Friday, June 20, 2008
Frontier Exchange
Cooper's presentation this Thursday over the French settlements developed in the lower Mississippi Valley has made me rethink my definition of a successful colony. As discussed in class, the French never really established their own subsistence farming infrastructure until late in the eighteenth century, forcing trade and cooperation with the local community for basic survival items. It strikes me as ironic that English colonies such as Jamestown and the Puritan settlements in New England are considered successes mearly because they discovered the best way to dominate and marginalize the native peoples and exploit the natural resources of their surroundings. Why should we consider the French unsuccessful because they discovered specialization a hundred years before the industrial revolution? If the natives are good at farming, let them farm and let the French trade and hunt pelts. Jamestown almost didn't make it because their residents couldn't figure out how to survive off the land. If the Mississippi Valley colonies understood their own weaknesses and specialized in what they were better at, I say good for them. And as we learned Thursday, it turned out better for everyone; natives, runaway slaves and colonists.
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3 comments:
It kind of makes you wonder how history would have changed if the English too had used Frontier trading. Obviously relations between the two would have been better. But i wonder if it would have made colonization go easier for the Indians or made the conflict worse and last longer?
Maybe you guys don't understand; the English were far too busy mining unlimited supplies of gold to partake in "Frontier Trading". It's clear that this type of sissy trading stuff is for the French only and will only stand in the way of collecting riches and dominating natives.
However people look at the europeans and whether they were "successfull" all the time or not, it is interesting to learn of how each european group found a different way to thrive and benefit off the land. Although I admit I laughed a little at the thought of the British thinking they didn't need native allies; I thought they were pretty dumb, but yet they are the ones who eventually took over the lands.
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