Chapter 4- Life in the American Colonies (1607-1770)
Lesson 1- Colonial Economy
Making a Living in the Colonies

• Life based on agriculture
• Colonists adapted to the climate and terrain where they lived

 
Commercial New England

• Thin, rocky soil made farming difficult
  • Subsistence farming- farmers grew just enough for their families
• Everybody in the family worked
  • Spun yarn, milked cows, fenced fields, sowed and harvested crops
  • Women- made cloth, garments, candles, and soap
• Small businesses:
  • Mill for grinding grain or sawing lumber
    • Ran on waterpower from streams
  • Large towns had blacksmiths, shoemakers, furniture makers, and gunsmiths
• Shipbuilding was an important industry
• Coastal cities were centers of trade
• Fishing, hunting for whales for oil and whalebone

 
The Middle Colonies

• Better for farming than New England
  • Fertile soil and a warmer climate
  • Farmers grew wheat and other cash crops (crops that could be sold easily in markets)
• New York and Philadelphia became busy ports and big cities
• Industries- carpentry, flour making, lumber mills, mines, ironworks, small-scale manufacturing
• Scotch-Irish, German, Dutch, and Swedish settlers
  • More cultural diversity (variety) than New England

 
Life in the Southern Colonies

• Rich soil and warm climate
• Large harvests of cash crops
• Little commerce or industry
• Large plantations in the Tidewater (flat, low-lying plains along the coast)
  • Built on rivers so crops could be shipped by boat
  • Like small villages (fields, a cluster of buildings, shops, storerooms, kitchens, chapel, school)
  • Small plantations would have fewer than 50 slaves, large plantations had 200 or more
• Backcountry- region of hills and forests between the Tidewater and the Appalachian Mountains
  • Settlers included newcomers to the colonies
  • Small family farms- corn and tobacco
    • Some had one or two slaves
  • Many more backcountry farmers than plantation owners
    • Plantation owners were wealthier and more powerful

 
Tobacco and Rice

• Tobacco- main cash crop in Maryland and Virginia
  • Planters used indentured servants at first and then slaves
  • Main cash crop of Maryland and Virginia
  • Most tobacco sold in Europe
    • Too much tobacco on the market would bring down prices
• Rice- main cash crop of South Carolina and Georgia
  • Dams built to create paddies (rice fields)
  • Some slaves had lived in the rice growing regions of West Africa
  • More difficult and more dangerous to grow than other crops
    • Land was covered in swamps
    • Snakes, alligators, insects
• Profitable- popular in Europe
  • Prices rose steadily
  • South Carolina and Georgia had fast-growing economies

 
The Growth of Slavery

• Slavery was widely practiced in West Africa
• Huge demand for slaves in the Americas
  • Major part of the colonial economy
• Africans captured and sold to Europeans and loaded onto ships

 
The Middle Passage

• The trip across the Atlantic Ocean
• Second leg of the triangular trade (trade route between three destinations, such as Britain, West Africa, and the West Indies)
• Slaves chained together
• Little food or water
• Dead and sick- thrown overboard
• Whippings
• Sold to plantation owners when they reached American ports

 
The Life of the Slave

• Most worked in the fields
• Overseers forced slaves to work hard
• Slave codes- rules governing the behavior and punishment of slaves
  • Slaves not allowed to leave the plantation without written permission
  • Illegal to teach slaves to read or write
  • Not allowed to gather in large groups
  • Runaways were punished severely
• Families often torn apart
• Slaves developed their own culture from their African languages, customs, and religion
• Some slaves learned carpentry, blacksmithing, or weaving
• Skilled workers set up shops and shared profits with slaveholders
  • Some bought their freedom

 
Critics of Slavery

• Mainly religious- Puritans, Quakers, and Mennonites opposed slavery

 
Lesson 2- Colonial Government
English Principles of Government

• Colonists brought English ideas about government
  • English people had political liberties that were not known elsewhere

 
Protected Rights

• Government must respect civil liberties (rights)
• Magna Carta (1215)- gave English people protection against unjust treatment or punishment

 
Representative Government

• People elect delegates to make laws and conduct government
• Parliament- England’s representative assembly; had the power to legislate (make laws)
  • Two chambers- House of Lords (aristocracy) and the House of Commons (mostly merchants and property owners)
  • Used as a model for American legislatures
• Struggle for power between Parliament and King James II
  • Parliament replaced James II with William and Mary (Glorious Revolution)
    • No ruler would have more power than the legislature

 
The English Bill of Rights

• Parliament drew up the English Bill of Rights in 1689
  • Ruler could not suspend Parliament’s laws, impose taxes, or raise an army without Parliament’s consent
  • Members of Parliament had to be freely elected
  • Trial by jury
  • Banned cruel and unusual punishments

 
Government in America

• Charter colonies- based on a grant of rights by the English monarch to a company
• Proprietary colonies- property of owner(s); proprietors named their own governors and other officials
• Royal colonies- under direct English control
  • Parliament appointed a governor and council (upper house)
    • Usually did what the king and Parliament wanted
  • Colonists selected an assembly (lower house)
• White men who owned property could vote
• Large share of the colonial population took part in government compared to Europe

 
Local Government in the Colonies

• Landowners had the right to vote and pass laws
• Colonists believed they had the right to govern themselves

 
English Economic Policies

• Mercantilism- an economic theory whose goal is building a state’s wealth and power by increasing exports and accumulating precious metals in return
  • Country must export (sell abroad) more than it imports (brings in from foreign markets)
  • Colonies supplied raw materials and served as a market for exports
• American colonies- provided England with raw materials (tobacco, rice, lumber, leather, etc.)
  • Bought English manufactured goods (tools, clothing, furniture)
• Navigation Acts- laws to control trade in the 1650s
  • Forced colonies to sell raw materials to England
  • Goods bought by the colonies from other countries had to go to England first and be taxed
  • Trade on ships built in England or the colonies

