American History - Not Dutch

The area we now call Germany was a bit of a cluster fuck in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Made up of hundreds of small independent states and fiefdoms once tied together under the auspices of the Holy Roman Empire, a series of religious schisms and persecutions, devastating wars, and invasions by the French and others had left many common people impoverished and eager to find a new beginning in a place where things weren’t nearly as shitty.  It was into this mess that William Penn waded in 1682, eager to try and convince whomever he could to immigrate across the Atlantic to his new colony of Pennsylvania whose motto was ‘we don’t give a shit who you are’.  Though not overly successful, aside from some Mennonites who were tired of being treated like crap for having a slightly different belief about proper Christian worship, it did at least create an idea amongst many Germans of a possible better life across the sea.  Over the next several decades handfuls of other Germans followed, selling themselves into indentured servitude to make the journey.

The first mass migration of Germans to North America occurred in 1709.  A combination of famine and French invasion in the Palatine region of Germany had led to a refugee crisis, with over ten thousand Germans taking refuge in Britain.  Much like today, this sparked a lot of debate, with some claiming the Germans would be beneficial for the economy and others claiming they were a bunch of poor disease ridden mooches who should go back to where they came from.  The British government solved this little issue by shipping the Germans to other places, including some 3,000 which got shipped to New York where they were forced to do labor on public works projects to pay for their passage.  After the debt was paid, the Germans were given lands in the interior to settle, near territory claimed by the Iroquois Confederacy, who weren’t really known to be the welcoming sort.  However, luckily for the Germans, the Iroquois viewed them as more of an opportunity then a threat.  At the time, the Iroquois leaders were beginning to recognize that the world was quickly changing, and if they wanted a place in it, they’d have to change too.  The Germans were given access to land and in return they taught the Iroquois about European agricultural practices, a relationship which benefited both sides greatly.

The success of the German colonies in New York convinced more Germans from Palatine that heading off to America was in their best interest.  Some were refugees who had to enter indentured servitude to make the passage or members of persecuted religious minorities like the Amish and the Mennonites, but many were farmers attracted by promises of free land.  A farmer who owned just an acre of land in Germany, could own over 100 acres of land in America.  A good portion of the German immigrants were literate and educated.  They travelled down the Rhine River and then across the Atlantic by the thousands.  The flow increased even more when Queen Anne of Britain died childless in 1714, leaving the crown to her German cousin, George the Elector of Hanover.  By the 1760s some 100,000 Germans had immigrated.

Thanks to its status of not giving two shits about such things, Pennsylvania was the most popular destination for most of the German immigrants, who made up more than a third of the colonies population by the 1760s.  However, it was not the only destination.  Groups of Germans also settled in Georgia and the French colony of Louisiana.  As well, many Germans in Pennsylvania, finding little available land, moved south along the eastern foothills of the Appalachians, settling lands as far south as North Carolina.  By the time of the American Revolution, nearly 10 percent of the population of the British colonies was German.

Though respected and viewed as being hardworking and industrious, many of the English-speaking descendants of the original colonists did not take kindly to the arrival of the Germans, beginning a trend in American history which continues through today.  The already established colonists refused to let the Germans settle the more fertile lands near the coast.  They also referred to the Germans as Dutch, because there were already Dutch around and they kind of sounded the same anyways so fuck it.  For their part, the Germans seemed to have little interest in assimilating with the already existing customs.  They instead formed tight knit communities where they retained German language, customs, and food.  Though they were almost entirely all Protestant, most were Lutherans, which did not mesh well with the other Protestant faiths already established.  As a result, a bit of a chicken and the egg situation arose, wherein the descendants of the English colonists disliked the Germans because they remained distinct and therefore foreign, which in turn gave the Germans the impetus to remain apart from the broader colonial society.  This distinction did not begin to wane until well into the nineteenth century.        

American History - French Relations

It’s probably worth mentioning at this point the very different worldviews which dominated the eastern half of North America during the first half of the eighteenth century.  On one end of the spectrum was the British, who for a myriad of reasons you should have probably picked up on by now, largely viewed the New World as an empty void perfect ripe with opportunity for new beginnings.  Whether that new beginning was dreams of a utopian society, free fertile land, or get rich schemes, it drew thousands of people across the Atlantic, both voluntarily and by force, who thanks to the relatively mild climate, created a level of prosperity which made popping out a ridiculous number of children make sense.  As a result, the population of the British colonies quickly rose into the millions, while in comparison, the population of New France was only around 70,000 or so.

There are many reasons for this discrepancy, which can pretty much be boiled down to the kings of France were dicks and nobody wanted to move to New France.  Now at the time, the French monarchy ruled with pretty much absolute dictatorial powers, both at home and abroad.  While the British largely took a laissez-faire approach to their colonies, largely leaving them to run themselves as long as they were productive or at the very least not disruptive, New France was run with a more feudal flare, tightly controlled by appointed royal governors, who got to do whatever the hell they wanted as long as the king was cool with it.  This combined with the fact that only Catholics were allowed to emigrate and that Canada was cold as balls compared to the mild French climate, created little incentive to cross the Atlantic permanently.  As a result, most people who went only planned to do so temporarily, working a three-year contract in hopes of returning home if not wealthy, at the very least better off than they were before.

