Eighteenth-Century America

Chapter 1

Overview: Colonial Society in 1700

Not a homogeneous society

Ethnic and religious diversity

Free and unfree No national identity No common culture French vs. English

battle for control

Labor in the Colonies

Plantation economy depended upon manual labor.

Indentured Servants (debt slavery) Worked 4 to 7 years. Accounted for half the white settlers in all colonies outside New

England. Slavery (chattel slavery) (1619 – Jamestown)

Increased staple crops for commercial markets. Mortality rate improved. Racist rationalization based on color differences or heathenism. Perpetual black slavery became the custom and the law of the

land.

The Middle Passage

About 21 million people captured in West Africa between 1700 and 1850. Millions died during the Atlantic crossing and as many

as 7 million remained slaves in Africa. Slaves were captured by other Africans within the

interior, brought to the coast, sold to Europeans. Packed together in slave ships and subjected to a 4

to 6 week passage. So brutal that 1 in 7 died en route. Once in America they were thrown

indiscriminately together and treated like work animals.

The Atlantic Slave Trade

(Middle Passage)

Slavery in British North America

Great Ethnic Diversity in Slave Population. Before 1750: Slave importation.

17th century – Brazil & Caribbean 18th century – Directly from Africa

After 1750: Native-born population. Distinctively African-American culture

20% of colonial population. (40% in south) British North America bought less than 5 percent of the total

slave imports to the Western Hemisphere (1500-1800). 400,000 out of 9.5 million; however, had a better chance for

survival.

The Slave Family and Community

The differences among blacks lessened as slave importation tapered off and the black population grew through natural increase.

Black families remained vulnerable.

Slave marriages had no legal status and family members were often separated by deaths or debts of masters.

Slave Societies in the Eighteenth-Century South

Tense and embattled regions.

Salve resistance More

frequent More

successful

Slave Societies in the Eighteenth-Century South

Slavery and Colonial Society in French Louisiana Natchez Revolt (1729)

Africans challenged French control / importation of slave stopped

Greater freedom for blacks in Louisiana Freedom granted to those who served in French militia.

Became the core of Louisiana’s free black community. Slave Resistance in 18th-Century British N.

America The Stono Rebellion (1739) (South Carolina)

The largest slave revolt of the colonial period. Nearly 100 slaves killed several whites before being caught

and killed by the white militia.

The Enlightenment

A scientific revolution that swept through Europe during the 17th century.

Assumptions The world is an orderly place. (Natural Law) Humans can understand order.

Influence in America Diets – God made world and then left alone Skepticism – Questioned everything Laws of nature

John Locke and tabula rosa (people can be corrupted) Reason and virtue

The Great Awakening

Causes: Challenges to religion (Enlightenment),

competing denominations, westward expansion Changes in society and tradition

Revivals (1730s) – A wave of evangelism that swept through the colonies. Jonathan Edwards George Whitefield – Emphasized “new birth”

Jonathan Edwards(1703-1758) Congregationalist minister

from Massachusetts. Feared religion had

become too intellectual and had lost its animating force.

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some other loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked.”

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

The Great Awakening

Influence on Colonists Old Light (structure)

Intended the Great Awakening to bolster church discipline and order. (Edwards & Whitefield)

New Light (emotion) Radical evangelists that attacked the established

clergy and appealed to the lower classes.

Short term results New religious groups and the split of more

Calvinistic churches: Baptists, Methodists, etc. New England Puritanism fragmented

The Great Awakening

Long term results American style evangelism and revivalism Denominational colleges Undermining of state-sponsored churches;

toleration of dissent Individual judgment: Fewer willing to defer

to the ruling social and political elite. Emphasized popular resistance to established authority.

The Enlightenment and the Great Awakening

Both emphasized the power and right of individual choice and popular resistance to established authority.

Both aroused hopes that America could become the promised land.

Fewer and fewer people were willing to defer to the ruling social and political elite.

Society

Population Growth Doubled

every 25 years

Cities Small and

isolated from one another.

Education Rapid

expansion.

The Settlement of the Backcountry

Isolation of the backcountry Frontier women

Social Conflict on the Frontier The Paxton Boys (1763) Regulation movements (1760s) Ethnic conflicts

Germans, Scots-Irish, etc.

Boundary Disputes and Tenant Wars Green Mountain boys (1760s)

Eighteenth-Century Seaports

Increasingly sharp class stratification The commercial classes Free and bound workers Women in cities

Urban diversions and hazards Plays, taverns, private social clubs, fraternal

societies. Problems of traffic, fire, and crime

Social Conflict in Seaports Religious tension Class resentment

Politics

Royal colonies British crown responsible for defense. British crown regulated external trade.

Elected lower houses Home rule Self-government in the colonies became

first a habit, then a “right.”

Economy: Mercantilism (self-sufficient)

World’s gold and silver supply fixed.

Nations could gain wealth only at the expense of another country – by seizing its gold and silver and dominating its trade.

Colonies were part of an empire. Source of raw materials. Market for finished goods.

AtlanticTrade

Growing economy

Unfavorable balance

of trade Shortage of

hard money

Ton of debt

Navigation Acts (1651, 1660, 1663)

Terms: All imported goods to be shipped in English

vessels. Enumerated articles could only be shipped to

England or other English colonies. All goods imported by the colonies come

through England.

The Imperial System before 1760 The benefits of benign neglect