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  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)

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Slavery in British North America  Great Ethnic Diversity in Slave Population.  Before 1750: Slave importation.  17 th century – Brazil & Caribbean  18 th 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 ( ).  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 17 th 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 ( )  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.

Atlantic Trade  Growing economy  Unfavorabl e 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