Citizenship 101: The Beginning (Not Really Though)

Welcome to Citizenship 101. Today we begin nowhere near the beginning. History doesn't have a clear beginning, middle, or end. And the history of countries is particularly difficult to pin down. In the United States the beginning comes well before European settlers set up the colonies. It started between 23,000 BCE and 9000 BCE when Asian nomads crossed a frozen land bridge to the continent we now call North America. From then until 1492, when the continent was "discovered" by Christopher Columbus, there was a ton of history and thousands of distinct civilizations, nations, and cultures. I could spend an entire blog just discussing that history, but I am not the archaeologist of the pair so I will leave that period to Raven's expertise.

So I am going to begin in the middle, instead of the beginning, with the "discovery", colonization, and settling of The New World.

Here are some basic facts you should know about the United States before it was the United States.

"Discovery"

- Columbus wasn't the only one who thought the world was round - everyone thought that! 1492 was the year they invented the globe - Columbus believed the circumference of the globe was smaller than it actually was, leading him to believe that he could circumnavigate his way to East Asian riches by sailing into the empty water we now know isn't empty at all.

- Columbus landed in the Bahamas on October 12th 1492, but that wasn't the first time Europeans hit New World soil. Leif Ericson landed in Newfoundland in 1002 or 1003, almost a half century earlier.

- Columbus was a stubborn ass who abused the natives, thought they were too stupid to know where they lived and went to his grave believing he'd found a new route to East Asia. Seriously, why do we celebrate this man?

Colonization

- Between 1565 and 1634 lots of European settlers from England, the Netherlands, France, and Spain began to colonize the Eastern coastline of the new continent.

- In 1590 Roanoke colony, founded by Queen Elizabeth I, mysteriously vanishes along with all its colonists. Modern archaeologist detectives believe the colonists split with some settling in Merry Hill in North Carolina and others assimilated with the Native Americans in the area.

- In 1607 the Virginia Company founded Jamestown in Virginia, which would struggle in its quest for gold, but later succeed hugely in planting something even more valuable (tobacco). 

- In 1620 the fun-loving Puritans joined the colonizing party, hoping to practice their stricter version of Christianity away from the loose and immoral Protestants of Europe.

- Most settlement happened for one of two reasons, religiously persecuted groups gained a monarch's permission to settle or a company gained the monarch's permission to settle and make money in the New World. In both cases the monarch gave permission because it would make the home country wealthier.

- There were 4 distinct areas of colonization: the tobacco colonies in Virginia, The New England Colonies, the Middle Colonies formed in Pennsylvania, and the Southern Colonies between Virginia and Florida.

- The tobacco colonies were settled by the Virginia Company and would eventually become fertile and wealthy farming land for tobacco. It was made up primarily of Virginia and Maryland, with Maryland becoming a haven for Catholics and Virginia for more traditional Protestants.

- The New England Colonies began with the Pilgrims in Plymouth and eventually split into several colonies: Massachusetts, the more religiously liberal Rhode Island, the more restrictive Connecticut, and the wild and untamed colony of New Hampshire.

- The Middle Colonies including New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware were a mish-mash of all sorts of settlers fleeing religious persecution and became a very prosperous and comparatively egalitarian place for its time.

- The Southern Colonies, which began as only the Carolina Colony, were poorer, mainly agrarian colonies that eked by in pre-Revolutionary times.

Settlement

- By 1775 there were 12 settled colonies: Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Delaware, while often listed as one of the 13 colonies was never actually a colony. It became a state in 1776, after the Declaration.

- Settlers came to the New World in one of three ways: freely, indentured, or enslaved.

- Slavery was practiced all over the New World, but was especially prevalent in the South, especially in tobacco rich areas like Virginia and Maryland.

- The difference in the working conditions of indentured servants and slaves was largely hope - many indentured servants never worked their way out of debt, but they had the opportunity to do so. Slaves had no opportunity. Indentured servitude also petered out much faster than slavery.

- Indentured servants and slaves were both more common in the South than in the North, but both areas had them and without their free labor the 12 colonies would never have been as successful.

- Georgia was largely a buffer area between the more prosperous Carolina colonies and the more hostile Native American nations, poor farmers were granted land in the territory in order to basically serve as a human wall against a less than friendly neighbor.

Truth or Myth?

Starting all the way back with the Puritans, this country has been built on the deep belief in personal freedom and religious tolerance.

I'll give you my two cents next time.

Let me know if you have questions, comments, or more information you'd like to know in the comments!