What if the Mayflower had sunk on its way to America?

[Deleted]

Considering the Pilgrim Fathers did not establish the first permanent English Colony in North America (that honour goes of course to Jamestown in 1607), would the course of American history have turned out significantly different had the Mayflower sunk without trace on its way to America in 1620?

Would the influence of Western Protestant Christianity have meant no a) No "Protestant Work ethic" b) No slavery in the Southern States c) A stronger native American population on the East Coast? d) No American War of Independence?

[middyman]

It would not have been good news for the reputation of the shipbuilders of Harwich. Apart from that, no difference long term.

[Deleted]

Aug 6, 2017 20:00:25 GMT middyman said:

It would not have been good news for the reputation of the shipbuilders of Harwich. Apart from that, no difference long term.

From all accounts the Mayflower was not in great condition when she sailed, so the cowboy builders of Harwich were lucky she reached America. But I definitely disagree that the loss of the Mayflower would have had no longer term affect. I don't think the narrow minded and rather selfish attitude of the Puritan separatists would have influenced American capitalism in quite the same way as for example the Planters of the Virginia Colony. The Virginia colonists had a much more sensible attitude to the question of starvation resorting to eating the dead (or nearly dead) when starvation threatened. The Plymouth colonist had to rely on the native Indians to help them, presumably because their religious scruples forbad them eating their fellow colonists. 

[Deleted]

Aug 6, 2017 20:20:27 GMT @jamesdowden said:

Aug 6, 2017 19:51:43 GMT @williamhone1780 said:

Considering the Pilgrim Fathers did not establish the first permanent English Colony in North America (that honour goes of course to Jamestown in 1607), would the course of American history have turned out significantly different had the Mayflower sunk without trace on its way to America in 1620?

Would the influence of Western Protestant Christianity have meant no a) No "Protestant Work ethic" b) No slavery in the Southern States c) A stronger native American population on the East Coast? d) No American War of Independence?

a) No, we'd just commemorate the next boatload of dissenters.
b) Slavery as pertaining just to the South is a 19th-century anachronism in 17th-century America: there were slaves then in the North too.
c) No, they'd eventually have died of European diseases still.
d) the American Revolution probably would have happened in some way – it had fairly wide-ranging causes that inspired support from throughout the thirteen colonies.

a) I think they would have taken it as a sign of god's displeasure and abandoned further attempts

b) No there were no slaves on the Mayflower.

c) No European settlers infecting the native Americans would have increased their numbers and made settlement more difficult/Impossible

d) I think the constitutional development of the colonies would have been more in line with Canada's

[AdminSTB]

Aug 6, 2017 20:37:51 GMT @williamhone1780 said:

a) I think they would have taken it as a sign of god's displeasure and abandoned further attempts

b) No there were no slaves on the Mayflower.

c) No European settlers infecting the native Americans would have increased their numbers and made settlement more difficult/Impossible

d) I think the constitutional development of the colonies would have been more in line with Canada's

You don't know a lot about Early Colonial America do you?

a) The Mayflower was merely the first successful British colony. The French were already in Quebec, people used Newfoundland to overwinter, the Spanish were in Florida and Mexico and the Dutch were on the Hudson. There was a British colony in Virginia and had been for a decade by the time of the Mayflower, there was even a Virginia House of Burgesses.

b) The first black people were imported into the colonies before the Mayflower in Virginia, although they were freemen or indentures not slaves. Slavery officially started in the Plymouth Colony first of all. However, slaves were being traded into the Caribbean from the mid-1500's by the Spanish.

c) The disease damage was long done before even the Jamestown settlement was done. Can I recommend Crosby's The Columbia Exchange as a easy primer. About 75% of First Nations people died within 30 years of the Spanish landing in Mexico because of complex trading patterns between First Nations. The main area not affected was the West Coast, not the East Coast. Even if the Mayflower hadn't have arrived, the French set off a secondary wave of smallpox in 1619 amongst the people of the Iroquois Confederacy, which halved their numbers and spread to the Abenaki Confederacy.

d) Someone would have settled Plymouth colony with a few years, although the French might have got their first.

