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Feb 9, 1500
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. -
Jun 11, 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 Bartoloméde Las Casas and another
Dominican philosopher JuanGinésdeSepúlveda,
each took opposing positions to justify enslavement
and nothing was resolved. -
Indentured Servants
They were given food, clothing, housing and taught farming or household skills. American landowners were in
need of laborers and were willing to pay for a laborer’s passage to America if they served them for several years.
• By selling passage for 5 to 7 years worth of work they could then start out on their own in America.
• Many of the migrants from
first few
years.
England died in the -
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.
• The vast majority of these slaves went to sugar colonies in the Caribbean and to Brazil, where
life expectancy was short and the numbers had to be continually replenished.
• About 600,000 African slaves were imported into the U.S., or 5% of the 12 million slaves brought
across from Africa. -
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, killing
between 10 million and 100 million people, up to 95% of the indigenous
population of the Americas :
• -
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, where
they founded multiple colonies. -
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. -
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 and the biblical principle that "he who will not
work shall not eat.“ The high mortality rate was quite distressing
and cause for despair among the colonists. Tobacco
later became a cash crop, with the work of John Wolfe
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
when they established their first permanent settlement in Jamestown,
VA in 1607. The main purpose of this colony was the hope of finding gold. -
Indentured Servants
From the beginning of VA's settlements in 1587 until the 1680s, the main
source of labor and a large portion of the immigrants were indentured
servants looking for new life in the overseas colonies.
• During the 17thcentury, 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. -
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.
• The Spanish continued this with the enslavement of local aborigines in
the Caribbean.
• As the native populations declined from European diseases, forced exploitation,
atrocities,they were often replaced by Africans imported through a large
commercial slave trade.
