History of Rhode Island

Precolonial period

Native Americans were present in southern New England by about 9500 bc. When European explorers and settlers arrived in the early 16th century, they found several Algonquian-speaking peoples inhabiting the region. The Wampanoag dominated the east side of Narragansett Bay, but their numbers were severely reduced by an unknown epidemic that ravaged the Native Americans of Cape Cod and elsewhere in Massachusetts in 1616–19. On the west side of the bay, the Narragansett, nearly 5,000 strong, ruled about two-thirds of what is now Rhode Island state; in the 1620s they actually expanded their realm at the expense of weaker groups, such as the Wampanoag, to take Aquidneck (Rhode Island) and parts of present-day Providence, Lincoln, Cumberland, and Smithfield. In the northwest corner of Rhode Island were the Nipmuc, while along the southern coast were the Niantic. The Pequot, pressing eastward from Connecticut, defeated the Narragansett for control of parts of present-day Richmond and Charlestown in a battle in 1632. However, the next year smallpox struck the Pequot, reducing their numbers from 16,000 to about 3,000. Then, in 1637, the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony and Connecticut, accompanied by allies such as the Narragansett, attacked and nearly annihilated the Pequot in the first of many interethnic wars in New England.

Colonial period

The Narragansett welcomed Roger Williams, a refugee from Massachusetts Bay Colony, and sold him the land to found Providence in 1636. Williams, a pioneer of religious liberty, believed in the separation of church and state and had been banished from Massachusetts for his beliefs. His settlement was the first place in America where government ruled “only in civil things,” and it attracted other dissenters. Williams helped Anne Hutchinson and her followers, likewise exiled from Massachusetts, to purchase Aquidneck (later Rhode) Island, where they founded Pocasset (Portsmouth) in 1638. These early settlements were unstable and full of intensely religious individualists. In 1639 William Coddington and eight other prominent families left Portsmouth to found Newport on the southern end of Aquidneck Island. Providence experienced two secessions within its first five years, including one which led to the establishment of Shawomet (Warwick) in 1643 by Samuel Gorton. These internal struggles were made worse by a century-long effort by the neighbouring colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Connecticut to dismember and extend their authority over Rhode Island. These surrounding colonies denounced Rhode Island as “Rogues’ Island” and tried to extinguish it by purchase, invasion, royal commission, fiat, fraud, and intimidation. At different times Plymouth claimed Aquidneck Island; Connecticut claimed most of Rhode Island south of present-day Warwick; Massachusetts claimed the Cranston-Warwick area; and various fraudulent land syndicates, supported by Massachusetts and Connecticut, claimed all the land once owned by the Narragansett.

In 1643 the neighbouring colonies formed a military alliance called the United Colonies of New England (or the New England Confederation), pointedly excluding Rhode Island’s towns and denying the validity of the purchases that Williams had made from Native Americans. As a result, Williams rushed to England and in 1644 secured a parliamentary charter for his colony that sought to join the communities of Providence, Newport, Warwick, and Portsmouth under one patent to become one colony, called Providence Plantations. However, Coddington blocked the merger until 1647, when a loose confederacy was established; he refused to accept even this form of government and secured a patent in 1651 that made him governor for life over the islands of Conanicut and Aquidneck, which included the settlements of Portsmouth and Newport. Williams and John Clarke (the latter representing island opponents to Coddington) traveled to England and had Coddington’s commission rescinded. Williams returned to the colony, and Clarke remained in England as its agent. After the restoration of the monarchy (1660) in Britain following the Commonwealth period, the charter for Rhode Island was considered invalid, and Clarke obtained a second charter in 1663, which guaranteed the “lively experiment” of Rhode Island. The charter was retained until 1842, when it was replaced by a state constitution.

The existence of Rhode Island was severely threatened by King Philip’s War (1675–76). Although the colony was not an official party to the conflict, it suffered greatly. An army from the United Colonies invaded Rhode Island in December 1675 and attacked the Narragansett in the Great Swamp Fight. In retaliation, the Narragansett destroyed all white settlements in Rhode Island on the western side of the bay, including Providence, which they burned in March 1676. Most of the settlers fled to Aquidneck Island. In the end, Native American power was destroyed, and nearly all of the colony was opened to settlement. Connecticut claimed most of the southern part of the colony by right of conquest for having defeated the Narragansett.

In the 1680s King James II attempted to consolidate all of England’s colonies in New England with New York and New Jersey under a single governor, and Rhode Island was reduced to a county of the Dominion of New England (1686–89). James demanded the colonies’ royal charters be surrendered, but, like Connecticut, Rhode Island hid its charter and reasserted its separate existence when James II was overthrown in 1689. The intervention of the crown into local matters marked the beginning of Rhode Island’s growing entanglement in larger imperial affairs. From 1689 to 1763 England and France fought a series of imperial wars in North America and drew Rhode Island into all of them.

Rhode Island’s engagement in seagoing commerce during that period was of great significance. It drew the colony out of its isolation and transformed its economy. Rhode Island’s climate of religious freedom opened the door to oceanic commerce: Quakers and Jews were attracted by the colony’s religious tolerance; since international trade in the colonial era was often conducted through families or coreligionists, the Quakers and Jews created Rhode Island’s first transatlantic networks. Newport became the principal town of Rhode Island until the American Revolution and the fifth largest town in British colonial America. Providence began catching up to Newport by the mid-18th century. Oceanic commerce led Rhode Island into the slave trade, and its ships became the main American carriers of enslaved persons. Over the course of the 18th century, Rhode Island merchants built a substantial trade network outside of the British imperial regulations. England greatly expanded its North American territory with the Treaty of Paris of 1763, after which it cracked down on trade and attempted to solidify its hold over its empire. Rhode Island’s colonial experience made it especially sensitive to efforts to restrict liberties.

The Sugar Act of 1764, which was meant to end the trade in smuggling sugar and molasses in the colonies, threatened Rhode Island commerce. Most of the colony’s trade in sugar was illegal; Rhode Island responded to this act with an official remonstrance admitting the illegality of most of the trade and stating that strict enforcement would wreck the colony’s economy. Rhode Island continued its unsanctioned commerce, and Britain sought to suppress it and raise revenues. As a result, the colony engaged in a series of violent acts of defiance. These culminated in the Gaspee incident in 1772. The British customs vessel Gaspee ran aground off Namquit (now Gaspee) Point while pursuing a smuggler. A large group of citizens from Providence boarded and burned the ship. Despite the fact that hundreds knew of or were involved in the attack, an official British inquiry could not locate any accomplices or perpetrators, and all escaped punishment. When the British government sought to punish Massachusetts after the Boston Tea Party (1773), Rhode Island sent aid to the state. When the first shots of the American Revolution were fired in Massachusetts in April 1775, Rhode Island immediately dispatched its militia in support.