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13 Colonies_ Comparing Regions New England, Middle, and Southern.mp413 Colonies_ Colonial Governments & English Influence.mp413 Colonies Part II_ Settlement of Additional Colonies - U.S. History.mp4
In the following questions, you will learn about the origins of the Middle Colonies. The Middle Colonies made up the middle part of the Thirteen Colonies, which were ruled by England in the 1600s and 1700s. The map below shows the Thirteen Colonies in 1750.
Why are they called the Middle Colonies?
The Middle Colonies get their name from their location. They were all near the middle of the Atlantic coast of North America. The Middle Colonies were also in the middle in other ways:
Environment: The soil in the Middle Colonies was better than the soil in New England, but not as good as the soil in the Southern Colonies.
Economy: The Middle Colonies were similar to the Southern Colonies because growing crops was so important. But the Middle Colonies were also like New England because both regions had many other businesses.
In the 1500s and 1600s, Europeans were interested in the land and resources of the region that became the Middle Colonies. Look at the timeline of the early settlements founded, or established, in the region.
During the 1600s, settlements were founded by a few different countries in the region. But, by the mid-1700s, the Middle Colonies were all claimed by numerous countries.
What was the Netherlands like in the 1600s?
The Netherlands fought a war to become independent of Spanish rule in the late 1500s and early 1600s. After the war, the Netherlands became well known for its trade and economy:
A large number of goods were imported to and exported from Amsterdam, a port city.
Dutch ships and merchants transported enslaved Africans to European colonies in the Americas.
The Dutch East India Company was created in 1602. The company was supported by the Dutch government and organized trade with Asia. Later, the Dutch West India Company was created to organize trade in the Americas.
Many different Native American groups were already living in the region that became the Middle Colonies when Europeans began to form settlements there in the 1600s. Two of the most important groups were the Iroquois Confederacy and Algonquian-speaking peoples. Both of these groups interacted with Dutch traders in present day New York. The table lists some characteristics of the two groups.
The Mohawk were one of the Native American peoples that made up the Iroquois Confederacy. In the passage below, a chief of the Mohawk explains the trade relationship between the Mohawk and the Dutch in 1659.
Why did the Dutch want beavers?
The Dutch made a lot of money from beaver fur. The fur of many types of animals was used to make warm clothing in Europe in the 1600s. But beaver pelts, or furs, were particularly valuable. Beaver furs had two layers. The bottom layer could be turned into felt, a material that was used to line hats.
By 1660, France, England, the Netherlands, and Spain all claimed land in eastern North America, but England claimed the most territory. English leaders believed that they could control trade by claiming more territory than any other country. They wanted to control trade so that England would gain more wealth. Imagine that you are a member of the English government who is interested in controlling trade in North America to benefit England in the 1600s.
Controlling trade by fighting pirates
Another way that the English government tried to control trade was by fighting pirates! Pirates attacked ships and stole their goods. The English government took several actions against pirates in the late 1600s:
passed laws that forbid merchants and lawmakers from helping pirates
put arrested pirates on trial
A famous pirate is executed
Captain William Kidd was one of the most famous pirates to be put on trial. The governor of New York had earlier helped Kidd. But with changes to English law, the New York governor had Kidd arrested and sent to England for trial.
Kidd was convicted and was executed for his crimes. Kidd was placed in irons and his body was left to rot next to the Thames River in London.
Beginning in the mid-1600s, England worked to expand its empire in North America. An empire is a group of places ruled by a central power. So, in 1664, the king of England sent part of the English navy to take over the Dutch colony of New Netherland and create the English colony of New York. Members of the English government stated a number of reasons for wanting to take over New Netherland.
What did the Dutch do when the English came to take New Netherland?
Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam disagreed about how to respond to the arrival of four English warships in 1664. Peter Stuyvesant (STY-vuh-sent), the governor of the colony, wanted to fight back against the English.
