Northeastern North America

(1694 to 1695 CE): Conflict, Colonization, and the Emergence of Slave Societies

In 1694–1695 CE, Northeastern North America remained embroiled in colonial warfare, significant demographic shifts, and critical economic transformations. These years saw continued fighting between French and British colonial powers (King William’s War), the consolidation of plantation slavery, the expansion of European settlements, and strategic indigenous migrations and alliances.

Intensified Colonial Warfare

Iberville’s Atlantic Campaign (1695)

In 1695, Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, a renowned French-Canadian military commander, conducted aggressive naval expeditions targeting English holdings along the Atlantic Coast, from Fort William Henry on the contested New England–Acadia boundary to the fortified settlement of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Iberville, who previously captured Fort Severn (a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post) in 1690, significantly disrupted English commerce and heightened tensions between France and Britain.

Continued Frontier Conflict in New England

As part of King William’s War, frontier warfare intensified in New England and Acadia, where indigenous warriors allied with the French, particularly the Wabanaki Confederacy, launched numerous raids on English settlements. The conflict severely disrupted colonial expansion and settlement in northern New England and intensified mutual hostility between English colonists and indigenous groups.

Emergence of Slave Societies in Carolina

Barbadian Influence and Plantation Slavery

English planters from Bermuda had established settlements near what would become Charleston, South Carolina, during the 1670s, laying the foundation for plantation agriculture. By the mid-1680s, wealthy slaveowners from Barbados had become the dominant political force in Carolina, reshaping it into a deeply hierarchical society. They informally modified the original settlement plan—the Grand Model—into a plantation oligarchy, adopting noble titles while establishing an economic system heavily reliant on enslaved African labor.

Expansion of Rice and Indigo Cultivation

In the South Carolina Lowcountry, east of the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, rice plantations flourished. Plantation labor relied heavily on enslaved Africans, whose numbers grew rapidly; by 1720, enslaved people constituted the majority in South Carolina. Additionally, the colony began experimenting with indigo, a valuable plant source of blue dye, during this period. Although large-scale indigo cultivation and innovation would later become famously associated with Eliza Lucas Pinckney (born 1722), initial efforts and interest in indigo as a commercial crop date from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The growth of these crops further cemented slavery’s central economic role in Carolina society.

Divergence of North Carolina and Quaker Influence

The northern portion of Carolina developed distinctly, characterized by small farmers, Quaker communities, and less reliance on enslaved labor. Communication difficulties between north and south Carolina prompted separate administration from 1691 onward. Quakerism, introduced in Carolina by its founder George Fox in 1672, dominated the northern Albemarle Settlements. Quaker leader John Archdale was appointed governor of Carolina in August 1694, further entrenching Quaker influence. Archdale named Thomas Harvey deputy governor of North Carolina, and by August 1695, he replaced Joseph Blake as governor, highlighting growing administrative separation.

Cheyenne Migrations and Conflicts

Assiniboine-Cheyenne Conflict and Migration

According to tribal histories, during the seventeenth century, the Cheyenne were driven westward by the Assiniboine (Hóheeheo’o, "the rebels," named by the Lakota/Dakota peoples), moving from the Great Lakes region into present-day Minnesota and North Dakota. The most prominent ancient Cheyenne settlement was Biesterfeldt Village, located along the Sheyenne River in eastern North Dakota. These migrations reshaped indigenous territorial boundaries and alliances across the Northern Plains.

Cheyenne Arrival on the Missouri River

The Cheyenne oral history records their first significant arrival at the Missouri River in 1676, marking a key moment in their westward migration, driven by territorial pressures from competing indigenous groups and colonial expansion.

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European Colonial Claims and Rivalries

By the late seventeenth century, major European powers claimed extensive portions of North America:

• Spain controlled Florida, modern-day Mexico, and much of the southwest.

• France established New France, encompassing Canada, Acadia, and the central Illinois Country.

• England occupied the northern Atlantic coast and steadily expanded its influence southward through the Carolina colony.

France remained wary of territorial vulnerability, given Britain’s aggressive colonial ambitions and Spanish presence in the South.

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New York City: Slavery and Piracy Hub

During the 1690s, New York City emerged as the principal colonial port for importing enslaved Africans into the northern colonies. The city’s strategic harbor also became a critical supply base for pirate vessels operating along the Atlantic coast, reflecting its growing economic and strategic significance within Britain’s North American colonies.

