New World Immigrants

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Written Assignment 2 HIS-113 1David Spencer

Written Assignment 2

Motives of European Migrants and the environment they faced in their new world

colonies were essential in defining the future character of the respective colonies, what drove

their economies, and who provided the labor for that drive.

European Migrant Motives

The earliest English immigrant groups had motives of wealth or religious purity driving

them to America, but secular factors in England provided motives for the exponential growth

once the colonies were firmly established. Namely the overcrowding in England led to grim

economic fortunes for many Englishmen. The overcrowding resulted in a lack of land for

agriculture, and an oversupply of labor in the cities (Brinkley, 2012, p. 75). The lack of

opportunity in England propelled Englishmen to the great opportunities of the American frontier.

English immigration to America created protestant colonial populations. These

protestant colonists welcomed the Huguenots, French Protestants, after they fled persecution

after the revocation of the edict of Nantes of 1685 (p. 75). German Catholics and Protestants

found refuge in America from war. These Germans would become the Pennsylvania Dutch (p.

76).

The protectionist policies of mercantilist England forced another European group from

one set of colonies to the American colonies. The Scotch-Irish planting in Ulster suffered

economic collapse there after English tariffs, and embargoes destroyed their wool industry (p.

76).


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Large numbers of Scotch from their homeland also immigrated for greater opportunity to

America. The defeated rebellious Scotch highlanders came to settle in North Carolina.

Presbyterian Scotch lowlanders came to New Jersey (p. 77).

Environmental Economic Factors

These different groups took advantage of the different territories they claimed to produce

opportunity and wealth for themselves. The economies of what would become the north and the

south produced different economic systems largely because of the differences in the physical

environments of the two regions.

A few cash crops dominated the economic systems that emerged in the South. These

crops were very labor intensive to cultivate, which led to dependence on slave labor. The

importation of African slaves was in large part possible because of the large cash income

generated by the export of the Southern crops to Europe (p. 78).

In the Chesapeake region, the soil and climate produced various grades of quality

tobacco. However, soil exhaustion pushed planters further away from the original settlements

and plantations. All the while over-production created a boom/bust cyclical market for tobacco

(p. 78).

The first sustainable staple crop in Georgia and Carolina was rice. The Barbadian

planters that were the first to contribute large numbers of African slaves to what would become

the United States also tried to import the cultivation of sugar cane. Sugar did not do well in

Carolina, but it can be argued that Carolina was saved by rice just as Virginia was saved by

tobacco (Johnson, 1999, l. 1357). Rice culti vation in the southern estuaries (Brinkley, 2012, p.

78).


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Another staple crop emerged in South Carolina in the 1740s away from the wetlands that

supported rice cultivation (p. 78). Indigo proved to be a cash crop used for producing blue dyes,

which were in high demand in the European market (p. 79). The cultivation of indigo on the

high ground in South Carolina contributed to the spread of the colony out from the low country

into land farther away from the main waterways and into the piedmont.

Agricultural hardships of cold weather and hard, rocky soil (p. 79) led to the development

of an economy in the North distinguished by a thriving commercial class (p. 81). While most

of the North was not suitable for the large-scale monoculture cultivation that dominated the

south, areas of New York, Pennsylvania, and the Connecticut River Valley supplied large

quantities of wheat to colonies throughout the North and South (p. 80).

The limited areas producing large quantities of cereal grains did not propel the

commercial class; instead, the consumption and export of the products of mills and metal works

gave rise to the markets of the North. Mills were common in the North, and they in some cases

provided the energy to produce manufactured goods (p. 80). European immigrants also

established iron works in the North. These iron works first filled local demand and then began

exporting to England. The American Norths iron works industry was severely degraded by the

Iron Act of 1750, which protected English iron works at the cost of American works (p. 80).

Part of the competitiveness of American iron works was the plentiful supply of iron.

Mining and other extractive industries provided commodities for export to England (p. 81).

Forced Labor Compared

The major differences between indentured servitude and slavery fall into three broad

categories. First, the way in which an individual entered forced labor. Second, term of their


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service. And third, the inheritance of status. It is not clear if the first black laborers who came to

Jamestown in 1619 were slaves in the way we know them today, and the importance of race in

the power dynamic of forced labor evolved over time.

The English colonies of North America were latecomers to the Atlantic trade of African

slaves. The early labor force in the colonies came from indentured servants. While some

servants were prisoners or otherwise coerced to come to the New World, most indentured

servants came to the colonies voluntarily (p. 69). These indentured servants were motivated in

many cases by a desire to escape trouble in England, in the hope of opportunity, or simply for

land (p. 69). In contrast, African slaves were a product of the slave trade and were captives

normally taken prisoner by a rival African tribe and sold to European merchants at the West

African coast (p. 73). Therefore, the differences between African and European laborers began

at each individuals entrance into service, with one voluntary and the other captive.

The term of service also distinguished indentured servants from African slaves.

Indentured servants were granted their freedom after their contracted term of service. In

contrast, Africans remained in service permanently (p. 74).

Not only did African slaves serve life terms of service, but slave holders created a

perpetual labor force by enlisting the children of their slaves in forced labor. In this way, slavery

became an inherited state (p. 74). This state did not apply to indentured servants, whose children

were born free even if the parents were bonded to a master.

Initial Inputs

The initial environmental conditions existing in the respective colonies were the key

factors in shaping the economic conditions that created the divergent economic models in the


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South and North. Respectively creating the slave-labor intensive monoculture cultivation in the

south and the diversified economies of the North. These economic systems also bore the social

weight of what motivated different groups of Europeans to come to America in the form of

religious and political differences. In turn, these Europeans ability and willingness to fill the

demand for the specific labor needs in the South and North led to the bifurcation of American

society with stratified society in the south and largely a single class of freemen in the North.

Indeed, the social, environmental, economic, and labor conditions of the genesis of the colonies

seeded the divisions that would come to a head in the American Civil War.


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References

Brinkley, A. (2012). American history: A survey (14th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Johnson, P. (1999). A history of the American people . New York, NY: Harper Perennial.

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New World Immigrants