today we're looking at the middle colonies
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the questions down in the description so the middle colonies which included pennsylvania
new york new jersey and delaware were the most diverse among the english colonies and unlike
the new england colonies where the puritans basically were in control and not tolerant of
other beliefs in people the middle colonies were very diverse with many different religions and
many different ethnicities there were religions such as the lutherans mennonites presbyterians and
quakers all located in this region along with people from england france germany and the
netherlands all living alongside native americans so the middle colonies were really the melting pot
of early america and it's important to note that despite the fact that the english would become the
dominant nation colonizing america and much of our focus in early american history is on the english
there were other nations attempting to establish colonies in america among them were the dutch
or people from the netherlands and in 1624 the dutch west india company established a colony at
the point where the hudson river which is named after henry hudson who was an english explorer
that explored the area in 1609 it was at where the henry the hudson river and the atlantic ocean met
at a naturally sheltered harbor and the colony was called new netherlands with their capital there at
the harbor at new amsterdam this was an ideal location for trade and the dutch soon purchased
the island in the harbor from the manhattan native americans living there recognizing the
amazing trade opportunities in the location of new amsterdam offered the english soon set their
sights on capturing the colony and in 1664 the english sent a fleet of warships to attack new
amsterdam and concrete with little defenses the people of new amsterdam surrendered really with no
fight and the colony was now under the control of the english king charles ii gave the newly
acquired colony to his brother the duke of york and you guessed it they renamed it new york and
you'll find that you know the english were not necessarily very original in naming colonies
generally just naming them after a location back in england such as plymouth or just slapping new
in front of a name such as new england new york became one of the fastest growing colonies with
a population of around 8 000 in 1664 when the english took control and within less than 20 years
it grew to over 12 000 colonists you might note that i said the colony was given to the duke of
york not a company such as the virginia company of london or the massachusetts bay company new york
was different because it was a proprietary colony meaning there was one owner or a very small group
of owners that owned all the land and controlled the government the duke of york gave the southern
part of new york colony to two friends lord john berkeley and sir george carriette for repayment
of a debt they named the colony new jersey again after an island back in england in 1681 william
penn was given a large piece of land in america by king charles ii as repayment for a debt the king
owed to william penn's father penn was a very strict quaker and the quakers were a religious
group called quakers because they would quake at the word of god and tremble during worship they
believed that you did not need clergy or a pastor to help lead you and they also believed that all
people were equal and these were two ideas that did not set well with the church in england and in
fact william penn had been arrested several times in england for speaking out about his beliefs so
king charles ii was probably kind of happy to give this to this land to pen and repay the debt
and also kind of get someone out of the country that was a little bit of a troublemaker to him and
so in 1682 penn traveled to america and named the colony pennsylvania interestingly penn had a very
different outlook on native americans in america unlike other colonies that came in and immediately
tried to eliminate native americans penn argued that the land belonged to the native americans and
he began to negotiate treaties and make agreements and justly pay native americans for their land
as i mentioned earlier the quakers were very much ones that believed all people were equal so
this led to better relations with native american native americans but it also
led to them being the first abolitionists in america arguing that slavery was wrong
and so in 1701 william penn signed the charter of liberties giving the colonists in pennsylvania
the right to elect their own government and later he signed the charter of privileges
which allowed people living in the southern part of pennsylvania to form their own colony
which became delaware so with that hopefully you learned something and thanks for watching
you