Three Ways to Hold a Colony
Spain: institutions built on subjugation
- Spanish efforts to extract wealth from the land led them to develop institutions based on subjugating native populations, converting them to Christianity, and incorporating them, along with enslaved and free Africans, into Spanish colonial society.
- The CED's causal order is extraction → institutions: the economy determined the shape of the society.
- Incorporating is exact — the Spanish colonial society included the people it subjugated, in defined and unequal positions.
The CED's causal order for the Spanish pattern is...
The economy determined the shape of the society.
France and the Dutch: few people, many alliances
- French and Dutch colonial efforts involved relatively few Europeans and relied on trade alliances and intermarriage with American Indians to build economic and diplomatic relationships and acquire furs and other products for export to Europe.
- Relatively few Europeans is the decisive fact: a small population must trade rather than displace.
- So the pattern follows from the numbers, and the numbers follow from what the colony was for — furs, not farms.
The decisive fact about the French and Dutch colonies was...
A small population must trade rather than displace.
England: many migrants, settled apart
- English colonisation efforts attracted a comparatively large number of male and female British migrants, as well as other European migrants, all of whom sought social mobility, economic prosperity, religious freedom, and improved living conditions.
- These colonists focused on agriculture and settled on land taken from Native Americans, from whom they lived separately.
- Male and female matters: family migration produces population growth, which produces demand for more land.
Spanish, French/Dutch, or English?
Sort each colonial pattern.
Select all the things English migrants sought, according to the CED.
Male and female migrants — family migration.
One question predicts all three patterns: what did the colony want, and how many people did it send? Extraction with a subject labour force; furs with relatively few Europeans and therefore alliances; land with a comparatively large number of male and female migrants and therefore separation.
English colonists settled on land taken from Native Americans, from whom they lived ____.
A different relationship from trade alliances and intermarriage.
Why the three patterns diverged
- Spain wanted extraction, so it needed a subject labour force; France and the Dutch wanted furs, so they needed partners.
- England sent families seeking land, so it needed the land itself — which is why the CED says settled on land taken and lived separately.
- One sentence — what did the colony want, and how many people did it send? — predicts all three.
Match each colony's purpose to the relationship it required.
One question predicts all three patterns.
How and why they developed
- The objective is how and why various European colonies developed and expanded from 1607 to 1754.
- How: subjugation and incorporation; trade alliances and intermarriage; family migration and land taking.
- Why: because each empire's aim and each colony's population size made a different arrangement necessary.
A hundred traders who need partners behave differently from ten thousand farmers who need fields. Neither group chose its behaviour out of character; each was doing the only thing its numbers and its purpose allowed.
Spanish efforts to extract wealth... led them to develop institutions based on subjugating native populations, converting them to Christianity, and incorporating them, along with enslaved and free Africans, into Spanish colonial society. French and Dutch colonial efforts involved relatively few Europeans and relied on trade alliances and intermarriage. English colonisation efforts attracted a comparatively large number of male and female British migrants... focused on agriculture and settled on land taken from Native Americans, from whom they lived separately.