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Indigenous Alliances and Adaptations

Wabanaki Confederacy’s Continued Resistance

The Wabanaki Confederacy, comprised of Algonquian-speaking peoples including the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Penobscot, and Abenaki, continued its fierce resistance to English settlement expansion, carrying out numerous raids throughout the region. Their actions supported French objectives and asserted indigenous autonomy.

Haudenosaunee Strategic Neutrality

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Iroquois) sought strategic neutrality after decades of warfare and disease-induced population decline, navigating carefully between French and British colonial pressures. Their cautious diplomatic stance reflected their precarious position and declining influence in regional affairs.

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Legacy of the Era (1694–1695 CE)

The period of 1694–1695 CE marked critical developments in Northeastern North America. Intensified warfare during King William’s War, Iberville’s Atlantic campaign, and indigenous alliances reshaped regional power dynamics. Meanwhile, the entrenchment of plantation slavery, driven by Barbadian elites, established a new socio-economic reality in Carolina, sharply distinguishing it from the more egalitarian, Quaker-influenced North. Cheyenne migration patterns illustrated indigenous strategic adaptations in response to conflicts and pressures from other Native American groups. European colonial powers solidified territorial claims, setting the stage for future conflicts, while New York’s prominence as a slavery and piracy hub reflected changing economic conditions in the colonies. Collectively, these developments significantly influenced the cultural, economic, and geopolitical trajectories of Northeastern North America.

The British government in 1720 instructs governors of American colonies to consent to no Act permitting Bills of Credit.

The South Sea Company, established in 1711 by the Lord Treasurer, Robert Harley, had been granted exclusive trading rights in Spanish South America, anticipating the successful conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession, which did not end until 1713, and the actual treaty rights granted had not been as comprehensive as Harley had originally hoped.

Needing to provide a mechanism for funding government debt incurred in the course of that war, Harley could not have established a bank, because the charter of the Bank of England made it the only joint stock bank.

He had therefore established what was ostensibly a trading company, though its main activity was in fact the funding of government debt.

In return for its exclusive trading rights, the government had seen an opportunity for a profitable trade-off.

The government and the company had persuaded the holders of around £10 million of short-term government debt to exchange it with a new issue of stock in the company.

In exchange, the government had granted the company a perpetual annuity from the government paying £576,534 annually on the company's books: in essence, a perpetual loan of ten million pounds paying six percent.

This had guaranteed the new equity owners a steady stream of earnings to this new venture.

The Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 had granted the company the right to send one trading ship per year (though this was in practice accompanied by two 'tenders') and the 'Asiento', the monopoly contract to supply the Spanish colonies with slaves.

The company had not undertaken a trading voyage to South America until 1717 and had made little actual profit.

Furthermore, when ties between Spain and Britain deteriorated in 1718 the short-term prospects of the company had been very poor.

Nonetheless, the company had continued to argue that its longer-term future would be extremely profitable.

The company in 1717  had taken on a further two million pounds of public debt, and in 1719 proposed a scheme by which it would buy more than half the national debt of Britain (£30,981,712), again with new shares, and a promise to the government that the debt would be converted to a lower interest rate, five percent until 1727 and four percent per year thereafter.

The purpose of this conversion was similar to the former one, allowing a conversion of high interest, but difficult to trade, debt, into low interest, readily marketable debt/shares of the South Sea Company.

All parties could gain.

The Bank of England proposes a similar competing offer, which does not prevail when the South Sea raises its bid to seven and a half million pounds (plus approximately one point three million pounds in bribes).

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Aislabie, is a strong supporter of the scheme.

Parliament in April 1720 accepts a slightly altered form of the company’s proposal, and the ensuing speculation causes the company’s stock to rise from one hundred and twenty-eight and one-half pounds sterling in January to one thousand pounds sterling in August.

Panic selling by British investors in September 1720 bursts the South Sea Bubble.

The stock has fallen by the end of September to one hundred and fifty pounds.

The company failures now extend to banks and goldsmiths as they cannot collect loans made on the stock, and thousands of individuals are ruined (including many members of the aristocracy).

With investors outraged, Parliament is recalled in December and an investigation begins.

Sint Eustatius—hence the Dutch nation—is the first to recognize the American Revolutionary government when the US brig Andrew Doria fires thirteen guns announcing their arrival in 1776.

An eleven gun response from Fort Orange salutes the Andrew Doria.

The Andrew Doria has arrived to purchase military supplies on St. Eustatius and to present to the Dutch governor a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence.

An earlier copy of the Declaration had been captured by a British naval ship.