But many Dutch colonists did not believe that New Netherland could defend itself. They sent a message to Stuyvesant:
[Fighting back] cannot save the smallest portion of our entire city, our property and (what is dearer to us), our wives and children, from total ruin.
Stuyvesant agreed to the demands of the Dutch colonists and the Dutch did not fight back against the English.
New Netherland became the English colony of New York. New Amsterdam became the city of New York City.
When the Dutch leaders of New Netherland surrendered to the English, the English set out terms, or rules, for the surrender. Read some of these terms.
All people can continue to use their land, homes, and property however they want.
All Dutch people can choose their own religious beliefs.
Diversity in New Netherland
Before the English took over New Netherland, the colony was home to a religiously diverse population. A diverse population is made up of people from many different backgrounds.
Aside from the Dutch, there were Puritans from England, other Christians from Sweden and present-day Germany, and Jews from Portugal. There were also Native Americans and enslaved Africans, some of whom practiced their native religions, and some of whom had become Christians.
The English takeover of New Netherland also affected Native Americans living in present-day New York. The groups that made up the Iroquois Confederacy formed a trade and military alliance with the English. This change had benefits and costs for the Iroquois Confederacy in the 1670s and 1680s.
Was the alliance with the English good or bad for the Iroquois Confederacy?
Historians disagree. Here are some arguments for both positions:
On the one hand, the Iroquois were better able to expand their empire and defeat native rivals such as Algonquian-speaking Native Americans.
On the other hand, the Iroquois were forced into conflicts that they were sometimes unprepared for. For example, the French had a series of victories against the Iroquois. And the Iroquois made many enemies by attacking other native groups.
After the English took over New Netherland, the English king allowed his brother to claim the land as his own private property under English law. This land formed the new colony of New York. In 1664, New Jersey was also founded by wealthy Englishmen who had the support of the English government.
New York Colony and New Jersey Colony: similarities and differences
New York Colony and New Jersey Colony had both been part of New Netherland. They shared a border with each other and with the Atlantic Ocean. They both had good land for farming and easy access to waters good for fishing.
However, one key difference was that New Jersey Colony had few natural harbors. Natural harbors are places where the coast curves inward and creates a protected area for ships to land and stay. Because it did not have many natural harbors, New Jersey Colony never had a major port city like New York City.
In 1680, the English king made William Penn an owner of land between New Jersey and Maryland. Penn named his land Pennsylvania. Two years later, the Duke of York gave Penn land that would later become the colony of Delaware. Penn was a member of the Quakers, a religious group that was persecuted, or treated poorly because of their beliefs, in England. Penn hoped that Quakers would settle in Pennsylvania, but he also wanted to welcome people of many different religions. The table below shows rules about religion in Pennsylvania and in Massachusetts, an English colony in New England.
This event likely occurred in the colony of Pennsylvania:
Members of all Christian groups vote in an election. Voting in an election is a right. The table shows members of different Christian groups had the same rights in Pennsylvania, but not in Massachusetts.
These events likely occurred in the colony of Massachusetts:
A Puritan church is given money from the government. A Puritan church is a religious group. The table shows that the government of the colony of Massachusetts gave tax money to certain religious groups. The government of the colony of Pennsylvania did not support a particular religion or give tax money to religious groups.
Only members of one Christian church are allowed to participate in government. Participating in government is a right. The table shows members of some Christian groups had more rights than others in Massachusetts, not Pennsylvania.
In 1683, William Penn wrote a letter that described the land and government of Pennsylvania. Penn wanted Europeans to move to Pennsylvania. The letter was published in England and in other European countries. Read the passage.
Courts of justice are established in every county, with proper officers, as justices, sheriffs, clerks, constables, etc.; [the] courts are held every two months.
William Penn likely included details about Pennsylvania's government because he wanted Europeans to know that Pennsylvania's government was running smoothly.
How else did Penn try to convince Europeans to move to Pennsylvania?
