Chesapeake region

Examples of Chesapeake region in the following topics:

• Chesapeake Slavery

  • The economy of the Chesapeake region revolved around tobacco and relied heavily on slave labor.
  • The Chesapeake region was composed of Virginia—with Jamestown, its first successful settlement established in 1607—and Maryland.
  • During the later part of the 17th century, the development of the Chesapeake region revolved around tobacco cultivation, which required intensive labor.
  • The headright system was designed to promote immigrant settlement and the cultivation of key staple crops that increased the prosperity of the Chesapeake region.
  • Discuss how planters in the Chesapeake region increasingly invested in the Atlantic slave trade to support their rural tobacco-based economy

• Early American Slavery

  • During the Revolutionary era, more than half of all African Americans lived in the Chesapeake region (Virginia and Maryland), where they made up more than 50% of the population.
  • In the Chesapeake region, the average slave owner owned one slave.
  • Therefore, slaves in the Chesapeake were often leased to other families and worked in fields or homes of their temporary masters.
  • There was very little commercial farming in the Chesapeake due primarily to the limited growing season.
  • Farms tended to be larger in the lower South than in the Chesapeake, and farmers worked a variety of crops (such as rice, indigo, and tobacco) staggered over the year.

• English Colonies

  • The first successful English colony was Jamestown, established in 1607 near Chesapeake Bay.
  • Unlike the cash crop-oriented plantations of the Chesapeake region, the Puritan economy was based on the efforts of self-supporting farmsteads who traded only for goods they could not produce themselves.
  • There was a generally higher economic standing and standard of living in New England than in the Chesapeake.
  • The colonial South included the plantation colonies of the Chesapeake region and the lower South.
  • The cultivation of rice was introduced during the 1690s via Africans from the rice-growing regions of Africa.

• The Coming of the English

  • Unlike the cash crop-oriented plantations of the Chesapeake region, the Puritan economy was based on the efforts of self-supporting farmsteads who traded only for goods they could not produce themselves.
  • The colonial South included the plantation colonies of the Chesapeake region—Virginia and Maryland—and the lower South colonies of Carolina and Georgia.
  • The location of the Jamestown Settlement ("J") is shown just south of the overlapping area, 60 miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

• A Growing Population and Expanding Economy in British North America

  • The first successful English colony was Jamestown, established in 1607 near Chesapeake Bay.
  • Unlike the cash crop-oriented plantations of the Chesapeake region, the Puritan economy was based on the efforts of self-supporting farmsteads who traded only for goods they could not produce themselves.
  • There was a generally higher standard of living in New England than in the Chesapeake.
  • The cultivation of rice was introduced during the 1690s via Africans from the rice-growing regions of Africa.
  • Finding a market for their goods in the British colonies of North America, Britain increased her exports to that region by 360% between 1740 and 1770.

• Settling the Colonial South and the Chesapeake

  • The Chesapeake Bay area included Maryland, first settled in 1634, and Virginia, with Jamestown established in 1607.
  • Though indigo and rice were also grown, agriculture in the Chesapeake and Southern Colonies focused on the demand for tobacco.
  • The ease with which it grew turned tobacco into the largest cash crop for the Chesapeake and Southern Colonies.
  • The largest social class in the south and Chesapeake regions was the merchants, vendors, and small farmers of the colonies.
  • The wealth of the region is expressed by an abundance of fish, game, and other trade products.

• Poverty in the Colonies

  • The lowest and poorest classes in colonial America differed in occupation and lifestyle by region.
  • For example, in the Chesapeake Bay alone, some 100,000 indentured servants arrived in the 1600s looking for work; most were poor young men in their early twenties.
  • The change in the status of Africans in the Chesapeake to that of slaves occurred in the last decades of the 17h century.
  • Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 helped to catalyze the creation of a system of racial slavery in the Chesapeake colonies.
  • At the time of the rebellion, indentured servants made up the majority of laborers in the region.

• Harassment by Britain

  • In addition, the British in Canada supported American Indians in their fight against further U.S. expansion in the Great Lakes region.
  • The Chesapeake-Leopard Affair was a naval engagement that occurred off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, on June 22, 1807, between the British warship HMS Leopard and the American frigate USS Chesapeake.
  • The USS Chesapeake was caught unprepared, and after a short battle involving broadsides from the HMS Leopard, Commander James Barron surrendered his vessel to the British after firing only one shot.
  • The Chesapeake-Leopard Affair created an uproar among Americans and strident calls for war with Great Britain, but these quickly subsided.
  • However, when British envoys showed no contrition for the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair and delivered proclamations reaffirming impressment, the U.S.

• Slavery in the Rice Kingdom

  • These backcountry farmers, like their counterparts in the Chesapeake, seldom owned slaves.
  • Once rice was established as the principle cash crop of South Carolina, it brought unprecedented wealth and prosperity to planters and the region.
  • It is no coincidence that white planters in the region starting importing African slaves when rice cultivation was introduced into the South, as the first English planters in South Carolina knew little about rice cultivation.
  • Rice plantations were larger than their tobacco counterparts in the Chesapeake, and planters expected slaves to cultivate up to five acres of rice a year, in addition to growing their own vegetables to feed themselves and their families.

• Settling the Southern Colonies

  • Prior to colonization, the American Indian tribes of the Algonquin, Siouan, and Iroquoian linguistic groups inhabited the Chesapeake Bay area.
  • Over time, the region quickly became well known for its high slave population and highly unequal social class distribution.