AP U.S. History 2.8: Comparison in Period 2

Europeans colonized North America in different patterns, shaped by their imperial goals, cultures and environments. Each empire's goals for land and labor shaped its colonies and its relations with American Indians.

Spain sought to extract wealth from the land. Its institutions subjugated native peoples, worked to convert them to Christianity, and incorporated them, along with enslaved and free Africans, into Spanish colonial society.

France and the Dutch Republic sent relatively few colonists. They relied on trade alliances and intermarriage with American Indians to acquire furs and other goods for Europe. French missionaries also sought converts, but the colonies' business was furs. France's 1603 charter commissioned the Sieur de Monts "to people and inhabit the lands, shores, and countries of Acadia," and paid for the venture with a ten-year monopoly on "trading or bartering in skins, and other things with the savages" (the charter's word for Native peoples). The Dutch West India Company's charter of 1621 let it "make contracts, engagements and alliances with the princes and natives" of the lands it reached.

England sent comparatively large numbers of men and women, along with other Europeans, who sought social mobility, prosperity, religious freedom and better living conditions. They farmed land taken from Native Americans and lived apart from them.

Sources: Charter of Acadia, 1603 (Avalon Project); Charter of the Dutch West India Company, 1621 (Avalon Project). The Spanish pattern is described from the AP course framework.

British colonies along the Atlantic coast also differed by environment, economy, culture and population.

• New England, first settled by Puritans, grew around small towns and family farms, with a mixed economy of farming and commerce.
• The middle colonies exported grain and drew migrants from across Europe, which made them more diverse and tolerant.
• The Chesapeake grew rich exporting tobacco, worked first by mostly male indentured servants and later by enslaved Africans.
• The southern Atlantic coast and the British West Indies used long growing seasons for plantations of cash crops worked by enslaved Africans, who were often the majority there.

Slavery followed the same regional lines. Every British colony took part in the Atlantic slave trade, but small New England farms used relatively few enslaved laborers, port cities held significant minorities of enslaved people, the Chesapeake and southern plantations held large numbers, and the great majority of enslaved Africans were sent to the West Indies. Other European empires took part in the Atlantic slave trade too, but their systems differed. Spain incorporated enslaved and free Africans into its colonial society. In many southern English colonies, as chattel slavery became the main labor system, new laws built a strict racial system: they banned interracial relationships and made the children of enslaved African American mothers enslaved for life.

The regions and the slavery comparison are described from the AP course framework.

European rivals and American Indians competed for the same resources. That competition encouraged industry and trade, and it led to conflict across the Americas. Georgia's charter of 1732 justified the new colony partly by South Carolina's danger: its "whole southern frontier continueth unsettled, and lieth open to the said savages" (spelling as printed; "savages" is the charter's word for American Indians). That is the crown's account, written to justify a new colony: it names the danger and says nothing of why the Native nations fought.

The British colonies also took part in political, social, cultural and economic exchanges with Great Britain. Trade, religion, philosophy and politics crossed the Atlantic, and colonists' attitudes changed as they became more tied to Britain and to one another.

Those exchanges pulled two ways. They built stronger bonds: Pennsylvania's Assembly claimed its powers "according to the Rights of the free-born Subjects of England." They also encouraged resistance to Britain's control, because colonists who claimed English rights expected to use them. In 1725 the crown settled quarrels in Massachusetts over the House's Speaker in the royal governor's favor.

Sources: Charter of Georgia, 1732 (Avalon Project); Charter of Privileges, 1701 (Avalon Project); Explanatory Charter of Massachusetts Bay, 1725 (Avalon Project).

A comparison is an argument, and an argument needs evidence. The course asks for two moves: describe a specific example of historically relevant evidence, such as a named document, law, person or event with its date, and then explain how that example supports the argument, which makes it relevant.

Take the claim that French and Dutch colonies depended more on American Indian trading partners than English colonies did.

• Too general: The French and Dutch were traders. No example is named.
• Specific but not explained: In 1626 a Dutch ship brought 7246 beaver skins to Amsterdam. True, but the reader is left to guess why it matters.
• Specific and explained: In 1626 a single ship from New Netherland carried thousands of beaver and otter skins, furs the Dutch acquired through trade with American Indians, while English colonists such as Georgia's were sent to make a living on the land.

Also ask what kind of source you are using. A charter records what its authors intended; a ship's cargo or a protest records something that was happening. Evidence of a plan is not evidence of a result.