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Chapter 3
Colonization and Conflict in the South
1600–1750
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain the development of Spain’s North American colonies.
• Describe the development of English society on the Chesapeake Bay.
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Instead of becoming havens for the English poor and unemployed, or models of interracial
harmony, the southern colonies of seventeenth-century North America were weakened by
disease, wracked by recurring conflicts with Native Americans, and disrupted by profit-hungry
planters’ exploitation of poor whites and Blacks alike. Many of the tragedies of Spanish
colonization and England’s conquest of Ireland were repeated in the American South and the
British Caribbean. Just as the English established their first outpost on Chesapeake Bay with a
set of goals and strategies in mind, so too the Native Americans of that region pursued their own
aims and interests. They had recently been consolidated by the weroance (or chief)
Wahunsenacawh into a powerful confederacy. Wahunsenacawh used the English newcomers to
During the same period, the Spanish Empire was consolidating its hold on North American
territories in what we now call Florida and the southwestern United States. The Spanish
attempted to subjugate the Native Americans in these regions and convert them to Catholicism.
When meeting resistance to their rule, the Spanish often countered with brutal oppression. They
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THEMES
Spain’s North American Colonies
As the English colonies in southern North America took shape, the Spanish extended their
empire into the American Southwest. There, they scattered military garrisons and cattle ranches
English Society on the Chesapeake
After Wahunsenacawh’s death, the English presence proved more likely to threaten than to
support his confederacy’s control over the Chesapeake. With the beginning of the tobacco boom,
the Virginia Company transported an increasing number of white settlers into Virginia. Some
were free men and women, but the vast majority were indentured servants. The spread of English
plantations encroached on tribal lands. Mounting tensions finally exploded in 1622 into full-scale
Chesapeake Society in Crisis
The Navigation Acts only strengthened the forces that were propelling Chesapeake society
toward a crisis. Local elites were divided and jealous, while freed servants and small planters
found diminishing opportunities for themselves. Religious hatred and a renewal of hostilities
with the Native Americans raised tensions further. Two civil wars resulted—Bacon’s Rebellion
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From the Caribbean to the Carolinas
As the tobacco economy evolved in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake, a booming sugar
economy also transformed the Caribbean into a slave-based plantation society. Land scarcity in
the English Barbados fostered the settlement of South Carolina, another proprietary colony.
More prosperous than either North Carolina (its poor neighbor) or Virginia, South Carolina still
LECTURE STRATEGIES
Seventeenth-Century Diversity of Settlement
The single most important theme of this chapter is the diversity of southern society during the
first century of settlement of North America. Since the knowledge of the early South that most
students bring to the American history survey is limited to Virginia, it is important to introduce
them to the full range of colonial development during this period—the proprietary regime and
Common Characteristics of Plantation Societies
To be sure, there are some important continuities in the development of colonial plantation
economies, and lectures provide an opportunity for pointing them out. Because all of their
economies were geared toward the production of a single, profitable, staple commodity of
increasing value to the mother country, the southern colonies established closer ties to English
merchants and politicians than did the northern colonies. Since in none of these colonies were the
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Differing Colonial Experiences in the Chesapeake, the Caribbean, and the Carolinas
Having summarized the similarities in the southern colonial experience, lecturers can address
differences in the character, pace, and direction of development in the Chesapeake, the
Caribbean, and the Carolinas. Relations between Native Americans and white settlers offer an
excellent set of opening contrasts. European diseases and slavery had virtually wiped out the
Differing Systems of Labor in the Early South
The contrasting labor systems of the early South also deserve full coverage. It comes as a
surprise to many students that Black slavery did not emerge as the dominant labor system in the
Chesapeake until the end of the seventeenth century, and that during the early years of settlement
in Maryland and Virginia, some Blacks were free while others were indentured servants. Equally
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TEACHING SUGGESTIONS
Native American Agency
This chapter encourages students to see Native Americans as full-fledged historical actors who,
like Europeans, had their own economic interests, political goals, and military strategies. You
can press this theme by posing the question of why native peoples did not seize their early
advantage—numerical superiority and the disarray of white settlers—to drive out their uninvited
guests. The opening section of the chapter addresses this issue by presenting the settlement of
Indentured Servitude and Unfree Labor
An approach that works especially well for stirring up interest in the early Chesapeake is to
inform a roomful of students that, since the majority of them are likely late adolescents with few
skills and little income, they have much in common with those boatloads of indentured servants
who made up the majority of immigrants to Virginia and Maryland. (If men outnumber women
in the class, the analogy is even more effective.) That opener helps to remind students that most
early inhabitants of the Chesapeake were bound laborers, not free workers; even more important,
The Creation of the Atlantic World
You might encourage students to avoid thinking of the North American colonies in isolation.
They existed in a network of commerce and cultural and social exchange with places all along
the Atlantic rim, but especially with Europe. Europe and America were constantly affecting each
others’ social and cultural development. For example, while mercantilist policy fostered the
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