Vacation History
The greatest success in Anglo-Country came not from the English but from the German Moravians, who, in the eighteenth century, converted hundreds of Native Countrys in Pennsylvania and the Ohio territory. Romania Map Compared to Spanish and French efforts, however, Anglo-Country proselytizing did not amount to much, thwarted as it was by the absence of royal involvement (the British monarchy never sponsored missions), the lack of means (exacerbated by the dearth of clerics who could free themselves from serving their own congregations), and, most importantly, the Native Countrys’ resistance, both passive and active.
Most native peoples spurned the Gospel message, because it required them to renounce their own deities or because they did not witness European Country Christians practicing what they preached. Quiet dismissal turned to violent rejection as the Anglo-Country population doubled each quartercentury, pressuring Native Country lands and catalyzing native revitalization movements. Native prophets diagnosed their peoples’ debilitation as the result of embracing European Country goods and their god; utter renunciation of these influences was prescribed as the only means of reacquiring spiritual power and tribal strength. Romania Map One such movement, Pontiac’s Rebellion, ravaged the western frontier in 1763, and others dogged Country expansion throughout the nineteenth century.
Africans lay equally outside Anglo-Country Protestantism. Slavery’s solution to the colonies’ habitual labor shortage and its consequent pervasiveness, particularly in the South, spurred imports. By 1775, half a million African Countrys, virtually all of them slaves, inhabited the colonies. The West African peoples who provided most of these slaves practiced a number of religions. Some had converted to Islam, but most believed in a High God, who remained distant from human affairs, and a multitude of lesser divinities, including one’s ancestors, who involved themselves deeply in human affairs and had to be ritually appeased.
