The author Daniel Henry Usner Jr brings the lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 into focus and delivers a coherent story of the complex social and economic history that is entangled into the Lower Mississippi Valley region. Usner reveals in this monograph the daily interactions between Europeans, Africans, and Indians in early colonial America. The study concentrates on the region along the Gulf Coast and depicts the frequent changes of political power beginning with the occupation of the French from 1699 to the early 1760s, and then the divided occupation of the Gulf Coast between the Spanish and the British from the early 1760s until the early 1780s. Usner does a notable job of exploiting the active participation in the local and regional …show more content…
The first division is a chronological account of the volatile political and diplomatic shifts of control and identity. In the first four chapters the evolution of the Lower Mississippi valley is meticulously examined. The initial establishment of France at Biloxi Bay in 1699 and the economic interest they had with the native Indians proved to have devastating impacts on the region. The undesirable conduct of the Indians motivated the Europeans colonist to export the Indians to the Caribbean in exchange for African slaves which would lead to a sequence of colonial wars and constant conflict with the Indians. Also covered in this section is the lack of imperial interest and the insufficient profit which facilitated the self-sufficient regional level “frontier exchange economy.” Concluding the chronology of the evolution of the Lower Mississippi Valley is the transformation that the Treaty of Paris resulted in as it realigned the political control from France to both Spain and Great Britain. Both Spain and Great Britain aggressively conscripted colonist, expanded and proliferated staple crop plantations, and expanded commercialized trade. Along with the increase in staple crop plantation was an increase in population, specifically African …show more content…
Indians, blacks, and white Europeans enjoyed significant freedom and autonomy throughout the French occupation of the Gulf region. However, the division of the region between the Spanish and Great Britain greatly altered these cross-culture and interracial interactions and created the beginning of a plantation agriculture economy. He argues that export-directed economy supplanted the frontier exchange economy which negatively changed the social contract between Indians, blacks, and European settlers. The transition from small producers to a full-scale commercialized economy enforced by planters, merchants, and colonial authorities through military use and the law ultimately eliminated the economic autonomy of the regions non-elite; Indians, blacks, and European settlers. The effects of these new economic and social developments consequently restricted blacks to plantation labor, small-scale land owners suffered from the inability to compete with large-scale plantations, and Indians underwent high restrictions and regulated trades with Spain and Great Britain for deer
In 1709, Jacques Raudot, passed an ordinance planned to identify owners’ demands for Seeking validation and security of their enslaved property and reinforcing the legality of both African and Indian servitude in New France. The ordinance accentuated the problems associated with insubordinate slaves, who often attempted to escape from their owners by repudiating their enslaved status. In his ordinance, Raudot also highlighted the need of slaveholding for the growth and development the colony. The ordinance disseminated to the public through New France’s officials who referred to Raudot’s ordinance as the root of legalized slavery in the colony. It was published in the towns of Quebec, Three rivers, and Montreal and was notarized by authorities.
Angela Mercado HISA137 Prof. Hackel 21 May 2015 Technologies Impact on The Economy of the Midwestern Frontier In John Mack Faragher’s 1986 historic work Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie, he examines the first generation of a Midwestern community; looking closely at those who settled in this small section of rural Illinois (Faragher xiii). Faragher specifically analyzes the development of the Sugar Creek Valley in the six decades before the American Civil War. In 1819, there was little to no settlements among the Sugar Creek area, however, as time passed and technology advanced, the socioeconomic position of the area changed. How settlers farmed their land and exported their products changed drastically and the Sugar Creek Valley became a hotspot for economical gain.
Beecher points out that, “This continent was once possessed only by the Indians, and earliest accounts represent them as a race numerous, warlike, and powerful. When our forefathers sought refuge from oppression on these shores, this people supplied their necessities, and ministered to their comfort.” Beecher addresses a key point that the land where she and other Whites live was originally and rightfully belonging to the Indians. Yet, the Indians were kind enough to offer assistance to the Whites as they sought refuge on these lands. Even though whites received so much assistance form Indians they insisted for more and thus took more and more land.
