Bitchy History - May 25, 2023


Episode 4： American History 101 - The Colonization of North America


Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

185.07

Word count

2,962

Sentence count

140

Harmful content

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

11

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.120 Welcome to Bitchy History, the American History podcast whose host is going to lose it if she hears the lost colony of Roanoke mentioned even one more time on one of those spooky, unsolved mysteries of history TikTok accounts. 0.72
00:00:18.860 Welcome back to yet another episode of Bitchy History.
00:00:21.620 You all have no idea how amazing it is that I have managed to keep this show on the rails and consistently on schedule. 0.86
00:00:27.140 It definitely helps that I decided to wait until the spring semester was over to get it started
00:00:31.180 I have ADHD and keeping myself on a totally self-imposed schedule is a nightmare usually 0.99
00:00:36.580 So on Monday we focused mostly on the Spanish colonization of the New World
00:00:41.160 Which mostly focused on the Caribbean and the South and Central American areas
00:00:44.980 I'm the first to admit that I could probably spend a dozen episodes on that history easily
00:00:49.520 But let's remember that the episodes for this show are largely based on my intro to American history course
00:00:54.720 in which I have 16 weeks to cover everything from the first native migration to the new world
00:00:59.760 to post 9-11 America. So I tend to skim some of the areas in order to get to the American part
00:01:06.200 of American history. Since this show does not have a 16-week limit on it, I do get to expand
00:01:11.940 on my usual lectures a bit, but I'm also not being paid by anyone. So I get to choose which
00:01:16.560 parts I expand on, which means that today we're shifting northward, the colonization of what is
00:01:21.500 now New England, to be specific. Spain focused their colonization attempts further south, leaving
00:01:27.000 the other three major players of the New World colonization to duke it out over the North American
00:01:31.260 continent. Those three would be France, the Netherlands, and England. We'll be discussing
00:01:35.500 all three today, starting with their reasons for colonization, how they practiced colonization,
00:01:39.960 and the impact it had on North American society. The interplay between French, Dutch, and English
00:01:44.460 cultures are at the core of some of the major tension points in American history, after all.
00:01:49.020 We'll be talking about English colonialism last, because it's going to take more than a single episode,
00:01:53.060 so you get a cliffhanger today. Yay!
00:01:55.500 So between France and the Netherlands, let's slip a coin.
00:02:01.820 And it looks like France wins.
00:02:03.640 Let's break out a croissant, or some wine, I'm not judging.
00:02:06.360 This episode comes out at 8 a.m. Eastern, but that does not mean that's when you're listening to it.
00:02:10.740 And now, let's talk about French colonialism in the New World.
00:02:14.560 In later years, the French would also begin sending Catholic missionaries to convert the natives.
00:02:18.580 but the initial reasons for colonizing the New World were primarily economic.
00:02:23.020 The French built several large settlements throughout what is now Canada and the American Northeast.
00:02:27.660 These settlements were tied together loosely by trading posts and forts that controlled waterways.
00:02:32.260 Compared to the Spanish and English, the French had a fairly low population, with far fewer women and children.
00:02:37.440 Many French fur traders would end up marrying Native women and living among Native tribes,
00:02:41.960 relying on the experience and skills of Natives to increase their profits.
00:02:45.100 This meant they tended to maintain slightly better relations with the natives, which means that we have a lot of ethnographic writings about the natives of this period from the perspectives of the French.
00:02:55.400 One day I may do an episode on that, but I'll save it for another day.
00:02:59.040 Maybe closer to Halloween.
00:03:01.020 And with that cryptic remark, let's move on.
00:03:03.900 French Canada and French Louisiana each had their own royal governor who oversaw the laws and land grants in their territory.
00:03:09.420 This was necessary to enforce some of the restrictions on immigration to French colonial areas.
00:03:14.300 areas, namely that only French Catholics were able to settle. French Protestants would end up
00:03:19.000 settling in English-controlled areas instead, which is a detail you should make note of because
00:03:23.300 this whole Catholic versus Protestant segregation thing is going to play a major role down the line
00:03:28.200 in, say, the 1770s or so. However, even with the royal governors in place, much of the government
