and today we’re 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 we’ve 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 you’ve 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.

We’re 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 supporters’ land.

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.

We’ll 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 of “freedom”

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

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

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.