Richard Mather and John Cotton inherited racist ideas from English thinkers before coming to America.

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The statement under consideration is: 'Richard Mather and John Cotton inherited racist ideas from English thinkers before coming to America.'
Option 1: True. This claim can be supported by historical context showing that both Mather and Cotton operated within a Puritan milieu in 17th-century England before emigrating to New England, a period during which racialized ideas about Native peoples and Africans circulated among English intellectuals and clerics. In practice, Puritan leaders in Massachusetts often justified colonization and relations with Indigenous peoples through frameworks that drew on earlier English writings and theological rationales that cast Native peoples as remnants of a ‘primitive’ state or as obstacles to civilizational progress. Moreover, the Atlantic world already carried importations of racial ideologies—such as justifications for subjugation and differential treatment—that traveled from England to the colonies. Therefore, the notion that they could have absorbed or been influenced by established English racial ideas before their own settlement in America has solid grounding in the historical pattern of transfer of ideas across the Atlantic.
Option 2: False. This would require evidence that Mather and Cotton developed their beliefs in isolation from or independently of English intellectual currents, or that they explicitly rejected English racial conceptions altogether. In the historical record, there is little to support the claim that these figures formed their views in a vacuum, detached from English sources. It would also be inaccurate to assert that English thinkers universally opposed racist ideas at that time; many English writers and clergy articulated and reinforced racial hierarchies that later appeared in colonial discourse. Thus, denying any influence from English thinkers would ignore the broader context of transatlantic intellectual transmission and the common practice of adopting prevailing colonial-era ideas. Consequently, classification as false would misrepresent how ideas migrated and were adapted in the early colonial period.

In evaluating these options, one should consider how 17th-century English religious and political writings contributed to justifications for conquest, land-seizure, and social stratification, and how those lineages extended to Puritan leaders in New England. The evidence tends to align more closely with the view that racist ideas were indeed part of the broader English and transatlantic discourse that Mather and Cotton encountered before or during their migration, rather than with a claim that they developed such notions independently or in complete opposition to English thought.

Note: This analysis focuses on the contextual and historiographical reasoning around the question rather than presenting a definitive biographical excerpt from primary sources. Different framings of the question might emphasize variations in the degree of influence or the particular form those ideas took in their writings and actions.

ETHN150 #59537 Online (7/14/25 - 8/10/25) 🪡 Quiz#2 (Group 2)

Richard Mather and John Cotton inherited racist ideas from English thinkers before coming to America.

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