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  • Hi I’m John Green, this is Crash Course U.S. History

  • and today were going to cram 150 years of American history into one video.

  • Why?

  • Well, many American history classes don’t cover the colonial period at all,

  • because most major American history tests have like, one question about it.

  • Mr. Green, Mr. Green,

  • so this isn’t going to be on the test?

  • That’s awesome because I have some flirtatious notes to exchange

  • with Jessica Alvarez.

  • Yeah, Me from the Past.

  • So listen, would you rather do well on one test or lead a richer,

  • more productive life as a result of having a better understanding

  • of the complicated factors that led to the creation of

  • the greatest nation in history?

  • Stan, can I get a Libertage?

  • [Yes. Here is your Libertage]

  • So listen up, Me from the Past. It’s time to bask in our own greatness.

  • And by greatness, I mean morally dubious dominance over people

  • who would have been just fine without us.

  • [BEST]

  • [intro music]

  • [intro music]

  • [intro music]

  • [intro music]

  • [intro music]

  • [EVAR!]

  • So contrary to popular mythology,

  • Colonial America was more than just Jamestown and Massachusetts.

  • There was, for instance, New Amsterdam. [why they'll change it, I can't say…]

  • The tale goes the Dutch traders bought the island of Manhattan

  • from Lenape Indians for $24 in 1624.

  • That isn’t quite true, but it contains a truth. [classic History Channel Conundrum]

  • The Dutch traders who founded their colony were businessmen,

  • and New Amsterdam was above everything else a commercial venture.

  • This is still true in New York actually. [concrete jungle where dreams are made of]

  • I mean, Manhattan is all about Wall Street.

  • In fact, Crash Course writer and history teacher Raoul Meyer is believed to be

  • the last person living on the island of Manhattan

  • who does not work for an investment bank. [unless lying to look hip & dissenting]

  • So,

  • the Dutch let anyone into New Amsterdam who could help them turn a profit,

  • including Jews and even Quakers, [gasp! clutch the pearls]

  • but they didn’t like Indians very much, in fact they drove them out of the colony.

  • But anyway,

  • the $24 that Lenape supposedly got for New England was $24 more

  • than the Dutch got when the English took over the colony in 1664 by sailing

  • four frigates into the harbor and asking for the colony in a threatening voice.

  • So New Amsterdam became New York, which was a mixed blessing.

  • [and the future home of Carnegie Hall]

  • The population doubled in the decade after the English takeover,

  • but English rule meant less economic freedom for women,

  • who under the Dutch were able to inherit property

  • and conduct business for themselves, [just like big girls]

  • And under the English, free black people lost a lot

  • of the jobs they had been able to hold under the Dutch.

  • Things were better in Pennsylvania, so much so that it was known as the

  • best poor man’s country,”

  • which admittedly in the 17th century was a low bar to jump over.

  • Given by Charles II to this guy, William Penn in 1681,

  • Pennsylvania was a huge tract of land roundabout here.

  • The land included contemporary Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey,

  • but weve made an editorial decision not to talk about New Jersey

  • here on Crash Course due to my longstanding anti-New Jersey bias.

  • [not clear if that extends to The Boss]

  • So, Penn wanted his colony to be a haven for Quakers,

  • because he was a Quaker, [not to be confused with the Shakers]

  • as you know if youve ever seen a container of Quaker Oats.

  • [that's NOT Wilfred Brimley? oh]

  • Quakers were a pretty tolerant bunch, [not looking at you, Mr. R.M. Nixon]

  • except when it came to slavery, which they opposed vehemently.

  • And under Penn’s leadership, the colony showed remarkable religious toleration

  • and also an amazing respect for Indian communities, but then,

  • after Penn was gone, yeah, the usual.

  • In 1737, Pennsylvania colonists perpetrated one of the

  • most famous frauds of colonial America, the Walking Purchase.

  • Indians agreed to cede a tract of land

  • bounded by the distance a man could walk in 36 hours,

  • but the clever governor James Logan hired a bunch of fast runners

  • who marked out territory much larger than the Indians anticipated.

  • Quakers had to resort to such tricks because they were pacifists.

  • [but not above being real jerkity jerks]

  • I should also mention that they weren’t particularly fond of loose living.

  • The government prevented swearing and drunkenness, for instance,

  • but, you know, it was still pretty great compared to the other colonies.

  • More than half of the male population was eligible to vote,

  • and Pennsylvania’s dual promise of religious freedom and cheap land

  • attracted a lot of German immigrants

  • well I should say German-speaking immigrants.

  • There was, of course, not a Germany at the time

  • as many viewers of Crash Course World History pointed out to me.

  • And now let us venture South, where we will find many mosquito-borne illnesses

  • and somewhat less abolitionist sentiment.