As one can imagine, this was somewhat concerning to those trying to make money off the colony, and though they did try several novel ways of increasing the population, such as shipping over desperately poor women who were either orphans or widows, it did little to help the problem.  Due to this, New France remained largely dependent upon the relationships and alliances it built with various native tribes, exerting its power over wide swaths of territory via manipulation and trade centered on small forts often hundreds of miles from the next nearest French settlement.  In affect the French were claiming territory over which it had little to no actual control outside of dominating trade, which was rather novel for the time.  In comparison, though the British followed a similar model in some remote areas, as the populations of their colonies rapidly expanded they shifted more towards a just beat the shit out of anyone who didn’t get along with them mentality. 

Now it should come as no surprise that overall the majority of native tribes largely preferred dealing with the French over the British, a mentality that only increased as the British population in North America continued to grow exponentially.  These good relations allowed the French to wander much deeper into the continent, exploring and building a trading network across the whole of the Great Lakes and Mississippi watersheds, a network defended by various allied native tribes who increasingly became dependent upon French trade goods to survive.  In essence, while the British colonists increasingly sought to control territory through domination, New France did it via symbiotic relationships. 

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, the largest of course being the conflict between the French and the Iroquois Confederacy, which lasted for nearly a century and has already been covered extensively.  There were also of course multiple proxy wars, wherein the French supplied arms to specific tribes in order to attack tribes allied with the British or tribes who were disrupting French trade in one way or another.  Two of the most devastating of these took place in the early eighteenth century, when France was attempting to fully establish its trading network along the entirety of the Mississippi River.  Meeting resistance from the Fox in what is today Wisconsin and the Natchez in what is today Mississippi, both of whom were traditional enemies of tribes allied to the French, the French and their allies fought a series of wars which ended in the near extermination of both groups, their members killed, enslaved, or scattered by 1735.  The victories allowed the French to complete their trade network, which in turn allowed them to dominate the interior of the eastern half of North America, at least for a time.

American History - Thirteen Colonies

The colony of Georgia, founded in 1733, was the last of what became known as the Thirteen Colonies, which were grouped together by their decision to jointly oppose British rule some forty-two years later.  Though other British colonies existed along the Atlantic Coast, such as Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, they were only lightly settled in comparison to the larger and more economically dominant Thirteen Colonies.  Between 1700 and 1770, the population of these colonies rose rapidly from 251,000 to 2.1 million, including 500,000 slaves.  While this expansion was somewhat driven by the arrival of some 500,000 immigrants; largely Scot-Irish, English convicts, and Germans; the lion share was due to the higher than normal birth rates and life expectancies compared to their European counterparts.  By 1770, the population of the Thirteen Colonies was 31% that of Britain, including 0.6 million living in the New England colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island), 0.5 million living in the Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania), and 1.0 million living in the Southern Colonies (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia).  

Though theoretically ruled by the British crown, largely via an appointed Royal Governor, in practice the Thirteen Colonies largely governed themselves via assemblies elected by landowners, of which a much higher percentage of the population belonged thanks to an abundance of available land.  Though accounting for some 40% of the economic output of the British Empire, the British government largely took the stance that as long as trade continued unabated, they didn’t really give a flying fuck what their colonies did, an attitude which was largely copied by many of the colonial governments.  As a result, when combined with the lack of an established aristocracy, church, or trade guilds, in general the Thirteen Colonies had a greater sense of egalitarianism and equal opportunity compared to British subjects back home.  In the Thirteen Colonies, one could arrive with little to nothing, and within less than a lifetime move themselves solidly into the middle class, even getting into politics if they so desired. 

The vast majority of the population of the Thirteen Colonies were farmers, with major cities such as Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Charleston being relatively small compared to European standards.  High rates of land ownership meant a much larger percentage of the population was middle class, which led to longer and healthier lives, larger families, and a healthy tax base which was used to fund schools, mostly run by religious organizations.  These schools, focused more on technical subjects rather than the arts, led to the Thirteen Colonies having one of the most literate and well-educated populations in the world, who supported an exceptionally high number of newspapers and pamphlet printers.

The rapid growth of the population, both via immigration and an excessive amount of baby making, led to a constant push into the frontier.  With many of the former native tribes greatly weakened, or in some cases eradicated, by disease and warfare, they saw little reason not to push their way deeper into the interior, claiming new lands and looking for new opportunities.  The lack of support from government officials for these ventures led to the development of a highly individualistic culture focused on small tight-knit communities, which only further enhanced the general sense of equality.  Though an upper class did exist, it was largely geographically centered on the large plantations of the Southern Colonies and the rich merchants of the New England coast. A growing industrial class was also forming in New England, spurred by the lack of available farm land to invest in building mills and sawmills along the areas many rivers and streams.

Given all of the above, it’s no wonder that the Thirteen Colonies increasingly began to feel separate from the British.  With a rapidly growth population, higher levels of prosperity, and even the fastest crossing of the Atlantic taking three weeks, it was inevitable that a new and separate culture would emerge over time.  One which would eventually result in a revolution which would change the course of history for both the new world and the old.