00:03:35.480 of the French colonies was run by economic interests. For nearly 200 years, the Hudson
00:03:40.540 Bay Company would serve as the de facto government of the French territories. The company was started
00:03:45.260 by two Frenchmen who wanted to exploit the rich fur country of the Hudson Bay region, with 56
00:03:50.720 trading posts stretching across modern-day Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. And speaking of Hudson Bay,
00:03:56.960 let's talk a bit about the man it's named for, Henry Hudson. Hudson worked for both the British
00:04:01.560 and the Dutch during his time as an explorer of the New World. He was best known for his exploration
00:04:06.120 of present-day Canada and northeastern United States, where his name can be found in Hudson
00:04:10.620 Bay, the Hudson River, and at least one international clothing outlet, which started out as the
00:04:15.760 oldest incorporated joint stock company in the English-speaking world, the Hudson Bay Company.
00:04:21.080 In 1607 and 1608, Hudson made two attempts on behalf of English merchants to find the
00:04:26.160 rumored northeast passage to Cathay via a route above the Arctic Circle. He failed. In 1609,
00:04:32.420 he landed in North America on behalf of the Dutch East India Company and explored the region around
00:04:36.960 the modern-day New York metropolitan area. His explorations would lay the foundations for the
00:04:42.080 later Dutch colonization of the New World. Though his name is pretty well remembered, his death is
00:04:47.040 less well known, mostly because we actually don't know when he died, but we can make a pretty good
00:04:52.020 guess. On his final expedition in 1611, after wintering on the shores of James Bay, Hudson
00:04:57.680 wanted to press on west, but most of his crew was not having it. They were cold, they were hungry,
00:05:02.740 and they wanted to go home. When Hudson didn't agree to this, they mutinied. The mutineers cast
00:05:07.940 Hudson, his son, and seven other members of the crew adrift. Hudson and the rest of this group
00:05:13.920 were never seen again. Now, that doesn't mean that his son and the other men definitely died
00:05:18.460 in 1611. There were plenty of native tribes in the area where they might have found shelter,
00:05:23.180 but they never made it back to Europe, and we've never found any record of them, so it's more than
00:05:27.220 likely they died soon after. Dick moved by his crew, but honestly, we've all had to quiet quit
00:05:32.900 a toxic work environment a time or two in our lives, right? Anyway, since the final voyage of
00:05:38.160 Hudson's career was for the Dutch, it seems like a good time to talk about the Dutch colonization
00:05:42.280 of the New World. The Dutch reached unification when they successfully won independence from Spain
00:05:47.340 in 1581 during the Dutch Revolt. What were they revolting against exactly? Well...
00:05:57.220 Sorry, I couldn't resist.
00:06:01.220 Anyway, once they had kicked the Monty Python skit out and they were independent,
00:06:05.040 they put their foot on the gas to join the international maritime trade that was going on at the time.
00:06:10.160 Inexplicably, they somehow managed to overtake the spice trade from Portugal,
00:06:13.720 despite some really, truly horrific false starts,
00:06:16.660 which I might one day make an episode on,
00:06:18.500 because honestly, the history of the Dutch East India Company is extremely wild.
00:06:22.580 With a strong hold on Asian trade,
00:06:24.540 the Dutch could have just ignored the Western New World totally if they'd really wanted to,
00:06:28.920 but instead they formed the Dutch West India Company and decided to diversify their holdings.
00:06:34.180 Unlike Catholic Spain and France, the Calvinist Dutch had little to no interest in religious
00:06:38.660 conversion as part of their colonization. The wish to colonize was based on profit and finding 0.91
00:06:43.320 an outlet for an ever-growing population. In the early 17th century, the Dutch established a
00:06:48.500 settlement at the southern tip of modern-day Manhattan Island that would serve as the seat
00:06:52.220 of their colonial government in New Netherland, and they named it New Amsterdam. And if you've
00:06:56.920 ever listened to They Might Be Giants, you know exactly how that story goes.
00:07:01.060 Even Old New York was once New Amsterdam.
00:07:05.620 And while They Might Be Giants might not be able to tell you why Old New York was once New
00:07:10.280 Amsterdam, I certainly can and will. But first, let's talk about Dutch colonization itself.
00:07:16.660 The Dutch established something called the Patroon System, in which the Dutch West India
00:07:20.300 Company offered the title of patron and a large estate to anyone who would bring 50 adults to
00:07:26.240 settle them as tenants on their land. The Dutch colonization of the New World would never grow 0.93