  • In 1663, English king Charles II gave eight proprietors the right to

  • set up a colony just north of the Spanish- controlled Florida to serve as a buffer.

  • This became South Carolina, and its original settlers came from

  • the sugar colony of Barbados, [hello Witch of Blackbird Pond nostalgia]

  • which helps to explain why they were so AWESOME... at slavery.

  • They tried to enslave the Indians and ship them to the Caribbean,

  • but when that didn’t work out, they began to import African slaves.

  • Were going to talk a lot more about slavery in future episodes,

  • but for now just bear in mind: It sucked.

  • [CU N Comments L8TR H8TRS]

  • Okay, so in the last quarter of the

  • 17th century, the British colonies in the Americas experienced a series of crises.

  • Oh, it’s time for the Mystery Document?

  • The rules here are simple. I guess the author of the document,

  • I get it right, no shock. I get it wrong, shock. [not a simulation]

  • Okay.

  • we accuse Sir William Berkely as guilty of each an every one of the same, and as

  • one who hath traitorously attempted, violated and Injured his Majesties

  • interest here, by a loss of a greate part of his Colony and many of his faithfull

  • loyal subjects, by him betrayed and in a barbarous and shamefull manner expoased to

  • the Incursions and murther of the heathen, and we doe further declare these ensueing

  • persons in this list, to have been his wicked and pernicious councellours.

  • Both wicked and pernicious.

  • Both wicked and pernicious. Those are some terrible counselors.

  • Okay, so this guy clearly hated William Berkley,

  • who I happen to know was governor of Virginia.

  • Particularly upset about the colonists being incurred upon and murthered

  • by the heathen, that is the Native Americans.

  • Uh, I mean I have a guess, but I’m not brimming with confidence.

  • Uh, the one person I know who hated William Berkley was Nathaniel Bacon?

  • YES! YES! YES!

  • No shock for me and no pleasure for you, you schadenfreudic Crash Course viewers.

  • So, Nathaniel Bacon arrived in Virginia in 1673 and led an armed uprising against

  • Governor Berkeley just three years later.

  • And just to be clear, he was mad, not because Berkeley did a poor job

  • protecting colonists from Indians,

  • but because Berkeley wouldn’t allow them to kill more Indians and take more land.

  • Berkeley had already given the really good land to his cronies, those aforementioned

  • wicked and pernicious councellours,” [never out of fashion, your nepotism]

  • leaving men like Bacon with a serious beef.

  • I hate myself. [justly]

  • Before the rebellion was quelled by the arrival of English warships,

  • Bacon burned Jamestown and made himself ruler of Virginia

  • and looted Berkeley’s supportersland.

  • Twentythree of the rebels were hanged, but not Bacon,

  • who died shortly after taking control from, you guessed it, dysentery.

  • [effyeah Oregon Trail'rs!]

  • Dang it Dysentery it’s called HIS-STORY not DYSENTERYS-STORY.

  • [pulled a muscle there, did you not?]

  • Bacon’s Rebellion is sometimes portrayed as an early example of

  • lower class artisans and would-be farmers rising up against

  • the corrupt, British elite, which I guess, kind of, but

  • the biggest effects of the rebellion were

  • 1. A shift away from indentured servants to slaves,

  • and 2. A general desire by the English crown to control the colonies more.

  • Okay so in 1686, King James II really tried to put the hammer down

  • by consolidating Connecticut, Plymouth, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,

  • Rhode Island, New York, and East and West Jersey into one big mega-colony

  • called the Dominion of New England.

  • Its near dictatorial control of former New York Governor Edmund Andros

  • who proceeded to appoint his own officials and lay his own taxes

  • without even consulting any of the elected assemblies.

  • [hello there, present-day Michiganders]

  • Luckily, or unluckily depending on your perspective,

  • a major event in British history reversed this policy:

  • the Glorious Revolution.

  • Now, thankfully this isn’t Crash Course British history

  • or it would quickly turn into Crash Course: John-is-bored-history,

  • but the upshot is that Britain got a fancy, new royal family from Holland,

  • which sparked uprisings in the colonies, and Andros was thrown into a Boston jail

  • as the colonies reasserted their independence.

  • And these new guys imposed the English Toleration Act of 1690,

  • which decreed that all Protestants could worship freely.

  • As toleration acts go, this one wasn’t that tolerant,

  • I mean, it still discriminated against Jews,

  • but it did mark the end of the Puritan experiment.

  • No longer would membership in a Congregationalist church be

  • a requirement for voting in General Court elections

  • property ownership would now be the determining factor.

  • And Massachusetts would now have a governor from England,

  • not from a company board residing inside the colony itself.

  • This was the context for one of the most talked about events in colonial history,

  • the Salem Witch trials.

