COLONIAL SOCIETY: Family, Social Order, and Religion

1
COLONIAL SOCIETYFamily, Social Order, and
Religion
2
Sources of Stability New England Colonies of
the Seventeenth Century

• New Englanders replicated traditional English
  social order
• Contrasted with experience in other English
  colonies
• Explanation lies in development of Puritan
  families

3
Immigrant Families and New Social Order

• Puritans believed God ordained the family to
  prevent temptation outside the family
• Reproduce patriarchal English family structure in
  New England
• Greater longevity in New England results in
  invention of grandparents
• Multigenerational families strengthen social
  stability

4
Commonwealth of Families

• Most New Englanders married neighbors of whom
  parents approved chose godly partners
• Education provided by the family
• Towns of families, not of individuals
• New England families did not need indentured
  servants

5
Womens Lives in Puritan New England

• Women not legally equal with men
• Marriages based on mutual love
• Most Women contributed to society as
• wives and mothers
• church members
• small-scale farmers
• Women accommodated themselves to roles they
  believed God ordained

6
Womens Roles

• Women cooked, washed, made clothes, milked the
  cows, and gardened day in and day out
• deputy husbands there was both dependency and
  independence

7
Social Hierarchy in New England

• Absence of very rich necessitates creation of new
  social order (neither rich nor poor)
• New England social order becomes
• -leader not based on wealth but other criteria
• - much greater social mobility than in England

8
The Challenge of the Chesapeake Environment

• Imbalanced sex ratio among immigrants
• High death rate
• Scattered population

9
Family Life at Risk

• Normal family life impossible in Virginia
• mostly young male indentured servants
• most immigrants soon died
• in marriages, one spouse often died within a
  decade
• Serial marriages, extended families common
• Orphaned children raised by strangers

10
Women in Chesapeake Society

• Scarcity gives some women bargaining power in
  marriage market
• Women without family protection vulnerable to
  sexual exploitation
• Childbearing extremely dangerous
• Chesapeake women died 20 years earlier than women
  in New England

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The Structure of Planter Society The Gentry

• Tobacco the basis of Chesapeake wealth
• Early gentry become stable ruling elite by 1700

12
The Structure of Planter Society The Freemen

• The largest class in Chesapeake society
• Most freed at the end of indenture
• Live on the edge of poverty

13
The Structure of Planter Society Indentured
Servants

• Servitude a temporary status
• Conditions harsh
• Servants regard their bondage as slavery

14
The Structure of Planter Society Post-1680s
Stability

• Gentry ranks open to people with capital before
  1680, no matter reputation or social standing
• Demographic shift (life expectancy
  increased)after 1680 creates creole(born in
  America) elite
• Shift adds stability/legitimacy to colony
• Ownership of slaves consolidates planter wealth
  and position
• Freemen find advancement more difficult

15
The Structure of Planter Society A Dispersed
Population

• Large-scale tobacco cultivation requires
• great landholdings
• ready access to water-borne commerce
• Result population dispersed along great tidal
  rivers
• Virginia a rural society devoid of towns
• Dispersion results in lack of institutions, like
  schools

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Rise of a Commercial Empire

• English leaders ignore colonies until 1650s
• (Salutary Neglect)
• Navigation Acts passed to regulate, protect,
  glean revenue from commerce

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Regulating Colonial Trade The Navigation Act
of 1660

• Most important law passed by the Crown prior to
  the American Revolution
• Ships engage in English colonial trade
• must be made in England (or America)
• must carry a crew at least 75 English
• Enumerated goods only to English ports
• 1660 list included tobacco, sugar, cotton,
  indigo, dyes, ginger
• Pay tariff at port, England makes money,
  colonists lose money (initially)

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Regulating Colonial Trade The Navigation Act
of 1663

• Goods shipped to English colonies must pass
  through England
• Increased price paid by colonial consumers
  because colonists had to pay the duties added on
  in the English port.

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Results of 1663 Act

1. Encouraged domestic shipbuilding
2. Prohibited European rivals from getting these
   enumerated goods anywhere else but England

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Regulating Colonial TradeImplementing the Acts

• New England merchants skirt laws
• English revisions tighten loopholes governors
  now responsible to keep other countries out of
  ports
• 1696--Board of Trade created(to enforce)
• Navigation Acts eventually benefit colonial
  merchants because 25 of all Englands needs come
  from American Colonies.

21
Civil War in Virginia Bacon's Rebellion

• Nathaniel Bacon leads rebellion, 1676
• Rebellion allows small farmers, blacks and women
  to join, demand reforms
• Governor William Berkeley regains control
• Rebellion collapses after Bacons death
• Gentry recovers positions, unite over next
  decades to oppose royal governors

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COMMON EXPERIENCES, SEPARATE CULTURES
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Growth and Diversity

• 1700-1750 colonial population rises from
  250,000 to over two million
• Much growth through natural increase
• Large influx of non-English Europeans, especially
  African, Scotch-Irish, and Germans