History Case

Michael Pantell 09/26/2011

1). Reconstruct analytically the reasons for founding the American colonies, the nature of ethnic, racial, social and religious conflicts among settlers. Your discussion must include the role of women and plantation economy with its early reliance on indentured labor. How are the challenges of the colonies to be interpreted in the philosophical context of what is history and cultural pluralism?

1). The early English colonies were founded in an attempt of England to grow their empire. They wanted to control much more land than what was already owned by them. England wanted to become the largest and most powerful in the world at that time. They set up cities in the new world called colonies. Of course with every settlement, there will be disputes with the people that live there and/or the people who they kicked out to get there. There were many conflicts among early settlers. The ethnic and racial conflicts were mainly the Scots-Irish. During the seventeenth century, English rulers thought they could dominate Catholic Ireland by transporting thousands of lowland Scottish Presbyterians to the northern region of that war-torn country. The plan ultimately failed. English officials who were members of the Anglican church discriminated against the Presbyterians. They passed laws that placed the Scots-Irish at ba severs disadvantage when they traded in England; they taxed them a unreasonable rates. The role of power in the average household back than was very unfairly balanced. The women's job was basically to stay home and care for the family while the men went out and worked for money. Women didn't have many rights back than. They weren't allowed to work the same jobs as men and if they did they would be paid considerably less, they also couldn't drink in public, especially if there husband wasn't there with them. That's why there were a lot of secret women's only bars in the back of shopping malls. Just about every person working on the fields were indentured servants that came from England. An indentured servant is someone who gets someone to pay for their passage into the new world in exchange for them working for them for a number of years, usually from three to seven years. There owners also treated them unfairly with long hours and labor-intensive duties around the plantations where they would work. Cultural pluralism was everywhere, the majority of the community were indentured servants who weren't the same ethnicity, race, or religion as their "owners."

And yet they were treated poorly. The Scot-Irish and all others who weren't from England, who didn't abide by English rule, or who were from a rival country were treated with no respect and were forced to work on the plantations while the plantation owners treated them unfairly. If they wanted to they could have easily taken over