00:07:30.740 to the size of the English or even the French. By 1655, the population of New Netherland had
00:07:35.660 grown to about 2,000 people, with about 1,500 of those living in New Amsterdam. By 1664,
00:07:41.800 the population of New Netherland had risen to almost 9,000 people, 7,500 of whom lived in New
00:07:47.300 Amsterdam. 1,000 of them lived near Fort Orange and the remainder in other small towns and villages.
00:07:53.000 Despite being a small and short-lived colonial attempt, the Dutch left cultural reminders all
00:07:57.600 over American culture. Everything from sports like bowling and ice skating to presidents like
00:08:02.580 Van Buren and Roosevelt. And in New York, names like Brooklyn and Yonkers and the Bowery all come
00:08:08.000 from Dutch words. Yonkers in particular has a very interesting Dutch history. The name originates
00:08:13.620 with a Dutch honorific, which a Dutch lawyer and landowner named Adrian Vanderdonk used.
00:08:18.880 Vanderdonk was a particularly active part of New Amsterdam's culture, making an effort to explore
00:08:23.800 the New World and write detailed accounts of the land, vegetation, animals, topography, and climate.
00:08:29.440 His writing, including one pamphlet titled A Description of New Netherland, became a promotional
00:08:33.800 tool to encourage immigration to the colony. During his explorations, he also made an effort
00:08:38.560 to learn the language and culture of the native tribes in the area, which made him an invaluable
00:08:43.040 translator and mediator when inevitable conflicts arose between the Dutch West India Company and the
00:08:48.320 local tribes. It was because of this aid to the company that he would receive a land grant of
00:08:53.240 24,000 acres on the mainland just north of Manhattan, which is now present-day Yonkers.
00:08:59.180 But aside from being the namesake of this particular area of New York State,
00:09:03.420 Vanderdonk was significant to American history in another way. The New Netherlands colony was
00:09:08.220 owned and operated by a private business, not a government, and as such the rights of the people
00:09:12.960 in the colony were kind of limited. Van der Donk was one of the first activists for a Republican
00:09:17.800 form of government in the trading post. His advocacy for democratic rule in New Amsterdam
00:09:22.180 would eventually lead to the granting of city rights to New Amsterdam in 1653,
00:09:27.120 the first declaration of rights and liberty on American soil.
00:09:31.280 The Dutch colony of New Netherlands didn't last that long in the grand scheme of things. By 1664,
00:09:36.880 it was under English control. I could go into the hows and whys of that, but this is an American
00:09:41.420 history podcast, not the history of the Anglo-Dutch wars. Suffice to say that the English and the
00:09:46.460 Dutch had beef, that beef ended with the Treaty of Breda, and England kept New York in exchange
00:09:51.840 for giving up Suriname in South America and the island of Run in the East Indies to the Dutch.
00:09:56.920 As a side note, one of the Dutch politicians involved in the Treaty of Breda was later lynched
00:10:01.620 and eaten by an angry mob of Dutch rioters. Yes, I said eaten, as in cannibalism. But this was like
00:10:09.020 five years later and probably completely unrelated to the Treaty of Breda. I just thought that this
00:10:14.560 was important information you needed to know about the Dutch. Now that I've completely scared you off 0.98
00:10:19.240 of touring Amsterdam, actually the cannibalism occurred in The Hague. Amsterdam is cannibal
00:10:23.860 history free as far as I know. Anyway, let's segue into the English colonization of the New World.
00:10:30.360 Honestly, English colonization is basically all we're going to be talking about next week
00:10:34.740 at all. I apologize, but that is just the way American history goes. So it's the 1580s. You're
00:10:41.380 Queen Elizabeth, and you've been ruling for around 20 years now, and you're kind of getting the hang
00:10:47.020 of this whole ruling thing. You've solidified the Church of England, you've ended some very tense
00:10:52.180 religious conflicts, and you are ready to join in on gobbling up as much of the undeveloped New 0.88
00:10:57.180 World as all the other European countries around you. There's a whole host of reasons why England 0.95
00:11:02.420 is interested in the New World. Like the Dutch, they want to find a new passage to the East Indies 1.00
00:11:06.720 and they keep hoping they're going to find that Northeast passage. Hint, they will not. They want 1.00
00:11:12.020 resources, they want land, and a few people just want to get the heck out of England because no one 1.00
00:11:16.420 likes their stupid Puritan separatist religion anymore and they figure that the New World will 0.99
