Democracy in America
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Democracy in America
Author Alex de Tocqueville
Original title De la démocratie en Amérique
Publisher Saunders and Otley (London), Now in public domain
Publication date 1835-1840
This article is about the book written by Tocqueville. For the actual system of government used in the United States, see Politics of the United States.
De la démocratie en Amérique (published in two volumes, the first in 1835 and the second in 1840) is a classic French text by Alexis de Tocqueville on the democratic institution of the United States in the 1830s and its strengths and weaknesses. A literal translation of its title is On Democracy in America, but the usual translation of the title is simply Democracy in America. It is regarded as a classic account of the democratic system of the United States and has been used as an important reference ever since. The work is regarded as a seminal text in economics and a key work in the foundation of economic sociology.
In 1831, twenty-five year-old Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont were sent by the French government to study the American prison system. They arrived in New York City in May of that year and spent nine months traveling the United States, taking notes not only on prisons, but on all aspects of American society including the nation's economy and its political system. The two also briefly visited Canada, spending a few days in the summer of 1831 in what was then Lower Canada (modern-day Quebec) and Upper Canada (modern-day Ontario).
After they returned to France in February 1832, Tocqueville and Beaumont submitted their report, entitled Du système pénitentiaire aux états-Unis et de son application en France, in 1833. When the first edition was published, Beaumont, sympathetic to social injustice, was working on another book, Marie, ou l'esclavage aux Etats-Unis (two volumes, 1835), a social critique and novel describing the separation of races in a moral society and the conditions of slaves in America.
Contents [hide]
1 Summary
2 Importance
3 Notes
4 See also
5 Bibliography
6 External links
Summary
The primary focus of Democracy in America is an analysis of why republican representative democracy has succeeded in the United States while failing in so many other places. He seeks to apply the functional aspects of democracy in America to what he sees as the failings of democracy in his native France.
Tocqueville speculates on the future of democracy in the United States, discussing possible threats to democracy and possible dangers of democracy. These include his belief that democracy has a tendency to degenerate into "soft despotism" as well as the risk of developing a tyranny of the majority. He observed that the strong role religion played in the United States was due to its separation from the government, a separation all parties found agreeable. He contrasts this to France where there was what
he perceived to be an unhealthy antagonism between democrats and the religious, which he relates to the connection between church and state.
Insightful analysis of political society was supplemented in the second volume by description of civil society as a sphere of private and civilian affairs[1]. the Second Book, published in 1840, is considered as a reference in sociology , but, some of its developments underline a Republican influence: because of his study of political freedom and individualism, Tocqueville's thought contains elements of republican Debate, particularly about the place of human being in political and civil society. his analysis of the virtue prooves a potential connection with civic humanism[2].
Tocqueville's views on America took a darker turn after 1840 however, as made evident in Aurelian Craiutu's "Tocqueville on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings".
Importance
Democracy in America was published in numerous editions in the 19th century. It was immediately popular in both Europe and the United States, while also having a profound impact on the French population. By the twentieth century, it had become a classic work of political science, social science, and history. It is a commonly assigned reading for undergraduates of U.S.A. universities majoring in the political or social sciences.
Tocqueville's work is often acclaimed for making a number of predictions which were eventually borne out. Tocqueville correctly anticipates the potential of the debate over the abolition of slavery to tear apart the United States (as it indeed did in the American Civil War). On the other hand, he predicts that any part of the Union would be able to declare independence. He also predicts the rise of the United States and Russia as rival superpowers (which they did become after World War II with Russia as the central component of the Soviet Union.)
American democracy was seen to have its potential downside: the despotism of public opinion, the tyranny of the majority, conformity for the purpose of seeking material security, the absence of intellectual freedom which he saw to degrade administration and bring statesmanship, learning, and literature to the level of the lowest. Democracy in America predicted the violence of party spirit and the judgment of the wise subordinated to the prejudices of the ignorant.
[edit]Notes
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Puritan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Puritans)
This article is about the religious movement. For other uses, see Puritan (disambiguation).
Gallery of famous seventeenth-century Puritan theologians: Thomas Gouge, William Bridge, Thomas Manton, John Flavel, Richard Sibbes, Stephen Charnock, William Bates, John Owen, John Howe, Richard Baxter.
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English-speaking Protestants in the 16th and 17th-century. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1559, as an activist movement within the Church of England. They were blocked from changing the system from within, but their views were taken by the emigration of congregations to the Netherlands and later New England, and by evangelical clergy to Ireland and later into Wales, and were spread into lay society by preaching and parts of the educational system, particularly certain colleges of the University of Cambridge. Puritans were mainly concerned with
religious matters, and took on distinctive views on clerical dress and in opposition to the episcopal system, particularly after the 1619 conclusions of the Synod of Dort were resisted by the English bishops. They largely adopted sabbatarian views in the 17th century, and were influenced by millenialism. In alliance with the growing commercial world, the parliamentary opposition to the royal prerogative, and in the late 1630s with the Scottish Presbyterians with whom they had much in common, the Puritans became a major political force in England and came to power as a result of the First English Civil War. After the English Restoration of 1660 and the 1662 Uniformity Act, almost all Puritan clergy left the Church of England, some becoming nonconformist ministers, and the nature of the movement in England changed radically, though it retained its character for much longer in New England.
Puritans by definition felt that the English Reformation had not gone far enough, and that the Church of England was tolerant of practices which they associated with the Catholic Church. They formed into various religious groups advocating for greater "purity" of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and group piety. Puritans adopted a Reformed theology and in that sense were Calvinists (as many of their opponents were, also), but also took note of radical views critical of Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin in Geneva. In church polity, some advocated for separation from all other Christians, in favor of autonomous gathered churches, and these separatist and independent strands of Puritanism became significant in the 1640s, when the supporters of a presbyterian polity in the Westminster Assembly were unable to forge a new English national church.
The designation "Puritan" is often expanded to mean any conservative Protestant, or even more broadly, to evangelicals. The word "Puritan" was originally an alternate term for "Cathar" and was a pejorative term used to characterize them as extremists similar to the Cathari of France. Some scholars use the term precisianist in regard to the historical groups of England and New England.[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Background
1.1 Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism
1.2 Conflict within the Church of England under Charles I
1.3 Fragmentation
1.4 Great Ejection and Dissenters
2 Terminology
3 Scholarly debates
4 Beliefs
5 Cultural consequences
6 Social consequences
6.1 Puritan family life
6.2 The home in New England
6.3 Education in New England
6.4 Restriction and individualism
6.5 The Puritan spirit in the United States
7 See also
8 Notes
9 References
Background
Main article: History of the Puritans
The movement that was later identified by the name "Puritan" can be traced back[citation needed] to the
Anabaptists of continental Europe, although the term itself was not coined until the 1560s, when it appears as a term of abuse for those who found the Elizabethan Religious Settlement of 1559 inadequate. Throughout the reign of Elizabeth I, the Puritan movement involved both a political and a social component. Politically, the movement attempted, mostly unsuccessfully, to have Parliament pass legislation to replace episcopacy with a congregational form of church governance, and to alter the Book of Common Prayer.
Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism
By the end of Elizabeth's reign, the Puritans constituted a self-defined group within the Church of England who regarded themselves as the godly; they held out little hope for those who remained attached to "popish superstitions" and worldliness. Most Puritans were non-Separating Puritans who remained within the Church of England, and Separating Puritans or Separatists who left the Church of England altogether were numerically much fewer. Although the Puritan movement was subjected to repression by some of the bishops, other bishops were more tolerant, and in many places, individual ministers were able to omit disliked portions of the Book of Common Prayer.
Puritanism was fundamentally anti-Catholic: Puritans felt that the Church of England was still too close to Catholicism and needed to be reformed further. During the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585 to 1604, anti-Catholicism agreed with English government policy. The accession of King James I of England brought the Millenary Petition, a Puritan manifesto of 1603 for reform of the English church, but James wanted a new religious settlement along different lines. He called the Hampton Court Conference in 1604, and heard the views of four prominent Puritan leaders there, but largely sided with his bishops. Well informed by his education and Scottish upbringing on theological matters, he dealt shortly with the peevish legacy of Elizabethan Puritanism, and tried to pursue an eirenic religious policy in which he was arbiter. Many of his episcopal appointments were Calvinists.
The Puritan movement of Jacobean times was distinctive from the rest of the church: in theology that was more prescriptive[jargon] than broad Calvinism, in legalism, theonomy, and especially congregationalism. Puritans still opposed much of the Catholic summations in the Church of England, notably the Book of Common Prayer, but also the use of non-secular vestments (cap and gown) during services, the use of the Holy Cross during baptism, and kneeling during the sacrament.[2] Puritans rejected anything they thought was reminiscent of the Pope, and many of the non-secular rituals preserved by the Church of England were not only considered to be objectionable, but were believed to put one's immortal soul in peril.
