CHAPTER 4 Experience of Empire Eighteenth-Century America

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CHAPTER 4Experience of Empire Eighteenth-Century
America
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Growth and Diversity

• 1700-1750colonial population rose from 250,000
  to over two million
• Much growth through natural increase
• Large influx of non-English Europeans
• Scots-Irish Flee English Oppression
• Germans Search for a Better Life
• Convict Settlers

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Distribution of European and African Immigrants
in the Thirteen Colonies
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Native Americans Stake Out a Middle Ground

• Disease and European settled agricultural
  practices made it difficult for Europeans and
  Natives to coexist
• Many eastern Indians moved into trans-Appalachian
  region (Middle Ground)
• Native Americans continued to trade with
  Europeans for metal goods and weapons
• Play English and French against each other

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The Spanish Borderlands, ca. 1770
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Economic Transformation

• Long-term period of economic and population
  growth
• Economies were geared to commerce, not
  manufacturing
• Trade was mainly with England and West Indies
  (West Indies provided merchants with profits that
  offset their British debts)
• English mass-production of consumer goods
  stimulated rise in colonial imports
• Inhabitants emulated English culture
• Trade between colonies increased

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The Great Wagon Road
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American Enlightenment

• Intellectual movement that swept Europe with new,
  radical ideas
• Age of Reason
• Searching for useful, practical knowledge
• The Enlightenments basic assumptions
• Optimistic view of human nature
• God set up the universe and human society to
  operate by natural laws
• Mixed reception in America

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Religious Revivals

• The Great Awakening
• Spontaneous, evangelical revivals that weakened
  the authority of the old colonial religions
• People began to re-think basic assumptions about
  church and state, institutions and society
• Jonathan Edwards emphasized the Calvinistic
  teachings of the Puritans (the importance of
  personal religious experience)
• The Awakening promoted a democratic, religious
  union of national scope
• Fostered sense of American unity/identity

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Clash of Political Cultures

• Colonists attempted to emulate British political
  institutions
• Effort led to discovery of how different they
  were from English people
• Example Royal governors
• More powers than king in England
• Veto legislation
• Dismiss judges
• Command provincial military
• Could NOT tax

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Colonial Assemblies/Legislatures

• Middle-class democracies
• Primary function was to prevent the encroachments
  on the peoples rights
• Assemblies controlled colonys finances
• No incentive for assembly to cooperate with
  governors (sometimes even hostile toward them)
• Exercised extreme vigilance against the spread of
  privileged power

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Century of Imperial War

• Britains conflicts with continental rivals like
  France spilled over to colonies
• Security threats from these conflicts forced
  colonists into more military and political
  cooperation
• British colonies overwhelmingly militarily
  superior to New France but ineffective

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North America, 1750
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A Century of Conflict Major Wars, 16891763
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Seven Years War/French and Indian War

• Wars fought for control of the Mississippi River
  and Ohio River Valley
• Prime Minister William Pitt shifted strategy to
  focus on North America (reason for victory)
• Peace of Paris 1763 France lost
• British got all North America east of Mississippi
• French retained two Caribbean Islands
• This particular war had the greatest impact on
  the colonies politically and economically

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Seven Years War, 17561763
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Albany Congress

• Albany Congress, 1754
• Benjamin Franklins idea of central colonial
  government
• Elected representatives decide on matters of
  defense, western expansion, and relations with
  Native Americans
• Could levy taxes to support its operations
• Albany Plan failed, disliked by English and
  Americans

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Perceptions of War

• Made colonists aware of their land
• Created trained officer corps that knew British
  vulnerabilities
• Colonists saw themselves as junior partners to
  British
• British felt colonists ungrateful and not willing
  to bear their fair share of burden

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North America after 1763