Do Now! Push Factor: Motivates people to leave their home countries Pull Factor: Attracts people to new locations Quaker: People who sought an “Inner Light” to understand the Bible.

EQ: What were the characteristics of the Middle Colonies? The students will be able to evaluate and identify the Middle Colonies.

Ch 2 Sec 5: The Middle Colonies Beginning in 1609, Dutch merchants sent ships across the Atlantic and up the Hudson River to trade furs with the Indians. In 1614, they founded a permanent settlement at Fort Nassau on the upper river. To guard the mouth of the river, the Dutch built New Amsterdam at the tip of Manhattan Island in 1626. It became the colony’s largest town, major seaport, and government headquarters. Coming to trade or to farm, the Dutch made no missionary efforts to convert the Indians.

The Dutch West India Company appointed the governor and an advisory council of leading colonists. New Netherland tolerated a diverse group of religions, including Jews. However, the colony attracted few immigrants. Push factors motivate people to leave their home countries. For example, religious persecution pushed the Puritans out of England. Pull factors attract people to a new location. For example, a promise of a better life and fertile soil. There was less cause for Dutch to leave home than the English.

In 1638, traders founded New Sweden on the lower Delaware River, within the present state of Delaware. Some of the colonists were Swedes, but most came from Finland. These colonists introduced many frontier techniques that eventually became classically American, such as log cabins. In September 1655, New Sweden was forced to surrender to its Dutch neighbors, New Netherland.

In 1664, the English forced the Dutch governor Stuyvesant to surrender New Amsterdam, which the English renamed New York, after its proprietor, the Duke of York. The region between the Chesapeake and the New England colonies became known as the Middle Colonies. The Duke of York granted lands between the Hudson and Delaware rivers as a new colony called New Jersey.

Governor Stuyvesant

Pennsylvania began as a debt paid to William Penn by King Charles II of England. William Penn was a wealthy Englishman who founded Pennsylvania. Penn belonged to a radical form of Protestantism whose members were called Quakers. They relied on mystical experience to know God and understand the Bible. They considered women spiritually equal to men, refused to bear arms, and tolerated other faiths.

William Penn

In 1680, the king granted to Penn the land west of the Delaware River as the colony of Pennsylvania, or “Penn’s Woods.” In 1682, Penn arrived and established a city named Philadelphia. Cultivating peace with the local Indians, the Pennsylvanians avoided the sort of native rebellions that devastated other colonies. In their ethnic and religious pluralism, the Middle Colonies anticipated the diversity of America’s future population.

EXIT SLIP Why were the Middle Colonies more diverse than either the Southern or New England colonies?

EXIT SLIP Which geographic factor most directly influenced the location of the first English settlements in North America? A) rivers along the Atlantic coast B) availability of flat land in the Midwest C) mild climate along the Gulf Coast D) forests throughout the Middle Colonies

EXIT SLIP Which geographic factor most directly influenced the location of the first English settlements in North America? A) rivers along the Atlantic coast B) availability of flat land in the Midwest C) mild climate along the Gulf Coast D) forests throughout the Middle Colonies