[edit]Conflict within the Church of England under Charles I
James I was succeeded by his son Charles I of England in 1625. In the year before becoming King, he married Henrietta-Marie de Bourbon of France, a Roman Catholic daughter of the convert Henry IV of France, who refused to attend the coronation of her husband in a non-Catholic cathedral.[3] She had no tolerance for Puritans. At the same time, William Laud, Bishop of London, was becoming increasingly powerful as an advisor to Charles. Laud viewed Puritans as a schismatic threat to orthodoxy in the church. With the Queen and Laud among his closest advisors, Charles pursued policies to eliminate the religious distinctiveness of Puritans in England. Charles was determined to eliminate the "excesses" of Puritanism from the Church of England. His close advisor Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, and moved the Church of England away from Puritanism, rigorously enforcing the law against ministers who deviated from the Book of Common Prayer or who violated the ban on preaching about predestination.
The Mayflower, which transported Pilgrims to the New World. During the first winter at Plymouth,
about half of the Pilgrims died.[4]
Charles relied largely on the Star Chamber and Court of High Commission to implement his policies. Charles adapted them as instruments to suppress the Puritans, following the later juristic methods of Elizabeth I. They were courts under the control of the King, not the Parliament, and were therefore capable of convicting and imprisoning those guilty of displeasing the King.[5] The Puritan movement in England allied itself with the cause of "England's ancient liberties"; the unpopularity of Laud and the suppression of Puritanism was a major factor leading to the English Civil War, during which Puritans formed the backbone of the parliamentarian forces. Laud was arrested in 1641 and executed in 1645, after a lengthy trial in which a large mass of evidence was brought, tending to represent him as obstructive of the "godly" and amounting to the whole, detailed Puritan case against the royal church policy of the preceding decade.
[edit]Fragmentation
A plate depicting the Trial of Charles I on 4 January 1649.
The Puritan movement in England was riven over decades by emigration and inconsistent interpretations of Scripture, and some political differences that then surfaced. The Westminster Assembly was called in 1643. Doctrinally, the Assembly was able to agree to the Westminster Confession of Faith, a consistent Reformed theological position. While its content was orthodox, many Puritans would have rejected portions of it. The Westminster Divines were, on the other hand, divided over questions of church polity, and split into factions supporting a reformed episcopacy, presbyterianism, congregationalism, and Erastianism.
The Directory of Public Worship was made official in 1645, and the larger framework now called the Westminster Standards was adopted for the Church of England (reversed in 1660).[clarification needed][citation needed] Although the membership of the Assembly was heavily weighted towards the presbyterians, Oliver Cromwell was a Congregationalist separatist who imposed his views. The Church of England of the Interregnum was run as a presbyterian ministry, but never became a national presbyterian church such as existed in Scotland, and England was not the theocratic state leading Puritans had called for as "godly rule".[6]
[edit]Great Ejection and Dissenters
At the time of the English Restoration (1660), the Savoy Conference was called to determine a new religious settlement for England and Wales. With only minor changes, the Church of England was restored to its pre-Civil War constitution under the Act of Uniformity 1662, and the Puritans found themselves sidelined. A tradional estimate of the historian Calamy is that around 2,400 Puritan clergy left the Church, in the "Great Ejection" of 1662.[7] At this point, the term Dissenter came to include "Puritan", but more accurately describes those (clergy or lay) who "dissented" from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.[citation needed]
Dividing themselves from all Christians in the Church of England, the Dissenters established their own separatist congregations in the 1660s and 1670s; an estimated 1,800 of the ejected clergy continued in some fashion as ministers of religion (according to Richard Baxter).[7] The government initially attempted to suppress these schismatic organizations by the Clarendon Code. There followed a period in which schemes of "comprehension" were proposed, under which presbyterians could be brought back into the Church of England; nothing resulted from them. The Whigs, opposing the court religious policies, argued that the Dissenters should be allowed to worship in schism from the body of Christ, and this position ultimately prevailed when the Toleration Act was passed in the wake of the Glorious Revolution (1689). As a result, a number of schismatic individuals were legally tolerated in the 1690s.
The term Nonconformist generally replaced the term "Dissenter" from the middle of the eighteenth century.
[edit]Terminology
Originally used to describe a third-century sect of strictly legalistic heretics, the word "Puritan" is now applied unevenly to a number of Protestant churches (and religious groups within the Anglican Church) from the late 16th century to the present. Puritans did not originally use the term for themselves. It was a term of abuse that first surfaced in the 1560s. "Precisemen" and "Precisians" were other early antagonistic terms for Puritans who preferred to call themselves "the godly." The word "Puritan" thus always referred to a type of religious belief, rather than a particular religious sect. To reflect that the term encompasses a variety of ecclesiastical bodies and theological positions, scholars today increasingly prefer to use the term as a common noun or adjective: "puritan" rather than "Puritan."[citation needed]
The single theological momentum most consistently defined by the term "Puritan" was Anabaptist and led to the founding of the Independent or Congregationalist churches; In the United States, the church and religious culture of the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony formed the basis of post-colonial American Congregationalism, specifically the Congregational Church proper as well as Unitarianism.[citation needed] The term Puritan was used by the group itself mainly in the 16th century, though it seems to have been used often and, in its earliest recorded instances, as a term of abuse. By the middle of the 17th century, the group had become so divided that "Puritan" was most often used by opponents and detractors of the group, rather than by the practitioners themselves. As Patrick Collinson has noted, well before the founding of the New England settlement, "Puritanism had no content beyond what was attributed to it by its opponents."[8] The practitioners knew themselves as members of particular churches or movements, and not by the simple term.
Puritans who felt that the Reformation of the Church of England was not to their satisfaction but who remained within the Church of England advocating further reforms are known as non-separating Puritans. (The Non-Separating Puritans differed among themselves about how much further reformation was necessary.) Those who felt that the Church of England was so corrupt that true Christians should separate from it altogether are known as separating Puritans or simply as Separatists. Especially after the Restoration (1660), non-separating Puritans were called Nonconformists (for their failure to conform to the Book of Common Prayer) while separating Puritans were called Dissenters.
The term "puritan" is not strictly used to describe any new religious group after the 17th century, although several groups might be called "puritan" because their origins lay in the Puritan movement. The term "puritan" might be used by analogy (usually unfavorably) to describe any group that shares a commitment to the Puritans' Anabaptist points of view.
[edit]Scholarly debates
The literature on Puritans, particularly biographical literature on individual Puritan ministers, became large already in the 17th century, and indeed the interests of Puritans in the narratives of early life and conversions made the recording of the internal lives important to them. The historical literature on Puritans is, however quite problematic and subject to controversies of interpretation. The great interest of authors of the 19th century in Puritan figures was routinely accused in the 20th century of consisting of anachronism and the reading back of contemporary concerns. The national context (England and Wales, plus the kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland) frames the definition of Puritans, but was not a self-identification for Protestants who saw the progress of the Thirty Years War from 1620 as directly bearing on their denomination, and as a continuation of the religious wars of the previous century,
carried on by the English Civil Wars. The analysis of "mainstream Puritanism" in terms of the evolution from it of separatist and antinomian groups that did not flourish, and others that continue to this day such as Baptists and Quakers, risks an incoherent view of where the burden of belief lay for the "godly". Puritans were politically important in England, but it is debated whether the movement was in any way a party with policies and leaders before the early 1640s; and Puritanism in New England was important culturally for a group of colonial pioneers in America, but there have been many studies trying to pin down exactly what the identifiable cultural component was. Fundamentally, historians remain dissatisfied with the grouping as "Puritan" as a working concept for historical explanation. The conception of a Protestant work ethic, identified more closely with Calvinist or Puritan principles, has been criticised at its root, mainly as a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy aligning economic success with a narrow religious scheme.
[edit]Beliefs
Puritan teaching called for a commitment to Jesus Christ, for greater personal holiness. There were substantial works of theology written by Puritans, such as the Medulla Theologiae of William Ames, but there is no theology that is distinctive of Puritans. "Puritan theology" makes sense only as certain parts of Reformed theology, i.e. the legacy in theological terms of Calvinism, as it was expounded by Puritan preachers (often known as lecturers), and applied in the lives of Puritans. Various strands of Calvinist thought of the 17th century were adopted by different parts of the Puritan movement, and in particular Amyraldism was adopted by some influential figures. In the same way, there is no theory of church polity that is uniquely Puritan, and views differed. Some approved of the existing church hierarchy with bishops, but others sought to reform the Episcopal churches on the Presbyterian model. Some separatist Puritans were Presbyterian, but most were Congregationalists. The idea of personal Biblical interpretation, while central to Puritan beliefs, was shared with Protestants in general.