 
Colonial Resistance

• Colonists started to oppose the Navigation Acts
  • Wanted to manufacture their own goods and sell products to other countries
• Smuggling- shipping goods without government permission or payment of taxes

 
Lesson 3- Culture and Society
Life in the Colonies

• Population- 250,000 in 1700, 2.5 million by the mid-1770s
  • Slave population grew very quickly
• Immigration- the permanent moving of people into one country from other countries
  • Many people came from Europe to the colonies and traders brought many slaves from Africa
• Women- married early and had large families
• Colonies were a health place to live compared to other parts of the world
• Epidemics (illnesses that affect large numbers of people) were common and many people died

 
A New American Spirit

• Immigrants brought different languages and ways of thinking, but became Americans
• Spirit of independence- settlers developed their own ways of doing things
• Family formed the basic foundation of colonial society

 
Family Roles

• Men- formal heads of households
  • Managed the farm or business
  • Represented the family in the community
  • Worked in the fields and built barns, houses, and fences
  • Some worked as indentured servants or apprentices (young people who agree to learn a trade from a skilled craftsperson)
• Women- ran the households and cared for children
  • Many worked in the fields
  • Married women had few rights
  • Unmarried women- worked as maids or cooks
  • Teachers, nurses, seamstresses
  • Could run businesses and own property, but not vote

 
American Beliefs

• Commitment to education, strong religious beliefs, and openness to new ideas

 
Colonial Education

• Children taught to read and write at home
• Schools in New England and Pennsylvania
  • People needed to be able to read the Bible
  • Public education law in Massachusetts (1647)- required communities with 50 or more homes to have a public school
  • High rate of literacy
• Middle Colonies- most schools were private
  • Widows or unmarried women or religious groups ran schools
• Colleges founded to train ministers

 
The Great Awakening

• Great Awakening- religious revival in the 1730s and 1740s
  • Return to the strong faith of earlier days
  • Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were famous preachers
• Greater religious freedom
  • New types of churches emphasized personal faith rather than church rituals
  • Strength of established official churches declined
• United colonists

 
The Enlightenment

• Movement that spread the idea that knowledge, reason, and science could improve society
• Began in the middle of the 1700s in Europe
• Increased interest in science in the colonies
• Promoted freedom of thought and expression, equality, and the idea of popular government

 
Ideas of Freedom

• Newspapers faced government censorship (banning of printed materials because they contain unpopular or offensive ideas)
• John Peter Zenger was charged with a crime for accusing New York’s governor of corruption in his newspaper
  • Zenger argued that his statements were true
  • Found not guilty

 
Civic Virtue

• Colonists had new ideas of freedom and were thinking in terms of civic virtue (the democratic ideas, practices, and values that are at the heart of citizenship in a free society)
  • Benjamin Franklin- example of civic virtue

 
Lesson 4- Rivalry in North America
Rivalry Between the French and the British

• Britain and France competed for wealth and power
• Ohio River Valley
  • Rich in resources
  • French fur trade with Native Americans
    • Built forts from Lake Ontario to the Ohio River
  • British started building a fort in western Pennsylvania
  • French seized the site and built Fort Duquesne
    • Governor of Virginia sent a militia (military force made up of ordinary citizens) led by George Washington to drive out the French
  • Washington built Fort Necessity near Fort Duquesne
    • French and Native American allies attacked and forced Washington to surrender

 
Native American Alliances

• French had many Native American allies
• Native Americans distrusted the British
• French often married Native American women
• French missionaries converted many Native Americans to Catholicism
• Native Americans helped the French and raided British settlements
• British tried to make a treaty with the Iroquois
  • Iroquois Confederacy- most powerful group of Native Americans in eastern North America
  • Iroquois refused an alliance (partnership) with the British, but promised to remain neutral (not take a side)
• Albany Plan of Union- Benjamin Franklin’s plan for a united colonial government
  • Delegates agreed to it in Albany
  • Rejected by colonial assemblies who did not want to give up power

 
The French and Indian War

• Early success for France
  • Captured several British forts
  • Native Americans carried out raids against the British on the frontier (edges) of the colonies
• William Pitt- became prime minister (head of the British government) in 1757
  • Sent more British troops to fight in North America
  • Decided Britain would pay for the war
    • Would lead to taxes on the colonists after the war
  • Wanted to conquer French Canada
• British won a key victory at Fort Louisbourg in Nova Scotia in 1758
• British captured Fort Duquesne and renamed it Fort Pitt
• Quebec- capital of New France, high above the St. Lawrence River
  • British surprised and defeated the French in Quebec in September 1759
  • Montreal fell in 1760
    • Defeat of France in North America
• Treaty of Paris- ended the war in 1763
  • France gave Canada and lands east of the Mississippi River to Britain
  • Britain got Florida from Spain (France’s ally)
  • Spain got French lands west of the Mississippi River (Louisiana) and the port of New Orleans
  • End of France as a power in North America

 
New British Policies

• Native Americans lost their French allies and trading partners
• British raised prices on their goods, didn’t pay Native Americans to use their land, and colonists began settling in their lands
• Pontiac- chief of an Ottawa village near Detroit
  • Captured a British fort at Detroit in 1763
• Proclamation of 1763- King George declared that colonists couldn’t settle west of the Appalachian Mountains
  • 10,000 troops kept in America to enforce the rule
  • Removed a source of conflict with Native Americans
  • Kept colonists on the coast (where the British could control them)
  • Colonists were upset
    • Limited their freedom of movement
    • British troops might interfere with their liberties
• British government made plans to tax the colonies and tighten trade rules