The "Great Awakening"

Aspects that led to the “Great Awakening” in the colonies were several. Religious writing and Bibles were still the most popular and best-selling publications at the time, and theological issues definitely overshadowed political ones. Ministers and church officials worried that people were becoming too focused on gaining profit and worldly goods than pursuing their eternal salvation. The “Enlightenment” school of thought, brought over from Europe to America, questioned for the first time many faith-based aspects of religion and called for a more fact-based approach, one that focused on observing nature and employing the scientific method to try to prove or disprove religious ideas. The large revivals that began to spring up during the Great Awakening directly engaged individual members of society to question, discuss, and analyze religion directly, rather than being forced to defer and accept the personal Biblical interpretations of their church’s preacher or minister.

Criticism came, for the most part, from the very church leaders who felt threatened that their congregation would depart or be influenced by these “renegade” and wayward revivalists. They accused them of disrespecting established leaders and the church as a whole, as well as causing general disorder. One Anglican minister pointed out that revivals drew mostly poor people, those who were “rude, ignorant, void of manners, education or good breeding” (Liberty 158). The traditional church frontmen were convinced that a church service should be solemn and structured, whereas the evangelists of the Great Awakening opted for emotional preaching, individual participation, and an overall “church of the heart.”

Reverend George Whitefield was accused by Arnold of deceiving and representing God as a being that would accept absolution of sin and repentance (as opposed to the Church’s standard teaching that God has already decided who will or won’t be saved, and personal worship and activity has no influence on His decision). Arnold also accused Whitefield of stepping over his bounds by appearing to speak for God Himself. He “exclaim[s] against all the clergy of the Church and pass[es] unwarrantable sentences upon men as if he were the Supreme Judge” (Freedom 86). His attack on Whitefield, by far the most successful of these new evangelists with tens of thousands of spectators attending his revivals, was an attack on the revivalists as a whole.

One long-term effect of the Great Awakening was society’s subsequent increase in questioning authority and colonial issues. It also greatly increased freedom in the methods of worship allowed to the colonial population. “In listening to the sermons of self-educated preachers, forming Bible study groups, and engaging in intense religious discussions, ordinary colonists asserted the right to independent judgment” (Liberty 158). At the same time, this increased freedom caused much more division in the Church and led to the formation of many new and still-existing breakaway churches, among them Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists. Women began to preach during this time period, as well, which had not occurred before. Overall, it could be said that the increase of religious choice and freedom led to more courageous and independent thinking from colonists in every other aspect of their lives.

English and Indian views on "owning" land

To be English and not own your own land in the New World meant one thing and one thing only: indentured servitude. In order to pay for your passage over, you had to forfeit yourself to serve as a cheap laborer, barely above the status of a slave, for a bulk of your most healthy years (since the average lifespan was so short then). Also, the more land that one owned, the “freer” – not only economically but legally, politically, and in thought, action, and beliefs – one became. Prerequisites for being able to vote almost always came with the requirement of land ownership, with one example being Virginia Governor William Berkeley. Berkeley’s Viriginia had vast imbalances in the distribution of wealth. When it was first founded, the economic wealth gained from tobacco farming had enriched the colony’s founders and its middle-class landholders in near equal measure. But the governor soon began to favor the richest landowners with the choicest properties and left those who had fulfilled their indentured servitude to either work on a plantation or hit the road to claim unsettled land on the dangerous frontier. When he also made land ownership a prerequisite to the right to vote, it contributed to an uprising of poor whites and indentured servants who eventually carried out what would become known as Bacon’s Rebellion (granted, this rebellion was led by rich whites). A further complaint of the members of this Rebellion was that governor Berkeley was too friendly to Indians, and he refused demands by Bacon that he take the Indians’ land by force to accommodate white citizens. “Our design,” Bacon wrote, “[is] not only to ruin and extirpate all Indians in general, but all manner of trade and commerce with them” (Freedom 50). In the English view, owning land equated to wealth, stability, and power (as well as the ability to send a portion of it back home in support of the realm), and anything preventing its acquisition – including indigenous people – were merely obstacles to be overcome by any means necessary.

An excellent example of a contrasting style of leadership and land ownership occurred in New England, in William Penn’s new Quaker colony and “holy experiment” of Pennsylvania. In his view, all people – including women, blacks, and Indians – truly were equal, and he purchased land from the Indians before reselling it to colonists. “Sometimes, he even purchased the same land twice, when more than one Indian tribe claimed it” (Liberty 98). He also distributed the colony’s landmass at low prices. His “Chain of Friendship” promised to help protect Indians who were under other tribes’ rule, as well as provided sanctuary for ousted tribes, both practices being virtually unheard of at the time. Alas, even in this society of equality, political power was once again only granted to those who owned land. Penn established an “assembly elected by male taxpayers and ‘freemen’ (owners of 100 acres of land for free immigrants and 50 acres for former indentured servants)” (Liberty 99). This did, however, still essentially give the right to vote to the majority of the male population.

In direct conflict with the English view of land ownership, Indians believed that land could never be privately owned. As they accepted and believed that the Earth and everything upon it had its own spirit, how could one creature claim superiority enough to lay claim on a part of it? In their eyes, it would be the same as trying to say you owned the wind or the sky. The English brought and employed their own definition of land ownership, charging that the natives had no real claim on their lands because they did not work to cultivate or improve it. In the early seventeenth century, during the first colonies’ beginning years and initial contact with Indians, the English “recognized Indians’ title based on occupancy” (Liberty 60), and as such compensated them after seizing their land. But as the generations went on and populations grew, this façade crumbled and led to putting down, keeping down, and running off (or murdering) vast populations of Indians in fierce pursuit of their lands.

