Name: Olivia                                                                        Sept. 2016

Making Thirteen Colonies                                                        Homework

Directions: Read chapter 2 in Making Thirteen Colonies. Answer the following questions below. Use complete sentences. The following assignment is due on Friday, September 16th.

Questions:

1. What are the characteristics of the “gentlemen” as described in this reading? (Please be detailed in your description). How do they differ from “younkers?”

After reading this chapter, I would describe gentlemen as privileged. On page 18 of Making Thirteen Colonies, Joy Hakim wrote that the gentlemen did not work. Nor were they expected to. In the text, it also says that they lived off family money. Gentlemen were constantly looking for adventures and riches because they had so much time on their hands since they were not hard at work. When the gentlemen came to the New World, they brought their best clothes which included the following: blouses, puffed knee pants, silk stockings, and feathered hats. The lives of younkers were typically the opposite of gentlemen. Some younkers were boys who worked for the gentlemen. Because of this they were expected to do all of the hard work on the ship. For example, they climbed the rigging, set up the sail, and kept a lookout for danger and land. Even though they are so different, in the New World their status wouldn’t  matter. They will have to work together to start a colony in this mysterious New World.

2. Take a closer look at the picture of page 19 and the caption that accompanies it. How are people in London imagining the New World based on what this picture shows? Be specific and be sure to reference the picture.

Based on the picture, it appears that the people of London imagined that the New World had potential. From what I could see, the painting made the New World look like paradise. There were a lot of plants and fruit in the foreground which would symbolize how fertile the ground was. There was also a lot of hunting in the background which would symbolize how there were a lot of animals in the New World. Next to the fruit, there is a moose like creature that looks like it could only be found in a myth. “In dirty, crowded London it was easy to imagine that America was an untouched Garden of Eden. It had to be full of animals known to Europeans only from myths-but which most people firmly believed existed somewhere,” (Hakim, p. 19) In class, we looked at another picture that Theodore De bry created. It also contained mythological creatures. I wonder how people believe these artists that created these pictures if they have never set foot in the New World themselves? What if the New World is not what they expected?

3. How well prepared would you say this group of men and boys was for the challenges of a new and unfamiliar land? Do you predict success or failure for this company’s colonizing attempts at this point? Why? Be sure to use textual evidence and analysis.

I believe that the younkers would do better than the gentlemen will because they had certain skills that would help them when they were in the New World. Unlike the younkers, the gentlemen had never worked a day in their lives. “In England, gentlemen were not expected or trained to work,” (Hakim, p. 18). This is important because the only skills they have that will help them in America is the fact that they can hunt. I can infer that the gentlemen didn’t recognize that their rank in England wouldn’t translate in America, and further the amount of money that they had in England wouldn’t matter in the New World. Another reason that I think the younkers would succeed more than the gentlemen is because they had been working on the ships for 4 months. They knew how to work with ropes and pulleys and if they had gone on other adventures, they would have had the necessary skills in order to build shelters and and any other tools that they would need to survive. “The boys were called ‘younkers’ and were expected to climb the rigging, high on the ship’s mast, help set the sails, and keep a lookout for land and danger,” (Hakim, p. 19). This is significant because in order to create a colony, you need to be able to survive for a few days to explore the land. I predict failure from this initial group but not for the groups to come in the future. I say that because it seems that most of this party is made up of gentlemen and they do not have the necessary knowledge and skill set to survive, and didn’t know what to expect when they got to the New World. The only task at hand was to survive the journey to the New World because once they got there, it became a level playing field. Not only were the gentlemen at the same level of the younkers, they were also at the same rank of the natives. At this point, the natives don’t care about their money and power unless it came over on the boats with them. Power is numbers and unless there are less than 105 natives combined in all of New England, I think that this particular group is going to have a problem.