In his letter, Penn described other positive things about the colony of Pennsylvania:
the natural beauty and clean air
the rich soil that could support growing different kinds of crops
the number of animals, fish, and birds that could be hunted
the kindness and peacefulness of the Native American groups who lived in Pennsylvania
the amount of land available for settlement
The governments of the Middle Colonies changed over the 1600s. Read the summary of one kind of change.
Before the late 1600s, the English government let individual men run colonies themselves. For example, William Penn owned the colony of Pennsylvania.
By 1702, both New Jersey and New York became royal colonies. Royal colonies were controlled directly by the king or queen of England. Pennsylvania remained owned by an individual.
Similarities between colonies owned by individuals and royal colonies
By the 1700s, the English government took a more direct role in running the Thirteen Colonies than they had in the 1600s. But many features of colonial government remained the same when colonies became royal colonies:
Colonists elected a general assembly that wrote laws.
An appointed governor enforced laws.
People in the colonies elected lawmakers to general assemblies in both royal colonies and in colonies owned by individuals. General assemblies wrote the laws that were enforced by the governor. But not everyone could vote in elections for a general assembly. Read the two pieces of information about voting rights in the colonies.
In the 1700s, most British colonies had similar voting laws. Usually, only white men who owned land could vote.
About half of white men living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, could not vote.
Voting rights and land ownership in the Middle Colonies
As in most British colonies, voting rights in the Middle Colonies were almost always connected to owning land or property such as farm animals. Owning land and property was more common in some places than in others:
In newer British settlements with lots of cheap land, up to 9 out of 10 white men could vote.
In older settlements or cities like Philadelphia, most people could not afford to buy land. Sometimes as few as 4 out of 10 white men could vote.
What about other groups of people?
Women, young people, enslaved people, and free people of African heritage were usually not allowed to vote in the British colonies. Historians estimate that only about 2 out of every 10 people living in the Thirteen Colonies could vote.
The Middle Colonies made up four of Great Britain's Thirteen Colonies in North America. New York was established when the English took control of Dutch land. Owners of that colony gave some of their land to two other men, leading to the establishment of New Jersey. William Penn founded Pennsylvania as a place where Quakers and other religious groups could live without fear of persecution. Penn was also granted rights to land that later became the colony of Delaware. Both royal colonies and colonies owned by individuals had elected assemblies that wrote laws. But only royal colonies were controlled directly by the English king or queen.
In the following questions, you will learn about the economy, laborers, and society of the Middle Colonies. The Middle Colonies were New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. They made up the middle part of the Thirteen Colonies. The two maps below give information about the land in the colonies. The first map shows soil fertility, or the quality of the soil. Soil that is more fertile is better for growing crops. The second map shows the length of the growing season.
A good place to settle
Unlike most of New England, the Middle Colonies had excellent farmland. Several features of the environment made the region good for growing crops:
The summers were warm and humid.
The winters were short and mild.
The entire area got a lot of rain.
The climate and growing conditions of the Middle Colonies allowed certain kinds of crops to grow well in the region. Early settlers to the Middle Colonies grew just enough food to survive. But over time, colonists began to grow enough food and other crops that they could sell some of what they grew. As a result, the economy of the Middle Colonies was largely based around growing cash crops, or crops meant to be sold in other places.
A cash crop is meant to be sold to other people. So, wheat would be considered a cash crop in these cases because the wheat is being sold to people:
You sell some of your wheat in New England where a plant disease has made it hard to grow wheat.
You make flour from some of the wheat you harvest. Then you sell the flour to slaveowners in the West Indies.
A crop is not a cash crop if it is not sold. So, wheat would not be considered a cash crop in these cases:
You give some of your wheat to a neighbor who uses the wheat to make bread to eat.
You use the wheat to make flour. You use the flour to make bread that you and your family eat.
Why were the Middle Colonies known as the "breadbasket of the colonies"?