The central tenet of Calvinism was God's supreme authority over human affairs, particularly in the church, and especially as expressed in the Bible. Puritans therefore sought both individual and corporate conformity to the teaching of the Bible, with moral purity pursued both down to the smallest detail as well as ecclesiastical purity to the highest level. They believed that man existed for the glory of God; that his first concern in life was to do God's will and so to receive future happiness.[9] On the individual level, Calvinists emphasized that each person should be continually reformed by the grace of God to fight against indwelling sin and do what is right before God. A humble and obedient life would arise for every Christian.
Calvinists studied the earlier Church fathers and quoted them against later developments of the Roman tradition. Chrysostom, a favorite of the Calvinists, spoke eloquently against drama and other worldly endeavors, and the Puritans adopted his view when decrying the culture of England, plays and bawdy city entertainments.
At the level of the church body, Calvinists believed that the worship in the church ought to be strictly regulated by what is commanded in the Bible (the regulative principle of worship). Calvinists condemned as idolatry many worship practices, regardless of antiquity or widespread adoption among Christians, against opponents who defended wtradition. Like some of Reformed churches on the European continent, Puritan reforms were typified by a minimum of ritual and decoration and by an unambiguous emphasis on preaching. Simplicity in worship led to the exclusion of vestments, images, candles, etc. They did not celebrate traditional holidays which they believed to be in violation of the regulative principle.
Puritans opposed the supremacy of the monarch in the church (Erastianism), and argued that the only
head of the Church in heaven or earth is Christ. They believed that secular governors are accountable to God (not through the church, but alongside it) to protect and reward virtue, including "true religion", and to punish wrongdoers — a policy that is better described as non-interference rather than separation of church and state. The separating Congregationalists, a radicla segment of the Puritan movement, believed the Divine Right of Kings was heresy.
Other notable beliefs of Calvinists included the priesthood of all believers, and that the observance of the Sabbath was still obligatory for Christians, although they generally believed the Sabbath had been changed to Sunday. Puritans believed Satan was of the netherworld, but Puritan pastors undertook exorcisms in some high-profile cases, wrote extensively and in alarmist fashion against heresy (for example in Gangraena), and believed in some allegations of witchcraft.
[edit]Cultural consequences
For more details on this topic, see Puritan recreation.
Puritans eliminated the use of musical instruments in their religious services, for theological and practical reasons. Outside of church, however, Calvinists encouraged music in certain ways.
There was a desire to see education and enlightenment for the masses (especially so they could read the Bible for themselves). In addition to promoting lay education, Calvinists wanted to have knowledgeable, educated pastors, who could read the Bible in its original languages of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, as well as church tradition and scholarly works, which were most commonly written in Latin. Most of their leading divines undertook studies at the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge before seeking ordination.
Diversions for the educated included discussing the Bible and its practical applications as well as reading the classics such as Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid. They also encouraged the composition of poetry that was of a religious nature, though they eschewed religious-erotic poetry except for the Song of Solomon. This they considered magnificent poetry, without error, regulative for their sexual pleasure, and, especially, as an allegory of Christ and the Church.
[edit]Social consequences
Particularly in the years after 1630, Puritans left for New England (see Migration to New England (1620–1640)), supporting the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and other settlements. The large-scale Puritan emigration to New England then ceased, by 1641, with around 21,000 having moved across the Atlantic. This English-speaking population in America did not all consist of colonists, since many returned, but produced more than 16 million descendants by 1988.[10][11] This so-called "Great Migration" is not so named because of sheer numbers, which were much less than the number of English citizens who emigrated to Virginia and the Caribbean during this time.[12] The rapid growth of the New England colonies (~700,000 by 1790) was almost entirely due to the high birth rate and lower death rate per year.
Puritan culture emphasized the need for self-examination and the strict accounting for one‘s feelings as well as one‘s deeds. This was the center of evangelical experience, which women in turn placed at the heart of their work to sustain family life. The words of the Bible, as they interpreted them, were the origin of many Puritan cultural ideals, especially regarding the roles of men and women in the community. While both sexes carried the stain of original sin, for a girl, original sin suggested more than the roster of Puritan character flaws. Eve‘s corruption, in Puritan eyes, extended to all women, and justified marginalizing them within churches' hierarchical structures. An example is the different ways that men and women were made to express their conversion experiences. For full membership, the Puritan church insisted not only that its congregants lead godly lives and exhibit a clear understanding of
the main tenets of their Christian faith, but they also must demonstrate that they had experienced true evidence of the workings of God‘s grace in their souls. Only those who gave a convincing account of such a conversion could be admitted to full church membership. While women were not permitted to speak in church until 1636 (although they were allowed to engage in religious discussions outside of it), they could narrate their conversions.[citation needed]
[edit]Puritan family life
The English Puritan William Gouge wrote:
―…a familie is a little Church, and a l ittle common-wealth, at least a lively representation thereof, whereby triall may be made of such as are fit for any place of authoritie, or of subjection in Church or commonwealth. Or rather it is as a schoole wherein the first principles and grounds of government and subjection are learned: whereby men are fitted to greater matters in Church or common-wealth.‖
Order in the family, then, fundamentally structured Puritan belief. The essence of social order lay in the authority of husband over wife, parents over children, and masters over servants in the family.
Ideas of proper order both sharply defined and confined a woman‘s authority. Indeed, God's word often prescribed important roles of authority for women; the Complete Body of Divinity stated that
―…as to Servants, the Metaphorical and Synecdochial usage of the words Father and Mother, heretofore observed, implys it; for tho‘ the Husband be the Head of the Wife, yet she is an Head of the Family.‖[citation needed].
Samuel Sewall, a magistrate, advised his son‘s servant that ―he could not obey his Master without obedience to his Mistress; and vice versa.‖
Authority and obedience characterized the relationship between Puritan parents and their children. Proper love meant proper discipline; in a society essentially without police, the family was the basic unit of supervision. A breakdown in family rule indicated a disregard of God‘s order. ―Fathers and mothers have ?disordered and disobedient children,‘‖ said the Puritan Richard Greenham, ―because they have be en disobedient children to the Lord and disordered to their parents when they were young.‖ Because the duty of early childcare fell almost exclusively on women, a woman's salvation necessarily depended upon the observable goodness of her child.[citation needed] Puritans further connected the discipline of a child to later readiness for conversion. Accordingly, parents attempted to check their affectionate feelings toward a disobedient child, at least after the child was about two years old, in order to break his or her will. This suspicious regard of ―fondness‖ and heavy emphasis on obedience placed pressures on the Puritan mother. While Puritans expected mothers to care for their young children tenderly, a mother who doted could be accused of failing to kee p God present. A father‘s more distant governance should check the mother‘s tenderness once a male child reached the age of 6 or 7 so that he could bring the child to God‘s authority.
[edit]The home in New England
In Puritan New England, the family was the fundamental unit of society, the place where Puritans rehearsed and perfected religious, ethical, and social values and expectations of the community at large. The relationships within the nuclear family, along with interactions between the family and the larger community, distinguished Puritans from other early settlers. The home gave women the freedom to exercise religious and moral authority, performing duties not open to them in public. The Puritan family structure at once encouraged some measure of female authority while supporting family patriarchy. Puritans usually migrated to New England as a family unit, a pattern different from other colonies where young, single men often came on their own. Puritan men of the generation of the Great Migration (1630–1640) believed that a good Puritan wife did not linger in Britain but encouraged her husband in
his great service to God. Although without property in New England, a wife in some ways had real authority in the family, although hers derived from different sources from her husband's, and she exercised it in different ways. Because the laws of God explicitly informed the earliest laws of the Massachusetts civil code, a husband could not legally command his wife anything contrary to God's word. (After the banishment of Anne Hutchinson, most congregations did not permit women to speak in church.)[citation needed]
Puritan marriage choices were influenced by young people‘s inclination, by parents, and by the social rank of the persons involved. Upon finding a suitable match, husband and wife in America followed the steps needed to legitimize their marriage, including: 1) a contract, comparable to today‘s practice of engagement; 2) the announcement of this contract; 3) execution of the contract at a church; 4) a celebration of the event at the home of the groom and 5) sexual intercourse. Problems with consummation could terminate a marriage: if a groom proved impotent, the contract between him and his bride dissolved, an act enforced by the courts.