  • A lot of ink has been expended on this incident,

  • and the interpretations of it are numerous and controversial,

  • so I’m just going to point out that when the witch trials,

  • which claimed the lives of 14 of the nearly 150 women (and men)

  • accused of witchcraft, happened in 1691,

  • New England as a colony had basically just failed in its religious mission.

  • The Tolerance Act meant that people

  • in Massachusetts would have to accept even Quakers as virtual equals.

  • QUAKERS.

  • So it’s not surprising that colonists would look for scapegoats,

  • or that their male leaders would seek to reassert their gender dominance.

  • Okay, to talk about colonial American economics,

  • let’s go to the Thought Bubble.

  • Most colonists were farmers or worked on farms, and they were mostly small,

  • unlike the giant plantations that predominated in the Caribbean.

  • Since New England contains relatively little in the way of tropical diseases

  • and was increasingly free of Native Americans,

  • the colonial population there skyrocketed--

  • so fast that families began to run out of land,

  • so second and third sons increasingly had to go make their way

  • in growing coastal cities.

  • Well talk about this more in future episodes, but for now

  • let’s just note the idea

  • of a person owning a small farm and the idea offreedom

  • are pretty closely intertwined in the early part of American history

  • it’s more an amber waves of grain place than a “behold this metropolisplace.

  • In fact, they were richer than any other colonial elites.

  • Were they rich enough to dominate the Constitutional Convention?

  • Time will tell.

  • Now not everyone was a farmer, or a slave.

  • There were growing numbers of artisans in the colonies.

  • Although British colonial policy discouraged local manufacturing,

  • the growing population in America meant that there was certain to

  • be a market for locally produced goods, especially clothing and metalwork.

  • Remember, one of the heroes of the American Revolution,

  • Paul Revere, was a silversmith. [remember that West Wing episode?]

  • Thanks, Thought Bubble.

  • So that variety of jobs leads us nicely to our last topic today, Colonial society.

  • Although Americans like to think of themselves as classless (pun intended),

  • that’s not really the case.

  • I mean, the colonies definitely had an elite ruling class,

  • especially in the south,

  • that did what it could to perpetuate itself.

  • Since George Washington’s father and grandfather

  • were both justices of the peace, an important role in colonial times,

  • meaning that George Washington had deeply elite roots.

  • [in addition to wide hips]

  • So, that was the top of colonial society.

  • And, at the bottom was a growing number of poor people.

  • While it’s never good to be poor,

  • it was much better to be poor in the colonies than it was in England

  • or much of the rest of Europe,

  • which is why people kept indenturing themselves to get here.

  • America had lots of food

  • and there was the possibility of maybe someday getting some land

  • provided you didn’t die of dysentery.

  • Oh, and also provided you weren’t a woman. [wah wah waaaaaaah]

  • Married women in 18th century colonial America generally couldn’t own property,

  • and husbands usually willed their land to their sons

  • and their personal items to their daughters,

  • meaning that almost all landowners were male.

  • In the earliest days of colonization,

  • when everyone was needed to ensure the survival of the colonies,

  • women had a greater role in the economy,

  • although they were still expected to be wives and mothers above all else.

  • [natch]

  • Male dominance was written into law and solidified in practice.

  • Women’s work was mostly confined to the home and,

  • especially for lower class women, it involved a lot of drudgery.

  • One woman Mary Cooper, wrote in her diary in 1769,

  • “I am dirty and distressed, almost wearied to death

  • This day is forty years since I left my father’s house and come here,

  • and here have I seen little else but hard labor and sorrow.”

  • Aaand that’s actually a good place to end because it reminds us

  • that history is about much more than the lives of Kings like James II

  • and rebels like Nathaniel Bacon.

  • And while history classes, and exams, tend to focus on those kinds of men

  • (and they were mostly men),

  • the real story of history is about regular people

  • trying to take care of their families and not die.

  • The colonial era often gets skipped for its lack of large scale drama,

  • but those small scale dramas can be found in abundance.

  • [An Abundance of Small Scale Dramas, kind of a catchy title there]

  • Next week, well go back to all that great men and dramatic events crap

  • when we start talking about the American Revolution.

  • I’ll see you then. Thanks for watching.

  • Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller.

  • Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko.

  • The associate producer is Danica Johnson.

  • The show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer,

  • and myself.

  • And our graphics team is Thought Bubble.

  • Last week’s phrase of the week--

  • oh wait, we don’t do phrase of the week anymore.

  • [i know, but it's for the best, pals]

  • If you have questions about today’s video, you can ask them in comments

  • where they will be answered by our team of [not] crack [cocaine] historians.

  • Thanks for watching Crash Course, and

  • as PRESIDENT OBAMA RECENTLY PARAPHRASED TO JOHN FROM THE FREAKING WHITE HOUSE,

  • Don’t Forget To Be Awesome.

  • Crash Course! Everything is fine

  • [outro]

Hi I’m John Green, this is Crash Course U.S. History

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