A lot of the wheat that was grown on farms in the Middle Colonies was turned into flour, the main ingredient in most breads. So, the Middle Colonies were nicknamed the "breadbasket of the colonies."
Flour didn't spoil easily, so it could be shipped long distances. In Europe and the West Indies there was increasing demand for wheat and flour:
There was a wheat shortage in Europe.
Sugar plantations in the West Indies left no room to grow food. So, slaveowners wanted inexpensive ways of feeding the enslaved population.
Cash crops from the Middle Colonies were sold all over the world. At the same time, the Middle Colonies received goods from other places. The map below shows how the Middle Colonies participated in world trade. The arrows pointing away from the Middle Colonies show exports, or goods that the Middle Colonies sold to other places. The arrows pointing toward the Middle Colonies show imports, or goods that the Middle Colonies bought from other places.
Who traded goods through ports in the Middle Colonies?
Merchants, or traders, imported and exported goods and enslaved people through ports such as Philadelphia and New York City. A few merchants became extremely wealthy and powerful. Many wealthy merchants used their money to build mansions and buy manufactured goods, such as furniture and china dishes, from England.
The importing and exporting business also included many other types of workers who lived in port cities:
Dockworkers loaded and unloaded goods from ships.
Enslaved people also often worked on the docks to unload ships.
Boarding house and restaurant owners ran businesses that served sailors while their ships were docked.
Harbor pilots steered big ships into and out of their home harbors.
Goods that were imported to or exported from the Middle Colonies often went through the port cities of Philadelphia and New York City. The graph below shows the populations of Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston, an important port city in New England. These three cities were the largest colonial cities from 1730 to 1770.
Colonial America's largest city
Philadelphia was the largest city in America at the time of the Revolutionary War. Many travelers were shocked at the fast growth of the population both in Philadelphia and the colony of Pennsylvania. One visitor to the Thirteen Colonies wrote these words in 1750:
Pennsylvania, which was [no more] than a wilderness in the year 1681, and contained hardly fifteen hundred people, now [competes] with several kingdoms in Europe in the number of inhabitants.
In other words, the visitor reported that Pennsylvania's population was now as big as that of many states in Europe!
Philadelphia: then and now
Today, Philadelphia has more than 50 times the number of people that it had at the end of the colonial period!
Much of the wheat in the Middle Colonies in the 1700s was grown on small family farms.
What was it like to live on a family farm in the Middle Colonies?
All members of the household worked, including children. Often tasks were divided by gender.
Boys usually helped with these tasks:
harvesting crops
clearing land of trees
building structures
Girls usually helped with these tasks:
cooking and cleaning in the home
gardening
milking cows and making butter
Most laborers in the Middle Colonies had their freedom. But there were two types of unfree laborers who were important to the economy of the Middle Colonies. Read about these two groups.
Indentured servants in the Middle Colonies usually came from places in Europe such as Germany or England. They signed a contract to work for landowners or tradesmen for a certain number of years.
Enslaved people were either captured and sold into slavery or born into slavery. Most enslaved people in the Middle Colonies were of African descent, although some Native Americans were also enslaved.
Runaways
It was common for both enslaved people and indentured servants to run away from their masters. In some cases, runaways hoped to escape forever. But in other cases, runaways had goals such as these:
to visit family and friends who lived in other places
to take a break from work
to try to bargain with a master for better work conditions
Masters sometimes placed advertisements in newspapers to offer rewards for the return of escaped indentured servants and enslaved people. Here is an example:
My indented servant . . . has been a wicked servant . . . [He often] . . . works about this city for others, without my [permission . . . in order to] get money and is very often drunk.
Pennsylvania Gazette, July 6, 1738.
Indentured servants in the Middle Colonies did different kinds of work. Read the two quotations from sources from the 1700s about indentured servants.
A German immigrant's description of the lives of indentured servants from Germany
Work mostly consists in cutting wood…clearing large tracts of forest. Such forests, being cleared, are then laid out for fields.…[Indentured servants] learn that stumps of oak trees are in America certainly as hard as in Germany.