[Deleted]

Aug 6, 2017 21:10:28 GMT AdminSTB said:

Aug 6, 2017 20:37:51 GMT @williamhone1780 said:

a) I think they would have taken it as a sign of god's displeasure and abandoned further attempts

b) No there were no slaves on the Mayflower.

c) No European settlers infecting the native Americans would have increased their numbers and made settlement more difficult/Impossible

d) I think the constitutional development of the colonies would have been more in line with Canada's

You don't know a lot about Early Colonial America do you?

a) The Mayflower was merely the first successful British colony. The French were already in Quebec, people used Newfoundland to overwinter, the Spanish were in Florida and Mexico and the Dutch were on the Hudson. There was a British colony in Virginia and had been for a decade by the time of the Mayflower, there was even a Virginia House of Burgesses.

b) The first black people were imported into the colonies before the Mayflower in Virginia, although they were freemen or indentures not slaves. Slavery officially started in the Plymouth Colony first of all. However, slaves were being traded into the Caribbean from the mid-1500's by the Spanish.

c) The disease damage was long done before even the Jamestown settlement was done. Can I recommend Crosby's The Columbia Exchange as a easy primer. About 75% of First Nations people died within 30 years of the Spanish landing in Mexico because of complex trading patterns between First Nations. The main area not affected was the West Coast, not the East Coast. Even if the Mayflower hadn't have arrived, the French set off a secondary wave of smallpox in 1619 amongst the people of the Iroquois Confederacy, which halved their numbers and spread to the Abenaki Confederacy.

d) Someone would have settled Plymouth colony with a few years, although the French might have got their first.

a) No it was Jamestown, which by 1620 was in a much better state than it had been in 1607-1609. Popham Colony in Maine which was established the same year as Jamestown was a failure, but that still left a small colony hanging on in Cuper's Cove in Newfoundland that had been established in 1610 and was still in existence by 1620. Less successful yes but still a permanent settlement. So I would argue your first sentence is not arguably correct.

b) I was careful to state "there were no Slaves on the Mayflower".  The question/scenario I posed was without the Plymouth colony would Slavery still have developed in Virginia, my argument is that the main settlement area would have continued to be Jamestown, so there were have been no need to import slaves. A successful Virginia economy would have made it the centre of the colonial empire and not New England as it later became.

c) The impact of European diseases on the native population is still a matter of dispute, for example there is a long standing misunderstanding that Syphilis was brought to the Americas by the Conquistadors. There is evidence that the disease was already there. Although East Coast populations were hit by epidemics, it is noticeable that West Cost and Central Plains populations were not substantially affected.

d) Not the answer to my question. I still maintain the constitutional development of the Americans colonies would have progressed much the same as they did in the Canadas later. Whether or not some other colonial power took over the territoires settled by England is tangential to the argument. 

[neilm]

Plymouth would have fewer Americans gawping at stuff. So few of them realise that the Mayflower Steps are fake.

[yellowperil]

I had been hoping the end of this sequence of events was going to be "no Donald Trump" but seems no such luck

[greenchristian]

The big effect in the long term would be the fact that the US celebration Thanksgiving would either not exist, or exist in a very different form (and probably be celebrated on a different date).

There is no reason to think that one ship sinking would have discouraged further groups of Puritans looking for a place in the New World where they could freely practise their faith. Ships sinking was far more common then than it is now, and the sea was seen as a dangerous place. There is no good reason to assume that other Puritans would have been aware of the Mayfair, or that they would have seen its disappearance as a sign of divine disfavour. So there would not have been any particular change to the influence of the Protestant Work Ethic on American culture (or its subsequent decline in favour of the American Dream ideology).

It would have had precisely zero effect on the prevalence of slavery in the American South. That was brought about by the kind of industries that were established there, and the fact that said area would have been colonised later, and possibly by a different community, is unlikely to have changed what kinds of crops were grown there, and the economic factors that made slave labour the most viable way of growing said crops.

The biggest factor in the number of Native Americans on the East Coast was Smallpox, and the arrival of the Europeans had already done its work there. Remember that some of the natives who saved the Mayflower pilgrims from starvation were already fluent in English. It's possible that butterflies would have meant that the Trail of Tears never happened, but that was centuries later.

What's the evidence for the suggestion that the Thirteen Colonies would have followed a similar constitutional history to Canada if the Mayflower had disappeared? The Thirteen Colonies contained quite a variety of religious views (each colony had its own, different, state religion immediately post-revolution - hence the first amendment), and Revolutionary thinking flourished in those colonies without strong Puritan origins as much as it did in those with said heritage. If you're looking for a religious inspiration for the American Revolution, you'd do better investigating the likes of Wesley, Whitfield, and Edwards than you would the Mayflower settlers.

