous People. The Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawks) controlled the waterways needed to move goods from the interior of the state to New Amsterdam, and the Dutch profited from a largely amicable relationship with the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois).

   The practice of Patroonships, however, a feudal style of land leasing, did lead to later violence in the mid-19^th century when families who’d been working the land fought back during the Anti-Rent Wars. The New York State legislature responded by outlawing the practice.

   The French, as part of their robust interest in the fur trade, were creating a rudimentary trading infrastructure as early as 1530’s. Trails, rough roads, water routes, forts and trading posts with primitive settlements began to emerge from Quebec, south into the Ohio Valley, and across the St. Lawrence into Maine. French trappers pressed west across Canada into what we currently refer to as our upper Midwest and northern states, hoping to discover a northwest passage to the Pacific.

   Manpower was needed to conduct the fur trade, and the French often used enslaved Indigenous People for this goal. According to the Minnesota Historic Society, “European colonialism introduced different concepts of slavery, brought new slave peoples to America from Africa, and drove Native-Native slave raiding to unprecedented levels. Slavery was an integral part of the fur trade during this period.” The presence of French  trading settlements, spartan as they were, opened the door for the powerful Jesuit movement in the 1600’s. The Jesuits were missionaries, intent upon converting the  Indigenous People of North America to Catholicism and their efforts were met with mixed results.

   Local to Schoharie Crossing, three Jesuit priests were killed by the Mohawks after teaching tribal children the sign of the cross and for being suspected of sorcery that blighted their crops. Conversely, the Shrine of Kateri in Fonda, NY, celebrates her conversion of a Mohawk girl to Christianity.

   While Catholic Jesuits were aimed at converting people to Catholicism, French Huguenots were Protestants who sought refuge from religious persecution in France by coming to America. They’re regarded as being the first true immigration movement in America. By the year 1700 there were an estimated 2,000 French Huguenots living here. Their departure was considered a loss of intellectualism for Europe.

   During 18^th century, the area now recognized as Germany, had experienced extended warfare, extreme weather, crop failure and religious persecution that forced many Protestant Palatine Germans to flee their homeland. After crossing Europe, they arrived in England, where Queen Anne used their plight as refugees fleeing Catholic invaders, to quell growing positive sentiment for Catholicism. She also responded to her country’s need for a labor force in the Hudson Valley, New York, where the British Navy needed workers to make pine tar. The Palatine’s did not take well to the relocation or to the harsh treatment they received at the hands of her Majesties’  Navy.  Many left the Hudson Valley and began to move northwest through the Catskill Mountains into the Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys. Queen Anne also linked the construction of Fort Hunter to anticipated tribal assistance in relocating Palatines to the Mohawk Valley. The fort’s construction sent a strong signal regarding   Britain’s alliance with the Haudenosaunee, and both sides welcomed a Palatine buffer from French raids.

   Great Britain, unlike the Spanish who used forced labor to extract precious minerals in Central and South America, needed an established work force to grow the grain, harvest the wood, or capture the fur bearing animals. Their impact on colonial immigration might aptly be described as recruiting a collection of settlers, servants and the enslaved. The impact of indentured servitude is often overlooked during a discussion of immigration.   During the colonial period one half to one third of all workers were indentured, either to pay off their passage to America or working in lieu of imprisonment or fines for crimes committed elsewhere. The length of servitude   varied depending on the nature of the contract, but the work expected of the indentured often led to premature death or serious injury, preventing these servants from ever realizing their American dream.

   Most of New England remained predominantly British during the 1700’s, with a population base well skilled and more literate than many other settlers. Facing limited opportunities in Ireland, approximately 250,000 Scotch-Irish left home in the 18^th century and settled in Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York, and the Carolinas. As Presbyterian Protestants, living in a predominantly Catholic region of Ireland, they were subject to religious persecution. The ability to own land was restricted by land leases controlled by wealthy British Lords. In America those Protestants became landowners and escaped the discrimination associated with their beliefs. They became the backbone of the British colonial workforce.

   As the 18^th century drew to a close a new era of immigration would soon take shape. The slow trickle of Europeans settlers coming to America would become a massive movement. From 1810-1870 immigration through the City of New York grew 5000%. In our next installment we’ll take an in depth look at the impact mass immigration had on our fledgling nation, why it occurred and how the people who settled here prior to this new wave viewed the newcomers.

“Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in
America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were
American History.”  - Oscar Handlin

Look for Part III this summer.