The courts could also enforce the duty of a husband to support his wife, as English Common Law provided that when a woman married, she gave all her property to her husband and became a feme covert, losing her separate civil identity in his. In so doing, she legally accepted her role as managing her husband‘s household, fulfilling her duty of ―keep[ing] at home, educating her children, keeping and improving what is got by the industry of man.‖
[edit]Education in New England
The emphasis on education in Puritan New England differed significantly from other regions of colonial America. The founding fathers established New England in pursuit of a model of Christian living that implied strong motivations for literary instruction. But New England also differed from its mother country, where nothing in English statute required schoolmasters or the literacy of children. With the possible exception of Scotland, the Puritan model of education in New England was unique.
John Winthrop in 1630 had claimed that the society they would form in New England would be "as a city upon a hill",[13] and that they must become a pure community of Christians who would set an example to the rest of the world. To achieve this goal, the colony leaders would educate all Puritans. These men of letters, who viewed themselves as a part of an international world, had attended Oxford or Cambridge and could communicate with intellectuals all over Europe. In 1636 colony leaders founded the school that shortly became Harvard College.
By the 1670s, all New England colonies (excepting Rhode Island) had passed legislation that mandated literacy for children. In 1647, Massachusetts passed a law that required towns to hire a schoolmaster to teach writing. Social motives for mandating reading instruction grew out of a concern that children not taught to read would grow ―barbarous‖; the 1648 amendment to the Massachusetts law and the 1650 Connecticut code, both used the word ―barbarisme‖. Different forms of schooling emerged, ranging from dame schools to ―Latin‖ schools for boys already literate in English and ready to master preparatory grammar for Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. Reading schools would often be the single source of education for girls, whereas boys would go to the town grammar schools. Indeed, gender largely determined educational practices: women introduced all children to reading, and men taught boys in higher pursuits. Since girls could play no role in the ministry, and since grammar schools were designed to ―instruct youth so far as they may be fited for the university,‖ Latin grammar schools did not accept girls (nor did Harvard). Evidence mostly suggests that girls could not attend even the less ambitious town schools, the lower-tier writing-reading schools mandated for townships of over fifty families.
The motive to educate was largely the need to read the Scriptures. As the articles of faith of 1549 had
proclaimed, ―Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation‖. A good Puritan's duty was to search out scriptural truth personally. Further, child ren needed to read in order to ―understand…the capital laws of this country,‖ as the Massachusetts law declared. Order was of the utmost importance for the Puritan community, a group trying to make a home in a new wilderness and create a perfected society from scratch.
[edit]Restriction and individualism
Window, Old Ship Church, Puritan meetinghouse, Hingham, Massachusetts
Puritans are often credited as the first American individualists, and at the same time the Puritan predilection to control others and how they live has been identified with a American social cultural tendency to oppose things such as alcohol and open sexuality.[14] In modern usage, the word puritan is often used to describe someone who has strict views on sexual morality, disapproves of recreation, and wishes to impose these beliefs on others. The popular image is slightly more accurate as a description of Puritans in colonial America, who were among the most radical Puritans and whose social experiment took the form of a theocracy. The first Puritans of New England certainly disapproved of Christmas. Celebration was outlawed in Boston from 1659 to 1681. The ban was revoked in 1681 by an English-appointed governor Sir Edmund Andros, who also revoked a Puritan ban against festivities on Saturday night; but it wasn't until the mid 1800s that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in the Boston region.[15] Likewise the colonies banned many secular entertainments, such as games of chance, maypoles, and drama, all of which were perceived as kinds of immorality.
However, non-Puritan Reformed Christians were not opposed to drinking alcohol in moderation,[16] or to enjoying their sexuality within the bounds of marriage as a gift from God.[17] In fact, spouses (albeit, in practice, mainly females) were disciplined if they did not perform their sexual marital duties, in accordance with 1 Corinthians 7 and other biblical passages. Because of these beliefs, the Puritans publicly punished drunkenness and sexual relations outside of marriage.
Reformed laws, however, regarded alcohol as a gift of God and demonstrated the subtle difference between a government's responsibility to punish sin versus its action to remove temptation. Early New England laws banning the sale of alcohol to Indians were criticized be cause it was ―not fit to deprive Indians of any lawfull comfort aloweth to all men by the use of wine.‖ One reason for laws banning the practice of individuals toasting each other was that it led to wasting God's gift of beer and wine. Another was that it was carnal.
[edit]The Puritan spirit in the United States
Late 19th century view
Alexis de Tocqueville suggested in Democracy in America that Puritanism was the very thing that provided a firm foundation for American democracy, and in his view, these Puritans were hard-working, egalitarian, and studious.[citation needed] Others decry this piety as works-righteousness and a form of supererogation. The theme of a religious basis of economic discipline is echoed in sociologist Max Weber's work, but both de Tocqueville and Weber argued that this discipline was not a force of economic determinism, but one factor among many that should be considered when evaluating the relative economic success of the Puritans. In Hellfire Nation, James Morone suggests that some opposing tendencies within Puritanism—its desire to create a just society and its moral fervor in bringing about that just society, which sometimes created paranoia and intolerance for other views—are at the root of America's current political landscape.[18]
The traditional American Southern view alleges that the Puritan ethic was at root the cause of the Civil War.[citation needed] In this view, the South resisted Puritan intolerant aggression with mainstream
Reformed Christianity. Owing to Puritan beliefs that emphasize the individual's autonomous interpretation of Scripture, separation from mainstream Christianity, and that economic success suggested God's blessings, the traditional Southerner attributed the regional conflict to the greed of the Northern ("Yankee") Puritan mindset, which believed it was more righteous than others.
Plymouth Colony
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Plymouth Colony
British colony
1620–1691 →
Seal of Plymouth Colony
Map of Plymouth Colony showing town locations
Capital Plymouth
Language(s) English
Religion P uritan, Separatist
Government Monarchy
Legislature Plymouth General Court
History
- Established 1620
- First Thanksgiving
- Pequot War
- King Philip's War 1675–1676
- Part of the Dominion of New England 1686–1688
- Disestablished 1691
Plymouth Colony (sometimes New Plymouth) was an English colonial venture in North America from 1620 to 1691. The first settlement was at New Plymouth, a location previously surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement, which served as the capital of the colony, is today the modern town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. At its height, Plymouth Colony occupied most of the southeastern portion of the modern state of Massachusetts.
Founded by a group including separatists who later came to be known as the Pilgrim Fathers, Plymouth Colony was, along with Jamestown, Virginia, one of the earliest successful colonies to be founded by the English in North America and the first sizable permanent English settlement in the New England region. Aided by Squanto, a Native American of the Patuxet people, the colony was able to establish a treaty with Chief Massasoit which helped to ensure the colony's success. The colony played a central role in King Philip's War, one of the earliest and bloodiest of the Indian Wars. Ultimately, the colony was annexed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691.
