History of Georgia (U.S. State) - British Colony

British Colony

The conflict between Spain and Great Britain over control of Georgia began in earnest in about 1670, when the British colony of South Carolina was founded just north of the missionary provinces of Guale and Mocama, part of Spanish Florida. Guale and Mocama, today part of Georgia, lay between Carolina's capital, Charles Town, and Spanish Florida's capital, St. Augustine. They were subjected to repeated military invasions by both sides.

The Spanish mission system was permanently destroyed by 1704. The coast of future Georgia was occupied by British-allied Yamasee Indians until they were decimated in the Yamasee War of 1715–1717. The surviving Yamasee fled to Florida, leaving the coast of Georgia depopulated, making formation of a new British colony possible. A few defeated Yamasee remained and later became known as the Yamacraw.

English settlement began in the early 1730s after James Oglethorpe, a Member of Parliament, proposed that the area be colonized with the worthy poor of England, to provide an alternative to the overcrowded debtors' prisons. Oglethorpe and other English philanthropists secured a royal charter as the Trustees of the colony of Georgia on June 9, 1732. The misconception of Georgia's having been founded as a debtor or penal colony persists due to the numerous English convicts who were sentenced to transportation to Georgia. With the motto, "Not for ourselves, but for others," the Trustees selected colonists for Georgia. On February 12, 1733, the first settlers arrived in the ship Anne, at what was to become the city of Savannah.

In 1742 the colony was invaded by Spanish forces during the War of Jenkins' Ear. Oglethorpe mobilized local forces and defeated the Spanish at the Battle of Bloody Marsh. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the war, confirmed the English position in Georgia.

From 1735 to 1750, the trustees of Georgia, unique among Britain's American colonies, prohibited African slavery as a matter of public policy. However, as the growing wealth of the slave-based plantation economy in neighboring South Carolina demonstrated, slaves were more profitable than other forms of labor available to colonists. Improving economic conditions in Europe led to fewer whites being willing to immigrate as indentured servants. In addition, many of the whites suffered high mortality rates from the climate and diseases of the Low Country.

In 1749, the state overturned its ban on slavery. From 1750 to 1775, planters so rapidly imported slaves that the enslaved population grew from less than 500 to approximately 18,000. Some historians have surmised that the Africans had the knowledge and material techniques to build the elaborate earthworks of dams, banks, and irrigation systems throughout the Low Country that supported rice and indigo cultivation; Georgia planters imported slaves chiefly from rice-growing regions of present-day Sierra Leone, the Gambia and Angola. Recent scholarship argues that the Europeans could have developed the rice culture on their own and that African knowledge played a minor role in the success of its cultivation as a commodity crop. Later planters added sugar cane as a crop.

In 1752 Georgia became a royal colony. Planters from South Carolina, wealthier than the original settlers of Georgia, migrated south and soon dominated the colony. They replicated the customs and institutions of the South Carolina Low Country. Planters had higher rates of absenteeism from their large coastal plantations. They often took their families to the hills during the summer, the "sick season", when the Low Country had high rates of disease.

The pacing and development of large plantations made the Georgia coast society more like that of the West Indies than of Virginia. There was a higher proportion of African-born slaves, and Africans who came from closely related regions. The slaves of the 'Rice Coast' of South Carolina and Georgia developed the unique Gullah or Geechee culture (the latter term more common in Georgia), in which important parts of West African linguistic, religious and cultural heritage were preserved. This culture developed throughout the Low Country and Sea Islands, where enslaved African Americans later worked at cotton plantations. African-American influence was strong on cuisine and music that became integral parts of southern culture.

Georgia was largely untouched by war during much of Britain's involvement in the Seven Years War – as the colony was located a long distance from Canada and the French-allied Indians. However, in 1762 Georgia was believed to be under threat from a potential Spanish invasion from Florida, although this did not occur by the time peace was signed at the 1763 Treaty of Paris. During this period the Cherokee Rebellion began.

Governor James Wright wrote in 1766 that Georgia had

"No manufactures of the least consequence: a trifling quantity of coarse homespun cloth, wool and cotton mixed; amongst the poorer sort of people, for their own use, a few cotton and yarn stockings; shoes for our Negroes; and some occasional blacksmith's work. But all our supplies of silk, linens, wool, shoes, stockings, nails, locks, hinges, and tools of every sort... are all imported from and through Great Britain."

(Saye p 135)