00:11:21.440 be a nice place to start fresh. But we'll talk more about the Pilgrims next Thursday. Because they 1.00
00:11:27.260 operated very differently, we can divide the colonies in New England into the southern and
00:11:32.040 northern colonies. Southern colonies were primarily built to make a profit. Joint stock companies with
00:11:37.440 investors would put money in to start the colony with the promise that it would turn a profit.
00:11:42.160 Sometimes this succeeded, sometimes it failed very badly. Northern colonies generally also had
00:11:47.580 joint stock companies that expected profit, but that was only a means to an end for the more
00:11:51.740 family-focused Puritan colonists that tended to settle in the north. The southern colonies started
00:11:56.920 with the establishment of the first permanent English settlement in North America, Roanoke,
00:12:01.820 in 1585, which did not disappear through any creepy supernatural means. I mean it, it didn't.
00:12:08.060 Please stop listening to Coast to Coast on AM radio. Roanoke Colony was founded by Governor
00:12:13.580 Ralph Lane in 1585 on Roanoke Island in what is now Dare County, North Carolina. Starting out,
00:12:19.820 they didn't have enough supplies, and they didn't get along with their neighbors very well,
00:12:24.040 which is going to become a repeated theme for English colonies in America.
00:12:27.840 Let me tell you that right now.
00:12:29.800 The 1585 colony failed, and Lane abandoned it, returning to England.
00:12:34.400 This didn't make the owner of the colony, Sir Walter Raleigh, very happy,
00:12:38.100 so they tried again in 1587.
00:12:40.400 This new colony was governed by John White.
00:12:43.340 White leaves on a supply run back to England,
00:12:45.520 but his return is delayed, and he doesn't get back until 1590,
00:12:49.200 by which time the colonists probably had decided
00:12:51.400 that he hadn't just run to the store for a pack of smokes and had come to believe that he wasn't
00:12:55.180 coming back at all. Three years is a long time to take getting groceries. Which leads us to why
00:13:01.040 it's very, very dumb to think that the disappearance of these colonists is at all 0.84
00:13:05.480 mysterious. When White finally did get back to Roanoke, he found an abandoned settlement.
00:13:11.060 The only message was the word Croatoan carved in the wooden palisade. White assumed that this
00:13:16.500 referred to the Croatoan tribe, which lived on Hatteras Island, about 65 miles-ish south of
00:13:22.140 Roanoke. White planned to go check on them, but bad weather prevented him, and he returned to
00:13:26.780 England. So it's true that we don't know exactly what happened to the colonists. I suppose that
00:13:32.500 is a mystery, but they didn't vanish into a sinkhole or get abducted by aliens. They moved,
00:13:38.300 probably due to bad weather, poor crops, disease, or any other number of hardships that could occur
00:13:43.020 with a brand new settlement investigations by colonists at jamestown nearly 20 years later
00:13:48.080 produced reports of stories of people with european features in native american villages
00:13:52.360 and john lawson an english explorer and naturalist wrote a century later in his 1709 work a new
00:13:58.460 voyage to carolina that he met croatoans living on hatteras island who claimed to be descendants
00:14:03.500 from white settlers which would seem to indicate that the colonists whether by force or by choice
00:14:09.120 had, well, gone native, quite literally, assimilated into the local tribes in order to
00:14:15.100 survive. So yes, the colony was lost, but the explanation for it is hardly as mysterious as
00:14:20.720 popular culture has tried to make it seem. I'm looking at you, American Horror Story and
00:14:25.380 Supernatural. It's enough of a tragedy that John White would never know what became of his daughter
00:14:30.140 Eleanor or granddaughter, the famous Virginia Dare, without adding some spooky element to the
00:14:34.940 entire debacle. The next permanent settlement by the English in the South would also be a bit of a 0.80
00:14:40.360 debacle, Jamestown in 1607, but we'll get into that on Monday. Once again, thanks for showing
00:14:46.860 up to listen to me bitch about history. Come back on Monday, where we will be exploring the history
00:14:50.960 of Jamestown and diving into the story of Pocahontas, because she deserves so much better
00:14:55.620 than the treatment Disney gave her, especially that second movie. What the actual fuck was that, 0.99
00:15:00.320 Disney. Please share this podcast if you're enjoying it and join the podcast discord. Follow 0.99
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00:15:14.720 Spotify and pay a small monthly subscription to help me keep paying my bills if you really enjoy
00:15:19.680 my content. No pressure, but I do have student loans and car payments to make.
00:15:30.320 Thank you.