Despite the colony's relatively short history, Plymouth holds a special role in American history. Rather than being entrepreneurs like many of the settlers of Jamestown, the citizens of Plymouth were fleeing religious persecution and searching for a place to worship as they saw fit. The social and legal systems of the colony became closely tied to their religious beliefs, as well as English custom. Many of the people and events surrounding Plymouth Colony have become part of American folklore, including the North American tradition known as Thanksgiving and the monument known as Plymouth Rock. Contents [hide]
1 History
1.1 Origins
1.2 Mayflower voyage
1.3 Prior exploration and settlements
1.4 Landings at Provincetown and Plymouth
1.5 First winter
1.6 "First Thanksgiving"
1.7 Early relations with the Native Americans
1.8 Growth of Plymouth
1.9 Military history
1.9.1 Myles Standish
1.9.2 Pequot War
1.9.3 King Philip's War
1.10 Final years
2 Life
2.1 Religion
2.2 Marriage and family life
2.3 Childhood, adolescence, and education
3 Government and laws
3.1 Organization
3.2 Laws
3.3 Official Seal
4 Geography
4.1 Boundaries
4.2 Counties and towns
5 Demographics
5.1 English
5.2 Native Americans
5.3 Black slaves
6 Economy
7 Legacy
7.1 Art, literature and film
7.2 Thanksgiving
7.3 Plymouth Rock
7.4 The Mayflower Society
8 See also
9 References
10 Notes
11 External links
[edit]History
[edit]Origins
See also: Pilgrim Fathers
The village of Scrooby, England c.?1911, home to the Pilgrims until 1607
Plymouth Colony was founded by a group of people who later came to be known as the "Pilgrims". The core group—roughly 40% of the adults and 56% of the family groupings[1]—was part of a congregation of religious separatists led by pastor John Robinson, church elder William Brewster, and William
Bradford. While still in the town of Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, England, the congregation began to feel the pressures of religious persecution. During the Hampton Court Conference, King James I had declared the Puritans and Protestant Separatists to be undesirable and, in 1607 Tobias Matthew, Archbishop of York raided homes and imprisoned several members of the congregation.[2][3] The congregation then left England and emigrated to the Netherlands, first to Amsterdam and then to Leiden, in 1609.[4]
In Leiden, the congregation found the freedom to worship as it chose, but Dutch society was unfamiliar to these immigrants. Scrooby had been an agricultural community, whereas Leiden was a thriving industrial center, and the pace of life was hard on the Pilgrims. Furthermore, though the community remained close-knit, their children began adopting Dutch language and customs. The Pilgrims were also still not free from the persecutions of the English Crown; in 1618, after William Brewster published comments highly critical of the King of England and the Anglican Church, English authorities came to Leiden to arrest him. Though Brewster escaped arrest, the events spurred the congregation to move even farther from England.[5]
In June 1619, after declining the opportunity to settle in New Netherland because of their desire to avoid the Dutch influence,[6] the Pilgrims obtained a land patent from the London Virginia Company, allowing them to settle at the mouth of the Hudson River. They then sought financing through the Merchant Adventurers, a group of Puritan businessmen who viewed colonization as a means of both spreading their religion and making a profit. Upon arriving in America, the Pilgrims began working to repay their debts.[7]
Using the financing secured from the Merchant Adventurers, the Pilgrims bought provisions and obtained passage on two ships, the Mayflower and the Speedwell. Though they had intended to leave early in 1620, difficulties in dealing with the Merchant Adventurers, including several changes in plans for the voyage and in financing, resulted in a delay of several months. The Pilgrims finally boarded the Speedwell in July 1620 from the Dutch port of Delfshaven.[8]
[edit]Mayflower voyage
See also: List of passengers on the Mayflower
The Mayflower arrived in Southampton, England, to rendezvous with the Speedwell and to pick up supplies and additional passengers. Among the passengers to join the group in Southampton were several Pilgrims including William Brewster, who had been in hiding for the better part of a year, and a group of passengers known to the Pilgrims as "The Strangers". This group was largely made up of passengers recruited by the Merchant Adventurers to provide governance for the colony and additional hands to work for the colony's ventures. Among the Strangers were Myles Standish, who would be the colony's military leader, Christopher Martin, who had been designated by the Merchant Adventurers to act as Governor for the duration of the trans-Atlantic trip, and Stephen Hopkins, a veteran of a failed colonial venture that may have been the inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest.[9]
"The Embarkation of the Pilgrims from Delfthaven in Holland" (1844) by Robert Walter Weir
The departure of the Mayflower and Speedwell for America was beset by delays. Further disagreements with the Merchant Adventurers held up the departure in Southampton. A total of 120 passengers, 90 on the Mayflower and 30 on the Speedwell, finally departed on August 15.[10] Leaving Southampton, the Speedwell experienced significant leakage, which required the ships to immediately put in at Dartmouth. After repairs were completed and a further delay ensued awaiting favorable winds, the two ships made it only two hundred miles beyond Land's End before another major leak in the Speedwell forced the expedition to return again to England, this time to the port of Plymouth. The Speedwell was determined
to be unseaworthy; some passengers abandoned their attempt to emigrate, while others joined the Mayflower, crowding the already heavily burdened ship. Later, it was speculated that the master of the Speedwell had intentionally sabotaged his ship to avoid having to make the treacherous trans-Atlantic voyage.[11]
The Mayflower, carrying 102 settlers, left Plymouth on September 6, 1620, without the Speedwell, and sailed for the New World with a land patent allowing them to settle specifically at the mouth of the Hudson River. Of the seventy adult passengers on the Mayflower, only twenty-seven adults were Pilgrims. Forty-three of the adult passengers the Pilgrims called "Strangers." The forty-three strangers had no religious interest in the colony. The Strangers were personal servants, indentured servants, or adventurous pioneers. Their goal was to seek their fortune in the New World, not to find religious freedom.[citation needed]
The voyage took almost two months as it was drawn out by strong westerly winds and by the Gulf Stream. Turbulent seas and storms added to this delay. In one such episode, Pilgrim John Howland was thrown overboard, but managed to grab a topsail halyard that was trailing in the water and was hauled back aboard safely. Land was sighted on November 9 off the coast of Cape Cod. The Mayflower made an attempt to sail south to the designated landing site at the mouth of the Hudson but ran into trouble in the region of Pollack Rip, a shallow area of shoals between Cape Cod and Nantucket Island. With winter approaching and provisions running dangerously low, the passengers decided to return north and abandon their original landing plans.[12]
The location in Cape Cod Bay settled by the Plymouth Colony was outside the territory of the London Company, which had granted its patent. The northern coastal territory had been granted to the Plymouth Company, but this patent fell into disuse after the failure of the Popham Colony. It was reorganized under a sea-to-sea charter under the Plymouth Council for New England. The actual Plymouth Colony would obtain land patents from the Plymouth Council in 1621 and in 1630, but it was governed independently from the Council under the Mayflower Compact.
[edit]Prior exploration and settlements
Title page of Captain John Smith's 1616 work A Description of New England, the first text to use the name "New Plymouth" to describe the site of the future colony
The Pilgrims were not the first people in the area. Besides the indigenous Native American tribes, there had been nearly a century of exploration, fishing, and settlement by Europeans. John Cabot's discovery of Newfoundland in 1497 had laid the foundation for the extensive English claims over the east coast of North America.[13] One of the earliest maps of New England, produced c.?1540 by car tographer Giacomo Gastaldi, erroneously identified Cape Breton with the Narragansett Bay; the resulting map completely omits most of the New England coast.[14] European fishermen had been plying the waters off the New England coast for much of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Frenchman Samuel de Champlain had explored the area extensively in 1605. He had specifically explored Plymouth Harbor, which he called "Port St. Louis", and made an extensive and detailed map of it and the surrounding lands. Patuxet, the native village upon which the town of Plymouth would soon be built, was shown by Champlain as a thriving settlement.[15] However, in 1617–1619, before the arrival of the Mayflower, an epidemic wiped out up to 90% of the Native Americans along the Massachusetts coast, including Patuxet. Although generally thought to be smallpox,[16], a recent analysis has concluded it may have been a lesser-known disease, leptospirosis.[17]. The absence of any serious native opposition to settlement by the Pilgrims may have been a pivotal event to their success and to English colonization in the Americas.