Part of contract for a man indentured to a merchant in New York
And [the master]…can teach…the [indentured servant]…the art and mystery of a merchant. And [the master] also shall find and provide…meat, drink and lodging.
The first passage suggests that life as an indentured servant was difficult. The second passage suggests that there were benefits for indentured servants. These included learning a trade or being given land or food and shelter.
Both indentured servants and enslaved people worked in all three regions of the Thirteen Colonies. But the experience of being an indentured servant or enslaved person was different in each location. The passage below is adapted from a historian's description of slavery in the Middle Colonies during the 1700s. Read the passage.
Slavery varied a lot by region. During the mid-1700s, African slaves were a small minority in the Middle Colonies (about 8 percent). . . . Slaves in the Middle Colonies and New England more often lived in urban areas than slaves in the Southern Colonies did.
Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America. Copyright 2001 by Penguin Books.
Enslaved people in the Middle Colonies had hard lives. They had little control over their own labor, and masters could brutally abuse enslaved people. Since enslaved people wrote few written documents about their lives, historians who want to learn about them must rely on other types of evidence. Read about one source that gives historians information about how enslaved people in the Middle Colonies lived.
When enslaved people died in New York City, many of them were buried in a cemetery in Lower Manhattan. The burial ground was discovered in 1991 when a new building was being constructed.
New York City's African Burial Ground
Thousands of enslaved people in New York City were buried in the same cemetery during the colonial era. But for hundreds of years, the cemetery was lost and forgotten.
When the burial ground was rediscovered in 1991, New Yorkers decided to build a monument to honor the people buried there. These words are written on the monument:
For all those who were lost,
For all those who were stolen,
For all those who were left behind,
For all those who were not forgotten.
Where did the free people who lived in the Middle Colonies come from? The two pie charts below compare the national origin, or the places where people came from, of the free populations of Pennsylvania and the colony of Massachusetts in New England.
Why did so many Germans immigrate to Pennsylvania?
Germans had many motivations for immigrating to Pennsylvania:
Frequent wars during the 1700s destroyed many German communities.
Famines, often caused by the wars, left many Germans without food.
Germans could practice their religions freely in Pennsylvania.
There was a growing community of Germans in Pennsylvania.
Look at the list of some of the houses of worship in New York City and Philadelphia in the 1700s.
Isn't that a lot of churches?
Yes! The Middle Colonies' diversity meant that they had more churches per person than any other region. The image below shows New York City in 1771. In colonial cities, church steeples tended to be the tallest buildings.
People in the Middle Colonies had different perspectives on whether the diversity of national origin, race, and religion in the Middle Colonies was positive or negative.
This quotation argues that diversity is positive:
[Philadelphia] has [welcomed many] people which other countries, [to those countries' great loss], have either neglected…or expelled. The author says that Philadelphia has welcomed many people that other countries have expelled, or kicked out. The author states that other countries have suffered a "great loss" by treating their people badly. So, he is glad that people from other countries have come to Philadelphia.
These quotations argue that diversity is negative:
This land is…[a place] for all evil-doers from [many different countries]. The author describes the people from other places who have come to the Middle Colonies as "evil-doers."
Our chiefest unhappiness here is too great a mixture of nations, and [the] English the [smallest number]. The author describes the "mixture of nations" in the Middle Colonies as an "unhappiness."
Many families made money from the farming of cash crops in the Middle Colonies. Some indentured servants could earn the chance to own their land and make money in the future. But other types of laborers, such as enslaved people of African descent, did not have the same opportunity to succeed. The population of the Middle Colonies was diverse when compared with the populations of other regions in the Thirteen Colonies. There were people who came from many different countries and who practiced many different religions. The economy of the Middle Colonies was based around the farming of cash crops such as wheat. Goods from the Middle Colonies were often exported out of the port cities of New York City and Philadelphia.
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