[J.G.Harston]

I have a nagging memory that the landing at Plymouth Rock was an accident and they were aiming for somewhere else.

[mboy]

Aug 6, 2017 21:49:56 GMT @williamhone1780 said:

c) The impact of European diseases on the native population is still a matter of dispute, for example there is a long standing misunderstanding that Syphilis was brought to the Americas by the Conquistadors. There is evidence that the disease was already there.

Where on earth have you been getting info from? I've never heard anyone suggest "Syphilis was brought to the Americas by the Conquistadors" outside of fringe theories - even cheap and easy history programs on Channel 4 reliably state that it was the other way around and that Columbus brought the disease back with his men. (The fact that the first reliable cases in Europe were in the Med just a couple of years after his boats returned is a bit of a giveaway really).

Although East Coast populations were hit by epidemics, it is noticeable that West Cost and Central Plains populations were not substantially affected.

{sigh}

The plains and west of continental USA were (and still obviously are) much less populated. In addition, in those days rivers were the primary mode of transport, and both the plains and the west are much more arid and thus river-free, making travel much more laborious, and thus disease-spread much slower.

[finsobruce]

Aug 9, 2017 18:46:51 GMT J.G.Harston said:

I have a nagging memory that the landing at Plymouth Rock was an accident and they were aiming for somewhere else.

Colony of Virginia.

[Deleted]

Aug 9, 2017 19:35:41 GMT finsobruce said:

Aug 9, 2017 18:46:51 GMT J.G.Harston said:

I have a nagging memory that the landing at Plymouth Rock was an accident and they were aiming for somewhere else.

Colony of Virginia.

China... imagine how world history would have been changed if they had landed there

[Adam in Stroud]

Aug 9, 2017 18:46:51 GMT J.G.Harston said:

I have a nagging memory that the landing at Plymouth Rock was an accident and they were aiming for somewhere else.

Times have changed
And we've often rewound the clock
Since the Puritans got a shock
When they landed on Plymouth Rock.
If today
Any shock they should try to stem
'Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock,
Plymouth Rock would land on them

[Ghyl Tarvoke]

It would probably have changed the whole political map of the North Eastern United States, but the US as a whole.... possibly.

Do note though that the Puritans were weird in their plan to settle in the New World. Most of them were content enough settling in the Netherlands.

[Deleted]

Aug 9, 2017 19:09:18 GMT mboy said:

Aug 6, 2017 21:49:56 GMT @williamhone1780 said:

c) The impact of European diseases on the native population is still a matter of dispute, for example there is a long standing misunderstanding that Syphilis was brought to the Americas by the Conquistadors. There is evidence that the disease was already there.

Where on earth have you been getting info from? I've never heard anyone suggest "Syphilis was brought to the Americas by the Conquistadors" outside of fringe theories - even cheap and easy history programs on Channel 4 reliably state that it was the other way around and that Columbus brought the disease back with his men. (The fact that the first reliable cases in Europe were in the Med just a couple of years after his boats returned is a bit of a giveaway really).

Although East Coast populations were hit by epidemics, it is noticeable that West Cost and Central Plains populations were not substantially affected.

{sigh}

The plains and west of continental USA were (and still obviously are) much less populated. In addition, in those days rivers were the primary mode of transport, and both the plains and the west are much more arid and thus river-free, making travel much more laborious, and thus disease-spread much slower.

Re Syphillis,  I said it was a myth and a misunderstanding and that it was already there, But we should of course never rule out completely the idea that something could have existed simply because of the absence of evidence.

Re East coast populations. Of course there is also evidence that the populations for the first settlers met were already much reduced from a middle ages high, since native Americans civilisations such as Cahokia in Southern Illinois and along the Ohio river and surrounding areas had disappeared by that time. So whilst the new diseases the settlers brought with them reduced populations further it is not certain it this decline was a steep as that suffered with the demise of the Cahokian culture.

[Deleted]

Aug 9, 2017 20:31:46 GMT Ghyl Tarvoke said:

It would probably have changed the whole political map of the North Eastern United States, but the US as a whole.... possibly.

Do note though that the Puritans were weird in their plan to settle in the New World. Most of them were content enough settling in the Netherlands.

I wish they had stayed there.