Popham Colony, also known as Fort St. George, was organized by the Plymouth Company (unrelated to Plymouth Colony) and founded in 1607. It was settled on the coast of Maine and was beset by internal political struggles, sickness, and weather problems. It was abandoned in 1608.[18]
Captain John Smith of Jamestown fame had explored the area in 1614 and is credited with naming the region of New England. He named many locations using approximations of Native American words. The future site of the Pilgrim's first settlement was originally named "Accomack" by Smith. In consultation with Prince Charles, son of King James, Smith changed "Accomack" to New Plymouth. A map published in his 1616 work A Description of New England clearly shows the site of the future Pilgrim settlement as named "New Plimouth".[19]
In the Mayflower settlers' first explorations of Cape Cod, they came across evidence that Europeans had previously spent extensive time there. They discovered remains of a European fort and uncovered a grave that contained the remains of both an adult European male and a Native American child.[20] [edit]Landings at Provincetown and Plymouth
The Mayflower anchored at Provincetown Harbor on November 11, 1620. The Pilgrims did not have a patent to settle this area, thus some passengers began to question their right to land; they complained that there was no legal authority to establish a colony. In response to this, a group of colonists, still aboard the ship as it lay off-shore, drafted and ratified the first governing document of the colony, the Mayflower Compact, the intent of which was to establish a means of governing the colony. Though it did little more than confirm that the colony would be governed like any English town, it did serve the purpose of relieving the concerns of many of the settlers.[21]
"Signing of the Mayflower Compact" (c.?1900) by Edward Percy Moran
The group remained onboard the ship through the next day, a Sunday, for prayer and worship. The immigrants finally set foot on land at what would become Provincetown on November 13. The first task was to rebuild a shallop, a shallow draft boat that had been built in England and disassembled for transport aboard the Mayflower. It would remain with the Pilgrims while the Mayflower returned to England. On November 15, Captain Myles Standish led a party of sixteen men on an exploratory mission, during which they robbed Native American graves and located a buried cache of Indian corn. The following week Susanna White gave birth to a son, Peregrine White, on the Mayflower. He was the first English child born to the Pilgrims in the New World. The shallop was finished on November 27, and using it, a second expedition was undertaken, under the direction of Mayflower master Christopher Jones. Thirty-four men went, but the expedition was beset by bad weather; the only positive result, from their perspective, was that they found the previously discovered cache of corn and raided it to provide for the colony. A third expedition along Cape Cod left on December 6; it resulted in a skirmish with local Native Americans known as the "First Encounter" near modern-day Eastham, Massachusetts. Having failed to secure a proper site for their settlement, and fearing that they had angered the local Native Americans by robbing their corn stores and firing upon them, the colonists decided to look elsewhere; the Mayflower left Provincetown Harbor and set sail for Plymouth Harbor.[22]
The Mayflower dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor on December 17 and spent three days surveying for a settlement site. They rejected several sites, including one on Clark's Island and another at the mouth of the Jones River, in favor of the site of a recently abandoned Native American settlement named Patuxet. The location was chosen largely for its defensive position; the settlement would be centered on two hills: Cole's Hill, where the village would be built, and Fort Hill, where a defensive cannon would be stationed. Also important in choosing the site, the prior Indian villagers had cleared much of the land, making agriculture relatively easy. Although there are no contemporary accounts to verify the legend,
Plymouth Rock is often hailed as the point where the colonists first set foot on their new homeland.[23][24]
The area where the colonists settled had been identified as "New Plymouth" in maps by John Smith published in 1614. The colonists elected to retain the name for their own settlement—after their final point of departure from England: Plymouth, Devon.[25]
[edit]First winter
See also: List of Mayflower passengers who died in the winter of 1620–1621
"The Landing of the Pilgrims" (1877) by Henry A. Bacon
On December 21, 1620, the first landing party arrived at the site of what would become the settlement of Plymouth. Plans to immediately begin building houses, however, were delayed by inclement weather until December 23. As the building progressed, twenty men always remained ashore for security purposes, while the rest of the work crews returned each night to the Mayflower. Women, children, and the infirm remained on board the Mayflower; many had not left the ship for six months. The first structure, a "common house" of wattle and daub, took two weeks to complete in the harsh New England winter. In the following weeks, the rest of the settlement slowly took shape. The living and working structures were built on the relatively flat top of Cole's Hill, and a wooden platform was constructed to support the cannon that would defend the settlement from nearby Fort Hill.
Many of the able-bodied men were too infirm to work, and some died of their illnesses. Thus, only seven residences (of a planned nineteen) and four common houses were constructed during the first winter.[26]
During the first winter in the New World, the Mayflower colonists suffered greatly from diseases like scurvy, lack of shelter and general conditions onboard ship.[6] 45 of the 102 emigrants died the first winter and were buried on Cole's Hill. Additional deaths during the first year meant that only 53 people were alive in November 1621 to celebrate the first Thanksgiving.[27] Of the 18 adult women, 13 died the first winter while another died in May. Only four adult women were left alive for the Thanksgiving.[28]
By the end of January, enough of the settlement had been built to begin unloading provisions from the Mayflower. In mid-February, after several tense encounters with local Native Americans, the male residents of the settlement organized themselves into military orders; Myles Standish was designated as the commanding officer. By the end of the month, five cannons had been defensively positioned on Fort Hill.[29] John Carver was elected governor to replace Governor Martin.
On March 16, 1621, the first formal contact with the Native Americans occurred. A Native American named Samoset, originally from Pemaquid Point in modern Maine, walked boldly into the midst of the settlement and proclaimed, "Welcome, Englishmen!" He had learned some English from fishermen who worked off the coast of Maine and gave them a brief introduction to the region's history and geography. It was during this meeting that the Pilgrims found out that the previous residents of the Native American village, Patuxet, had probably died of smallpox. They also discovered that the supreme leader of the region was a Wampanoag Native American sachem (chief) by the name of Massasoit;[30] and they learned of the existence of Squanto—also known by his full Massachusett name of Tisquantum—a Native American originally from Patuxet. Squanto had spent time in Europe and spoke English quite well. Samoset spent the night in Plymouth and agreed to arrange a meeting with some of Massasoit's men.[31]
Massasoit and Squanto were apprehensive about the Pilgrims. In Massasoit's first contact with the English, several men of his tribe had been killed in an unprovoked attack by English sailors. He also
knew of the Pilgrims' theft of the corn stores and grave robbing.[32] Squanto had been abducted in 1614 by the English explorer Thomas Hunt and had spent five years in Europe, first as a slave for a group of Spanish monks, then in England. He had returned to New England in 1619, acting as a guide to the explorer Capt. Robert Gorges. Massasoit and his men had massacred the crew of the ship and had taken in Squanto.[33][34]