The British are confused by the papers wrapped around the declaration, which they think is a secret cypher.

The papers are written in Yiddish for a merchant in Holland.

Sint Eustatius now assumes increased importance, because a British blockade makes it difficult to transport supplies directly across the Atlantic Ocean to United States ports.

The Dutch-controlled island in the West Indies is an entrepôt that operates as a major trading center despite its relatively small size.

During the American War of Independence Sint Eustatius becomes a crucial source of supplies, and its harbor is filled with American trading ships.

Its merchant networks—Dutch, but also British via Saint Kitts and especially Bermuda and also Jewish, many of whom are St. Eustatius residents—are key to the military supplies and goods being shipped to the revolutionary forces.

United States-European communications are directed through Sint Eustatius.

The importance of Sint Eustatius had increased further following France's entry into the war in 1778 as it is used to help supply the French West Indian islands.

St. Eustatius's role in supplying Britain's enemies provokes anger among British leaders.

Rodney alleges that goods brought out on British convoys had then been sold, through St. Eustatius, to the rebels.

It seems to have fueled a hatred for this island, especially with Rodney, who has vowed to "bring this Nest of Villains to condign Punishment: they deserve scourging and they shall be scourged."

He had already singled out several individuals on St. Eustatius who are instrumental in aiding the enemy, such as "... Mr Smith in the House of Jones—they cannot be too soon taken care of—they are notorious in the cause of America and France ..."

Following the outbreak of war between the Dutch Republic and Britain in December 1780, orders had been sent from London to seize the island.

The British are assisted by the fact that the news of the war's outbreak has not yet reached St. Eustatius.

A British expedition of three thousand troops sails from Saint Lucia on January 30, 1781.

Rodney leaves behind ships to monitor the French on Martinique.

He also sends Samuel Hood ahead to stop any merchant ships escaping from the harbor.

The main force arrives off St. Eustatius on February 3.

Rodney's ships take up position to neutralize any shore batteries.

Two or three shots are fired from the only Dutch warship on the roadstead, the frigate Mars under Captain Count Van Bijland.

Instead of disembarking the troops and launching an immediate assault, Rodney sends a message to Governor Johannes de Graaff suggesting that he surrender to avoid bloodshed.

De Graaff agrees to the proposal and surrenders.

De Graaff has ten guns in Fort Orange and sixty soldiers.

Rodney has over a thousand guns on his ships.

The nearby islands of Saint Martin and Saba also surrender by the following day.

There is a brief exchange of fire when two of the British ships shoot at the Mars and Van Bijland answers with his cannons.

Rodney reprimands the captains responsible for this lack of discipline.

The only battle occurs near Sombrero.

Rodney discovers that a convoy of thirty richly loaded Dutch merchant ships had just sailed off for home waters less than two days before his arrival, protected only by a single man-of-war.

He sends three warships after them, and they quickly catch up with the convoy.

The lone Dutch man-of-war is no match for the three British ships and, after a fierce thirty minute pounding, the mortally wounded commander, Rear-Admiral Willem Krul, while dying, orders his captain to lower the flag.

Eight of the Dutch crew are killed.

Krul is taken back to St. Eustatius where he is buried with full honors.

The crews of all Dutch ships taken at St. Eustatius and also those of Krul's convoy are stripped of all their possessions and taken to St. Kitts, where they are imprisoned.

The wealth discovered on Sint Eustatius by Rodney and Vaughan exceeds their expectations.

There are one hundred and thirty merchantmen in the bay as well as the Dutch frigate and five smaller American warships.

In total the value of goods seized, including the convoy captured off Sombrero, is estimated to be around three million pounds.

St. Eustatius is home to a significant Jewish community, mainly merchants and a few plantation owners with strong connections to Holland.

Ten days after the island surrendered to the British, part of the Jewish community, together with Governor de Graaff, are forcibly deported, being given only twenty-four hours' notice.

Rodney is particularly hard on the Jews.

The harshness is reserved for the Jews alone as he does not do the same to French, Dutch, Spanish or American merchants on the island.

He even permits the French to leave with all their possessions.

Rodney is concerned that his unprecedented behavior will be repeated upon British islands by French forces when events are different.

Rodney imprisons all the adult Jewish males (one hundred and one) in the West India Company's weighing house on the Bay.

Those who are not immediately shipped to St. Kitts (thirty-one heads of Jewish families) are held there for three days.

He loots Jewish personal possessions, even cutting open the lining of their clothing to find money hidden there.