Richard Hakluyt and English Expansion

England was not a massive empire like Spain was during the seventeenth century, and one of the first ways colonization efforts in North America took place was by charters given by the government to well-to-do individuals, such as Gilbert and Raleigh. If these private explorers were to successfully colonize areas of the New World at their own expense, they would retain rights to the land and its associated profits. Neither was successful in their efforts.

Active competition and animosity toward Spain was another factor that fueled England’s desire to extend onto the American continent. Not only did the two countries clash directly and militarily at times, but England was in the position to use Bartholome de las Casas’s rebuke of Spanish treatment of native Indian slaves as propaganda. The English would free these unfortunates from Spain’s “Black Legend” of cruelty, and would provide them with the opportunity to convert them to the “correct” faith.

England’s motives were nearly the same as Spain’s in many respects. Bringing additional glory, land, and profits for their home countries were respective desires, as well as “liberating” the poor indigenous tribes already inhabiting the New World with their own “superior” religions. Also like Spain, England was eager to lighten trade costs by establishing their own separate routes, as “the passage thither and home is neither too long nor too short, and to be made twice in the year” (Freedom 8). Additionally, they could reap the resources of the new land for themselves for transport back home or sale to other countries, thus monopolizing the native goods of the area and enhancing the riches of the realm.

One motive that was exclusively a concern of England was a desire to improve their period of significant economic trouble. Once the rich had “fenced off” many of the lands that poor workers had owned and claimed them as their own, the urban areas of London were flooded with displaced people “outside the fences” and seeking work. These wandering unemployed citizens were considered a bane on society, and emigration to America would provide a perfect way to both unload them from being burdens on the state, as well as – in theory, anyway – provide them with the opportunity to own and work their own land in the abundance of the New World (I’m sure that’s what all the advertising at the time said, anyway). Unfortunately, many of the poor who could not afford passage had to sign contracts that made them indentured servants to a rich purchaser, free to own their own land only after predetermined periods of near-slavery (usually four years or more), and even then at their own expense.

One of the things that struck me about Richard Hakluyt’s discourse and “laundry lists” of why England could do what the much-stronger empire of Spain was having difficulty with, is the recurring theme of “salvation” for beings that not only don’t need saving, but just want to be left alone. “The Spaniards govern in the Indies with all pride and tyranny,” Hakluyt says. “…so no doubt whensoever the Queen of England … shall seat upon that firmament of America, and shall be reported thoughout all that tract to use the natural people there with all humanity, courtesy, and freedom, they will yield themselves to her government, and revolt clean from the Spaniard.” It sounds remarkably to me like their plan of treating the Indians with “all humanity, courtesy, and freedom” is another way of saying “We’ll make them ours, not theirs, because we’re better than the Catholics.” As far as believing that the slaves will “revolt clean from the Spaniard,” I doubt Mr. Hakluyt really believed that much, but I think he was stretching things a bit to “close the sale,” or appear more convincing in his ideas. The Indians may well, given the opportunity, revolt against Spain, but only with the idea that things can’t possibly get any worse with these new Europeans than they are with the conquistadors! Little did they know that English rifles can be worse than Spanish whips, their diseases lay the same forms of waste, and they'll "liberate" Indians' lands from them just as aggressively.

European Expansion into the Americas

European countries sought to expand for various reasons. While most likely not their first priority, they wanted to expand their territory and reap the resources of the new areas of the Americas (many of which they had never even encountered up to that point). Second, countries such as Spain, France, and the Netherlands (and their merchants) were desperate to establish a new trade route and bypass the overland trade stranglehold the Ottoman empire had established in the Middle East, thereby “eliminat[ing] Islamic middlemen and win[ning] control of the lucrative trade for Christian western Europe” (Liberty, 20). Perhaps the primary reason, though, was the European notion that Christianity and Catholicism were inherently superior to the naturalistic religions and belief systems of the indigenous people in the Americas and should be spread by all means and methods necessary. The Spanish conquistadors and others overthrew, murdered, and infected as they invaded, all in the name of “saving” the savages from their “heathen” ways and converting them to European religion.

This provided a method of rationalizing what may have otherwise been considered genocide and intolerable cruelty. In other words: Sure, we might’ve enslaved them and accidentally diseased them and decimated them as a whole population, but that pales in comparison with the gift we’re giving them: saving their eternal souls and spreading the Word of God!

In Columbus’s case, he decimated the population of Hispaniola this way. The masses he enslaved to perform forced labor for the Spanish Empire were unaccustomed to the work and treated badly, including being starved and brutalized. In 1528, Spanish priest Bartholome de las Casas characterized the treatment of Indians as “…most horrible servitude and captivity which no one who has not seen it can understand. Even beasts enjoy more freedom when they graze in the fields” (Freedom 5). In addition to the Indian population decreasing from these conditions, new European diseases brought from Spanish urban areas were inadvertently introduced to these indigenous people that didn’t possess any natural immunity. Their numbers were reduced from an estimated 300,000 to one million in 1492 to having “nearly disappeared” within the next fifty years (Liberty 27).

This discourse was likely a surprising revelation for citizens of both Spain and its European rival countries. Commonly-held views of the New World’s exploration and the spread of Christianity were most likely imagined as civil and humane to all involved. This document gave European countries also seeking a piece of the Americas justification for their own subsequent invasions, alluding to coming “to rescue” the Indians from cruel Spanish treatment. Eventually Spain to try to reverse (or at least diminish) its reputation and “Black Legend” of sustained cruelty by implementing the “New Laws.” These were not universally welcome among the Spanish settlers, however, and – although the Indians were no longer slaves and had some access to land and wages – “[the new system] still allowed for many abuses from Spanish landlords and by priests who required Indians to toil on mission lands as part of the conversion process (Liberty 33).”