Samoset returned to Plymouth on March 22 with a delegation from Massasoit that included Squanto; Massasoit joined them shortly thereafter. After an exchange of gifts, Massasoit and Governor Martin established a formal treaty of peace. This treaty ensured that each people would not bring harm to the other, that Massasoit would send his allies to make peaceful negotiations with Plymouth, and that they would come to each other's aid in a time of war.[35]
On April 5, 1621, after being anchored for almost four months in Plymouth Harbor, the Mayflower set sail for England.[36] Nearly half of the original 102 passengers died during the first winter.[37] As William Bradford wrote, "of these one hundred persons who came over in this first ship together, the greatest half died in the general mortality, and most of them in two or three months' time".[38] Several of the graves on Cole's Hill were uncovered in 1855; their bodies were disinterred and moved to a site near Plymouth Rock.[39]
[edit]"First Thanksgiving"
"The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth" (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe
The autumn celebration in late 1621 that has become known as "The First Thanksgiving" was not known as such to the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims did recognize a celebration known as a "Thanksgiving", which was a solemn ceremony of praise and thanks to God for a congregation's good fortune. The first such Thanksgiving as the Pilgrims would have called it did not occur until 1623, in response to the good news of the arrival of additional colonists and supplies. That event probably occurred in July and consisted of a full day of prayer and worship and probably very little revelry.[40]
The event now commemorated by the United States at the end of November each year is more properly termed a "harvest festival". The original festival was probably held in early October 1621 and was celebrated by the 53 surviving Pilgrims, along with Massasoit and 90 of his men. Three contemporary accounts of the event survive: Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford; Mourt's Relation probably written by Edward Winslow; and New England's Memorial penned by Plymouth Colony Secretary – and Bradford's nephew – Capt. Nathaniel Morton.[41] The celebration lasted three days and featured a feast that included numerous types of waterfowl, wild turkeys and fish procured by the colonists, and five deer brought by the Native Americans.[42]
[edit]Early relations with the Native Americans
After the departure of Massasoit and his men, Squanto remained in Plymouth to teach the Pilgrims how to survive in New England, for example using dead fish to fertilize the soil. Shortly after the departure of the Mayflower, Governor Carver suddenly died. William Bradford was elected to replace him and went on to lead the colony through much of its formative years.[43]
As promised by Massasoit, numerous Native Americans arrived at Plymouth throughout the middle of 1621 with pledges of peace. On July 2, a party of Pilgrims, led by Edward Winslow (who later became the chief diplomat of the colony), set out to continue negotiations with the chief. The delegation also included Squanto, who acted as a translator. After traveling for several days, they arrived at Massasoit's capital, the village of Sowams near Narragansett Bay. After meals and an exchange of gifts, Massasoit agreed to an exclusive trading pact with the English (and thus the French, who were also frequent traders in the area, were no longer welcome). Squanto remained behind and traveled the area to establish trading
relations with several tribes in the area.[44]
In late July, a boy by the name of John Billington became lost for some time in the woods around the colony. It was reported he was found by the Nauset, the same group of Native Americans on Cape Cod from whom the Pilgrims had stolen corn seed the prior year upon their first explorations. The English organized a party to return Billington to Plymouth. The Pilgrims agreed to reimburse the Nauset for the stolen goods in return for the Billington boy. This negotiation did much to secure further peace with the Native Americans in the area.[45]
During their dealings with the Nausets over the release of John Billington, the Pilgrims learned of troubles that Massasoit was experiencing. Massasoit, Squanto, and several other Wampanoags had been captured by Corbitant, sachem of the Narragansett tribe. A party of ten men, under the leadership of Myles Standish, set out to find and execute Corbitant. While hunting for Corbitant, they learned that Squanto had escaped and Massasoit was back in power. Several Native Americans had been injured by Standish and his men and were offered medical attention in Plymouth. Though they had failed to capture Corbitant, the show of force by Standish had garnered respect for the Pilgrims, and as a result nine of the most powerful sachems in the area, including Massasoit and Corbitant, signed a treaty in September that pledged their loyalty to King James.[46]
In May 1622, a vessel named the Sparrow arrived carrying seven men from the Merchant Adventurers whose purpose was to seek out a site for a new settlement in the area. Two ships followed shortly thereafter carrying sixty settlers, all men. They spent July and August in Plymouth before moving north to settle in modern Weymouth, Massachusetts at a settlement they named Wessagussett.[47] Though short-lived, the settlement of Wessagussett provided the spark for an event that would dramatically change the political landscape between the local Native American tribes and the English settlers. Responding to reports of a military threat to Wessagussett, Myles Standish organized a militia to defend Wessagussett. However, he found that there had been no attack. He therefore decided on a pre-emptive strike. In an event called "Standish's raid" by historian Nathaniel Philbrick, he lured two prominent Massachusett military leaders into a house at Wessagussett under the pretense of sharing a meal and making negotiations. Standish and his men then stabbed and killed the two unsuspecting Native Americans. The local sachem, named Obtakiest, was pursued by Standish and his men but escaped with three English prisoners from Wessagussett, who he then executed.[48] Within a short time, Wessagussett was disbanded, and the survivors were integrated into the town of Plymouth.[47]
Word quickly spread among the Native American tribes of Standish's attack; many Native Americans abandoned their villages and fled the area. As noted by Philbrick: "Standish's raid had irreparably damaged the human ecology of the region...It was some time before a new equilibrium came to the region."[49] Edward Winslow, in his 1624 memoirs Good News from New England, reports that "they forsook their houses, running to and fro like men distracted, living in swamps and other desert places, and so brought manifold diseases amongst themselves, whereof very many are dead".[50] Lacking the trade in furs provided by the local tribes, the Pilgrims lost their main source of income for paying off their debts to the Merchant Adventurers. Rather than strengthening their position, Standish's raid had disastrous consequences for the colony, as attested William Bradford, who in a letter to the Merchant Adventurers noted "[W]e had much damaged our trade, for there where we had [the] most skins the Indians are run away from their habitations..."[49] The only positive effect of Standish's raid seemed to be the increased power of the Massasoit-led Wampanoag, the Pilgrims' closest ally in the region.[49] [edit]Growth of Plymouth
Historical populations[47]
Date Population
December,
1620 99
April,
1621 50
November,
1621 85
July,
1623 180
May,
1627 156
January,
1630 almost 300
1643 approx. 2000
1691 approx. 7000