This article’s title is “Inseparable Companions” and Irreconcilable Enemies: The Hurons and Odawas of French Detroit, 1701-38 and its author is Andrew Sturtevant. The thesis in this article is the sentence, “The Hurons ' and Odawas ' simmering hostility and eventual conflict demonstrate that native groups survived the Iroquois onslaught and that their interaction profoundly shaped the region”. In this article, Sturtevant is arguing that the Huron and Odawa are distinct nations with different culture and that because of the differences they had many disagreements, not simply because of the colonialism by the French. Sturtevant uses direct quotes from primary sources to show that the distinct nations fought because of their own differences,
However, in this new period of time, the need to take control of new land was prominent for America's economy “but the Opposition is right—there is a difference. We did not need the western Mississippi Valley when we acquired it, nor Florida, nor Texas, nor California, nor the royal provinces of the
Prior to the 20th Century, the United States of America had yet to become a well-established global power; the United States was undergoing major developments in technology, refinement and overhaul of governing policies, and development of urban centers. In addition to the previously mentioned developments in the United States, there were various new job opportunities, as a result of the rapid urbanization and the need to develop infrastructure, and cheap land offered by the US Government enticed individuals to move from the East Coast and head westwards in hopes of prosperity. Conflict between the free states and the slave states had resulted in an additional increased demand for the settling and statehood of sections of the territories west of the Mississippi River. It would be this conflict for land expansion that would lead to the historical event known as Bleeding Kansas, wherein conflict between activists from both the free and slave states would be so violent that it resulted in a total of more than
The French came to America to explore recently claimed land by their government. The land was the area of the St. Lawrence River. The French were exceptionally well at making kinship by not taking advantage the natives and respecting them rather than
The study of slavery in the southern half of the United States prior to the Civil War examines the institution in a capitalistic sense, choosing to see the punishment of slaves as unlikely due to the paternalistic relationship that allegedly existed between slaves and their masters. Recently, historiographical texts, such as River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom by Walter Johnson, have taken up the mantle of disproving this. In his introduction, Johnson describes the institution of slavery as such: "The Cotton Kingdom was built out of sun, water, and soil; animal energy, human labor, and mother wit; grain, flesh, and cotton; pain, hunger, and fatigue; blood, milk, semen, and shit." In regards to the title of his book, Johnson asserts that the importance of slavery in terms of economic history did not lie with Massachusetts, but along the Mississippi River, additionally dismantling prior historiography surrounding slavery. Serving as the major thesis of his book, Johnson convincingly and ambitiously argues that slaves labored, resisted, and reproduced in the Mississippi Valley Region, and it was the response by southerners to material limitations, such as land degradation, in this region that slaveholders increasingly projected their power onto
The frontier in the late 1700’s was a place of disagreement, this political and social unrest helped mold America. The village of Paxton was a few miles east of Harrisburg in eastern Pennsylvania, it became a place of racial and political unrest during Pontiac 's Rebellion. It was considered part of the frontier in the 1760s, the area was populated by many hardened Scots-Irish immigrants who had grown weary of their vulnerability to attack. Requests for soldiers or guns, powder and lead at the very least were ignored by the legislators, many of them were Quakers.
The Portrayal of Slavery in Antebellum Louisiana in Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave In his memoire Twelve Years a Slave, illegitimately enslaved Solomon Northup does not only depict his own deprivations in bondage, but also provides a deep insight into the slave trade, slaves’ working and living conditions, as well as religious beliefs of both enslaved people and their white masters in antebellum Louisiana. Northup’s narrative is a distinguished literary piece that exposes the injustice of the whole slaveholding system and its dehumanizing effect. It is not a secret that the agriculture dominated the economy of antebellum Louisiana (Louisiana: A History 183). Therefore the Southern planters needed relatively cheap workforce to cultivate
A. Religious and spiritual misinterpretation occur frequently throughout the Jesuit documents. These misunderstandings are justified throughout these historical documents and provide a clear Native belief system to the subjective recordings of the Jesuits who detailed these connections. These documents accompanied the encroachment of New France in Northeast America, published annually in France beginning of 1632 and actively read by interested Europeans. The documents not only reflect on environment and cultural practices of Native Americans, yet also the subjective observations and biases of the missionaries who detailed their first interactions. Certain passages of history are more interesting than those which record the efforts of
In each decade since about 1860, the Atchafalaya River had drawn off more water from the Mississippi than it had a decade before. By the late 1940’s the volume approached one-third, as the Atchafalaya widened and deepened, eroding headword, offering the Mississippi an increasingly attractive alternative, it was preparing for nothing less than absolute capture: before long it would take all of the Mississippi, and itself become the master stream. The Mississippi River with its sand and silt, has created most of Louisiana, and it could not have done so if it stayed in one channel. If it had only stayed in one channel southern Louisiana would be a long narrow peninsula reaching into the Gulf of Mexico.
Kaitlin Pennington The Accidental City From the time French settlers first came to Louisiana to Spanish control of Louisiana to Louisiana in the era after the American Revolution, there have been many turns of events. Some of these events were significant enough to completely change Louisiana’s course of history. In The Accidental City, James Powell gives us an insight to the unpredicted creation of the city of New Orleans and how much of an affect that it had on the people and the future state of Louisiana.
Elaborating on concepts from the previous chapters, Cronon discusses how and why New England in the 1800s was ecologically different from New England in the 1600s. The author lists many relevant issues which influenced the ecological change: deforestation, dams, crop disease, European pests, and so forth. Cronon states that there is a clear difference between New England before and after European colonization, but stresses the dangers of analyzing ecological change simply by contrasting two landscapes (before and after European colonization). Cronon discusses how disease helped to promote European expansion, and how economic and ecological imperialisms reinforced each other. He also mentions that Indians continuously evolved, and an earlier
“Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress”, chapter one of “A People’s History of the United States”, written by professor and historian Howard Zinn, concentrates on a different perspective of major events in American history. It begins with the native Bahamian tribe of Arawaks welcoming the Spanish to their shores with gifts and kindness, only then for the reader to be disturbed by a log from Columbus himself – “They willingly traded everything they owned… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” (Zinn pg.1) In the work, Zinn continues explaining the unnecessary evils Columbus and his men committed unto the unsuspecting natives.