Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations

The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was the official name of one of the original thirteen British colonies in North America. The name of the colony, and subsequent state, is often shortened to Rhode Island. Despite having the longest name of any colony, Rhode Island was the smallest colony by size. Roger Williams, a Puritan minister from Massachusetts who sought to establish a safe haven for religious freedom, founded the colony in 1636. The colony lived up to Williams’s goals, as it was home to both the first Baptist church and the first Jewish synagogue in the American colonies. During the eighteenth century, Rhode Island became a wealthy colony buoyed by its prosperous fishing, farming, and shipping industries. Although Rhode Island played a major role in the slave trade, the colony was the first in America to outlaw the practice. It was also the first American colony to renounce its allegiance to Great Britain prior to the Revolutionary War (1775–1783).

Background

Before European explorers arrived in North America, the region that would become Rhode Island was home to numerous groups of Native Americans. The largest of these, the Narragansetts, occupied most of the area and often battled smaller native groups such as the Wampanoags, Nipmucs, and Pequots. In 1524, Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to explore Rhode Island, sailing into what would later be named Narragansett Bay. No other Europeans visited the region until Dutch captain Adriaen Block sailed the coastline on a journey from the Hudson River to Massachusetts in 1614.

The journeys of da Verrazzano and Block have sparked debate among historians over the origin of the name Rhode Island. Some accounts claim that da Verrazzano encountered a large island off the coast that he named Rhode Island because it reminded him of the Greek Island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean Sea. Later British colonists were said to have confused da Verrazzano’s discovery with Aquidneck Island, a larger island in Narragansett Bay. According to this story, the colonists named that island Rhode Island, which became the colony’s name as well. Other accounts claim that the red soil of Aquidneck Island inspired Block to name it Roodt Eylandt, which is Dutch for “red island.”

The first British colonists of Rhode Island were originally part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which had been established in 1630. The original British settlers in New England were the Pilgrims who founded the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in 1620. The Pilgrims belonged to a group of religious reformers known as the Puritans. The Puritans were Protestants who felt that the Church of England was influenced too much by Roman Catholicism and wanted to “purify” it of its Catholic practices. Puritans strictly adhered to their religious beliefs and had little tolerance for those who disagreed. In 1630, a group of Puritans was granted a charter for land in the New World and arrived in Massachusetts to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Overview

In 1623, an English clergyman named William Blackstone arrived in Massachusetts with a group of British settlers. Blackstone was an eccentric loner who broke away from the group and went to live on his own near modern-day Boston. When the Puritans arrived to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, they found Blackstone living on the land granted to them. Blackstone quarreled with Puritan church leaders and was eventually driven off the land. He made his way south, and in 1635, Blackstone built a house near what is today Cumberland, Rhode Island, becoming the first European to settle in the area.

In 1631, minister Roger Williams and his wife arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Williams was offered a position as a church pastor, but he refused it because he did not agree with the Puritans’ strict views against religious freedom. Instead, he became a teacher and began to cultivate friendships with some of the local Native Americans. Williams often criticized Puritan leaders for what he saw as their unbending control over everyday life in the colony. He also spoke out against the colonial treatment of native peoples. He was briefly banished from the colony but returned in 1634 to take a job as a pastor. Williams remained outspoken against Puritan leaders and was again banished from the colony in 1635. This time, the church leaders were planning on deporting him back to England.

Williams, his wife, and several followers fled south and made their way to Rhode Island. Williams was granted land by the Narragansetts at the head of Narragansett Bay and built the first permanent English settlement on the site. He named the settlement Providence Plantations in honor of “God’s merciful Providence” that had led him to his new home. Williams based the government of the settlement on religious tolerance and formed an elected council of townspeople to make political decisions. By 1640, the population of Providence Plantations had grown to about one hundred.

From 1638 to 1642, three more towns—Portsmouth, Newport, and Warwick—were founded in Rhode Island. As the settlements began to grow, Williams traveled to England in 1643 to seek a royal charter that would make Rhode Island a colony. The British Parliament gave Williams a legal document that acknowledged the colony’s existence and defended its right to own land. In 1663, King Charles II issued a royal charter, officially creating the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. The first royal governor of the colony was Benedict Arnold, the great grandfather of the infamous Revolutionary War traitor of the same name.

Williams’ founding principle of religious freedom caused bad blood between Rhode Island and the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies. Residents unhappy with the strict Puritanism of Massachusetts moved south to Rhode Island. The colony also welcomed groups of Quakers, Jews, and French Huguenots—Protestants who faced persecution in their homeland. Williams himself founded the first Baptist church in the American colonies in 1638. In 1763, the Touro Synagogue in Newport became the first Jewish synagogue in the colonies.

Williams had long tried to maintain good relations with the local Native Americans and insisted that any land acquisitions be fairly negotiated with the native people. In 1675, a Wampanoag chief known in English as King Philip grew angry at the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies for seizing Native American lands. After conflict erupted between the Wampanoag and the Plymouth Colony, the Narragansetts provided a safe haven for the Wampanoag in Rhode Island. Troops from the Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut Colonies attacked the settlement, burning it to the ground, and killing about six hundred men, women, and children. The bloodshed that followed forced many settlers to flee mainland Rhode Island and resulted in the Narragansetts burning Providence in March 1676. By that August, the British colonists had emerged victorious, and the Narragansett leader and King Philip had been killed. The region’s Native American population was decimated and either sold into slavery or forced onto land on the southern coast of Rhode Island.

Rhode Island recovered. By the start of the eighteenth century, it had become a thriving farming and shipping colony. The colony’s agricultural output included corn, wool, lumber, and livestock. Although Rhode Island had technically abolished slavery in 1652, the law was never enforced and the colony played a major role in the Atlantic slave trade. Slaves from Africa arrived in Rhode Island ports before being sent to the sugar fields of the Caribbean. Providence and Newport became wealthy cities on the strength of the colony’s involvement in the slave trade. Under pressure from religious groups such as the Quakers, Rhode Island eventually became the first colony to ban the slave trade in 1774.

In the mid-eighteenth century, the American colonies became increasing unhappy with their treatment by the British government across the Atlantic. As tempers rose in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, colonists in Rhode Island were among the first to take violent action against the British. In 1769, a group of Rhode Islanders attacked and burned the British merchant ship Liberty as it sat in Newport harbor. Three years later, the British customs ship HMS Gaspee was boarded and burned after it ran aground off the coast of Warwick. On May 4, 1776, just two months before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Rhode Island became the first colony to renounce its loyalty to King George III and officially declared its independence from England.

Although only a few minor battles occurred in Rhode Island during the Revolutionary War, one of its native sons, General Nathanael Greene, rose to become second in command of the Continental Army behind only George Washington. Greene led the American army in the south and was instrumental in the decisive campaigns that led to the British defeat. On May 29, 1790, Rhode Island was the last of the original thirteen colonies to ratify the Constitution and become a US state. Its official name became the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations—a title it still maintains.

Bibliography

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