In November 1621, one year after the Pilgrims first set foot in New England, a second ship sent by the Merchant Adventurers arrived. Named the Fortune, it arrived with 37 new settlers for Plymouth. However, as the ship had arrived unexpectedly, and also without many supplies, the additional settlers put a strain on the resources of the colony. Among the passengers of the Fortune were several additional people of the original Leiden congregation, including William Brewster's son Jonathan, Edward Winslow's brother John, and Philip Delano (the family name was earlier "de la Noye") whose descendants include President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Fortune also carried a letter from the Merchant Adventurers chastising the colony for failure to return goods with the Mayflower that had been promised in return for their support. The Fortune began its return to England laden with ￡500 worth of goods, more than enough to keep the colonists on schedule for repayment of their debt, however the Fortune was captured by the French before she could deliver her cargo to England, creating an even larger deficit for the colony.[51]
In July 1623, two more ships arrived, carrying 90 new settlers, among them Leideners, including William Bradford's future wife, Alice. Some of the settlers were unprepared for frontier life and returned to England the next year. In September 1623, another ship carrying settlers destined to refound the failed colony at Weymouth arrived and temporarily stayed at Plymouth. In March 1624, a ship bearing a few additional settlers and the first cattle arrived. A 1627 division of cattle lists 156 colonists divided into twelve lots of thirteen colonists each.[52] Another ship also named the Mayflower arrived in August 1629 with 35 additional members of the Leiden congregation. Ships arrived throughout the period between 1629 and 1630 carrying new settlers; though the exact number is unknown, contemporary documents claimed that by January 1630 the colony had almost 300 people. In 1643 the colony had an estimated 600 males fit for military service, implying a total population of about 2,000. By 1690, on the eve of the dissolution of the colony, the estimated total population of Plymouth County, the most populous, was 3,055 people.[47] It is estimated that the entire population of the colony at the point of its dissolution was around 7,000.[53] For comparison it is estimated that between 1630 and 1640, a period known as the Great Migration, over 20,000 settlers had arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony alone, and by 1678 the English population of all of New England was estimated to be in the range of 60,000. Despite the fact that Plymouth was the first colony in the region, by the time of its annexation it was much smaller than Massachusetts Bay Colony.[54]
? 源文档
天鹅湖 维基百科，自由的百科全书 天鹅湖（1876） 睡美人（1889） 胡桃夹子（1892）
剧，也是所有古典芭蕾舞团的保留剧目。 ? ? ? ? ?
? ? 在天鹅湖里，剧本可以说是举足轻重的。本来有两个差别很大的天鹅湖版本。但通常它们会被混合着上演。它们的不同在于对结局的处理。在第一个版本里，王 式的。但在著名的圣彼得堡版本里尽管结尾音乐是那么悲悲愁愁的，最后的结局却是大团圆。 施魔法的面纱》的故事，作者是卡尔·奥古斯都·姆赛斯。里面提到了离德国城市兹维考不远处有一个天鹅池塘，那有着一个关于天鹅少女的传说。当法师施法于天鹅的羽毛时，天鹅就会变成一位少女。而且这样的主题在许多其他童话里也出现过。特别是那位可怜的公主，只有一位王子的爱情才能救她。但是悲剧式的结局却是姆赛斯的首创，以前从没在别的童话中出现过。
?第一幕 王子齐格弗里德（Зигфрид）在生日前夕，其母亲告诉他，已成年的齐格弗里德要在第二天选一位新娘。而到了晚上，王子去天鹅湖捕猎天鹅。 ?第二幕 齐格弗里德遇上被罗特巴特（Ротбарт）施咒的公主奥杰塔（Одета）。她白天是天鹅，晚上却会化成一位少女。只有当某位男子真诚地爱上她时，她才能得救。齐格弗里德邀请她第二天晚上来参加舞会，并会向母亲表示，愿意娶奥杰塔为妻。 File:Swanlake2.jpg 第三幕：王子与黑天鹅 ?第三幕 各国的公主和使节都来出席齐格弗里德的生日宴会。罗特巴特也带着他的女儿奥吉莉亚（Одилия）来了。
奥吉莉亚显示的是奥杰塔的形象，只是身着黑装。齐格弗里德被迷惑并与她缔结了婚约。当齐格弗里德意识到这一切的时候，大为震惊，并立即赶往天鹅湖。 第四幕 第四幕：奥杰塔与众天鹅 王子请求奥杰塔的宽恕，而奥杰塔也原谅了他。这时罗特巴特用魔法卷起大浪，要淹死齐格弗里德。奥杰塔为了救他纵身跃入湖内。根据导演编排的不同，结尾也不一样：或者是双双逝去形成悲剧式的结尾，或者是天鹅恢复人形，王子救起公主，爱情终于战胜了
企业维基很好很强大 许多IT部门都在运用维基方式处理从技术培训到项目管理的各种工作。 意大利国家电力公司（Enel）北美分公司的信息与通信技术经理Ernest Kayinamura与另一名IT经理积极采用维基(Wiki)方式，以便最终用户更容易获取各种IT材料。这是为什么？因为只有他们两个人服务全部北美的众多用户，既然维基能够减轻他们的工作负担，Kayinamura何乐而不为？ 其实这并不是什么个案，如今越来越多企业内的技术部门借助维基这种便于管理、开销又低的Web 2.0方式，以促进工作小组内部或不同部门之间的沟通。 早在1994年，就出现了第一个维基体系―WikiWikiWeb，设计者当初的设想是“维基成为切实可行的―最简单的联机数据库。” 15年过后，这个概念正深入越来越多的企业内部。业内人士表示，与免费使用的公共维基相比，企业内部的维基往往有着更多层次的结构，采用比较严格的版权管理政策确保对企业知识产权的访问，从而达到支持特定组织或部门的目标。
那些企业维基的支持者们表示，与电子邮件和较复杂的知识管理系统相比，企业维基提供了一种更简单、更自然的方式来共享信息、促进合作，完成集体任务。 减轻IT部门负担 Enel北美公司最早是在2005年启动的维基试点项目，最初他们是利用维基作为管理数据库应用开发的中心。目前它已成为一个成熟的内容管理平台，该平台让该公司的260名最终用户可以通过自助服务获取IT信息，而这些信息之前由Kayinamura领导的二人小组通过电子邮件或通过内部网络来分发。“工作量非常大。”Kayinamura说。 现在，Kayinamura的二人IT小组在使用Traction Software公司的TeamPage企业维基程序，它可以通过维基向最终用户提供各种信息，包括培训材料、计算机和手机使用政策、行业背景资料以及各种软件说明文档。 Enel在北美拥有及经营可再生能源项目，Kayinamura表示: “我们需要提供尽量多的自助服务参考材料，减轻IT部门的负担。我们为维基添加了许多资料，例如电子邮件摘要功能可以提醒员工注意任何新迈发布的内容。要是使用传统网页通知，员工去查看以往的邮件很不方便。” Kayinamura领导的IT小组还利用该平台作为放置关键
2005 in Oberwolfach
introduced the self-concordant functions which are useful in the analysis of Newton's method. [8] References 1. "The George B. Dantzig Prize". 2000. Retrieved December 12, 2014. 2. "Yurii Nesterov". 2009. Retrieved June 4, 2014. 3. Nesterov, Yurii. Introductory lectures on convex optimization : A basic course(PDF). ISBN 978-1402075537. 4. Bubeck, Sebastien (April 1, 2013). "ORF523: Nesterov’s Accelerated Gradient Descent". Retrieved June 4, 2014. 5. Bubeck, Sebastien (March 6, 2014). "Nesterov's Accelerated Gradient Descent for Smooth and Strongly Convex Optimization". Retrieved June 4, 2014. 6. "The Zen of Gradient Descent". 7. Nesterov, Yurii; Arkadii, Nemirovskii (1995). Interior-Point Polynomial Algorithms in Convex Programming. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. ISBN 0898715156. 8. Boyd, Stephen P.; Vandenberghe, Lieven (2004). Convex Optimization(pdf). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-83378-3. Retrieved October 15, 2011. External links Official website (https://www.uclouvain.be/32349.html) This article contains text translated from French Wikipedia Retrieved from "https://https://www.doczj.com/doc/862403236.html,/w/index.php? title=Yurii_Nesterov&oldid=712596518" Categories: Living people Belgian mathematicians Université catholique de Louvain faculty1956 births Soviet mathematicians This page was last modified on 30 March 2016, at 01:04. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia? is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Wiki简介 Wiki一词来源于夏威夷语的“wee kee wee kee”,原本是“快点快点”的意思,被译为“维基”或“维客”。 一种多人协作的写作工具。Wiki站点可以有多人（甚至任何访问者）维护，每个人都可以发表自己的意见，或者对共同的主题进行扩展或者探讨。 Wiki指一种超文本系统。这种超文本系统支持面向社群的协作式写作，同时也包括一组支持这种写作的辅助工具。有人认为，Wiki系统属于一种人类知识网格系统，我们可以在Web的基础上对Wiki文本进行浏览、创建、更改，而且创建、更改、发布的代价远比HTML文本小；同时Wiki系统还支持面向社群的协作式写作，为协作式写作提供必要帮助；最后，Wiki的写作者自然构成了一个社群，Wiki系统为这个社群提供简单的交流工具。与其它超文本系统相比，Wiki有使用方便及开放的特点，所以Wiki系统可以帮助我们在一个社群内共享某领域的知识。 Wiki发明者是一位Smalltalk程序员沃德·坎宁安(Ward Cunningham)。 由于wiki可以调动最广大的网民的群体智慧参与网络创造和互动，它将成为WEB3.0时代不可逆转的一大趋势。 Wiki与Blog的区别 Wiki站点一般都有着一个严格的共同关注，Wiki的主题一般是明确的坚定的。Wiki 站点的内容要求着高度相关性。最其确定的主旨，任何写作者和参与者都应当严肃地遵从。
Wiki的协作是针对同一主题作外延式和内涵式的扩展，将同一个问题谈得很充分很深入。Blog是一种无主题变奏，一般来说是少数人（大多数情况下是一个人）的关注的蔓延。一般的Blog站点都会有一个主题，凡是这个主旨往往都是很松散的，而且一般不会去刻意地控制内容的相关性。 Wiki非常适合于做一种“All about something”的站点。个性化在这里不是最重要的，信息的完整性和充分性以及权威性才是真正的目标。Wiki由于其技术实现和含义的交织和复杂性，如果你漫无主题地去发挥，最终连建立者自己都会很快的迷失。Blog注重的是个人的思想（不管多么不成熟，多么地匪夷所思），个性化是Blog的最重要特色。Blog 注重交流，一般是小范围的交流，通过访问者对一些或者一篇Blog文章的评论和交互。 Wiki使用最多也最合适的就是去共同进行文档的写作或者文章/书籍的写作。特别是技术相关的（尤以程序开发相关的）FAQ，更多的也是更合适地以Wiki来展现。Blog也有协作的意思，但是协作一般是指多人维护，而维护者之间可能着力于完全不同的内容。这种协作在内容而言是比较松散的。任何人，任何主体的站点，你都可以以Blog方式展示，都有它的生机和活力。从目前的情况看，Wiki的运用程度不如Blog的广，但以后会怎样，还有待观察，毕竟Wiki是一个共享社区。 Wiki发展历史 Wiki的历史还不长，无论是Wiki概念自身，还是相关软件系统的特性，还都在热烈的讨论中；所以怎样的一个站点才能称得上是一个Wiki系统还是有争议的。与Wiki相关最近出现的技术还有blog，它们都降低了超文本写作和发布的难度。这两者都与内容管理系统关系紧密。第一个Wiki 网站诞生于1995年，由沃德·坎宁安(Ward Cunningham)创建
到紧张和有压力，让您不想再参与维基，那么就忘掉这些规则，做您自己的事儿吧!”（“If rules make you nervous and depressed，and not desirous of participating in the wiki，then ignore them entirely and go about your business.”）但令人惊奇的是，虽然如此，维基却至今依然是一个很有组织、很规范的系统。[10] 处理破坏 与此同时，一些恶 英语维基百科上观看到的对于条目文章的修改 意的修改行为也会被限制。对破坏行为进行监督和纠正也并不是什么难事，用户只需查看修改的清单就可在几分钟（甚至几秒钟）内发现这些破坏行为，然后点击撤销按钮就可以回到被破坏之前的状态，这就比较利于维基社区对质量的掌控。 2004年11月1日前一期的《新闻周刊》引用英国艾塞克斯一位维基百科迷（他曾对1000多个词条的正确性进行网上监督）的话说：“合著百科全书的想法也许是有些疯狂，但它的自控却很好。” 4参与团队 维基媒体基金会 维基百科
维基百科基金会 是由属于非营利组织的维基媒体基金会负责托管与资助，同时维基媒体基金会还管理包括维基词典与维基教科书等与维基百科相关的计划。维基媒体基金会的经营主要是依赖公众或者企业的捐赠和补助金，其中重要的捐助者包括有美国投资家华伦·巴菲特、前美国总统吉米·卡特、维珍集团首席执行官理查德·布兰森爵士、亚马逊公司创办人杰夫·贝佐斯、Craigslist创办人克雷格·纽马克（Craig Newmark）等。[14] 管理人员 维基百科社区已经创建了“各式各样的官僚体系”，其中为了能够有效掌握维基百科中条目的编辑修改动向，使得许多语言版本的维基百科陆续由志愿担任管理人员者组织“明确的权力结构”。这些志愿协助管理工作的“管理员”往往在维基百科社区中也是拥有良好信誉的编辑用户，在成为有部分特权的“管理员”之后便拥有能力删除页面、封锁正在被破坏的文章或者是社区严重争执时删除污辱性对话，甚至也能够停止违规用户的编辑权利。不过“管理员”的权力行使者要在于编辑部分的行使，期望能够阻止用户对于维基百科的破坏性编辑，而对于普通的编辑用户实质上并无管辖权力。此外，管理员在决策决定这一方面也并未享有任何特殊权力 用户团队 维基百科是由全球无数志愿学者、玩家、学生等等有知识的人共同建筑的，该 英语维基百科仲裁委员会的介绍页面 计划的参与者叫做维基百科人。直至如今，参与者的人数仍在不断增加，特别是受到良好教育的人士。事实上，维基百科不能说是一种技术，而是一种创造性运用技术的方式，但对一种先进技术来说，能把它用好其实是最重要的事情。[15]维基百科本身有三个引人注意的特点，这些特点使维基百科与传统的百科全书有所区别：[15] 首先，维基百科将自己定位为一个包含人类所有知识领域的百科全书，而不是一本词典、在线的论坛或其他任何东西。其次，维基百科允许大众的广泛参与，它是一个协作计划。另外，维基百科是一部内容开放的百科全书，它允许任何第三