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US History timeline & concept chart: 16th-18th centuries (to 1754) British-American colonies: Difference between revisions
US History timeline & concept chart: 16th-18th centuries (to 1754) British-American colonies (view source)
Revision as of 16:11, 12 August 2023
, 12 August 2023→Southern colonial economies & demographics
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click EXPAND to read an analysis of Virginia social makeup under Berkeley's leadership: | click EXPAND to read an analysis of Virginia social makeup under Berkeley's leadership: | ||
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<pre> The society that bloomed in the Virginia tidewater during Berkeley’s decades in office reflected the social order, regional characteristics, and ecclesiastical convictions of the people who came. In fact, it reflected Sir William’s own view of the world and of the people who inhabited it. Though the Puritans hardly believed in a free society as we recognize it today, they were from the middling sort of society—craftsmen, tradesmen, and gentry—from a part of England with a tradition of local participatory government. The md women who immigrated to Virginia during the 1640s-60s came from opposite ends of the economic and social spectrum. | |||
From its first flourishing under Berkeley’s dynamic leadership to the end of its colonial existence in 1776, Virginia society was a culture of a sharp division between the haves and have-nots. After all, the very nature of a wealthy elite implies a mass of folk who are not. The vast majority of those who came to Virginia had Royalist and Anglican sympathies certainly (they were not welcome otherwise), but they were rural laborers of humble origins, generally illiterate and accustomed to a humble lot in life. While they dreamed of betterment in the New World, more than 75 percent of them arrived in Virginia as indentured servants. Two-thirds of those folk were unskilled agrarian workers. All the plantations springing up beside the rivers in the rich fertile delta of the Virginia tidewater required a labor force. As the Algonquian tribes being supplanted from eastern Virginia were unavailable for employment, that labor force had to be imported. | From its first flourishing under Berkeley’s dynamic leadership to the end of its colonial existence in 1776, Virginia society was a culture of a sharp division between the haves and have-nots. After all, the very nature of a wealthy elite implies a mass of folk who are not. The vast majority of those who came to Virginia had Royalist and Anglican sympathies certainly (they were not welcome otherwise), but they were rural laborers of humble origins, generally illiterate and accustomed to a humble lot in life. While they dreamed of betterment in the New World, more than 75 percent of them arrived in Virginia as indentured servants. Two-thirds of those folk were unskilled agrarian workers. All the plantations springing up beside the rivers in the rich fertile delta of the Virginia tidewater required a labor force. As the Algonquian tribes being supplanted from eastern Virginia were unavailable for employment, that labor force had to be imported. | ||