Introduction about the history of the colonization of America

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Plan

1. Introduction about the history of the colonization of America

2. Goals of colonization and mercantilism

3. Religious persecution

4. Spanish colonies (Florida, New Mexico, California)

5. French colony - Louisiana and Netherlands colony - New Netherland

6. Russian colonies and English colonies (Virginia, New England, Dominion of New England, Middle Colonies, Carolinas, East and West Florida)

7. British colonial government and unification of the British colonies

8. French and Indian War

9. Ties to the British Empire

10. Tax protests lead to Revolution

11. Colonial life

12. Culture and education

13. Religion

14. Mid-Atlantic Region

15. Farming

16. Seaports

17. Slaves

List of literature

1. Introduction about the history of the colonization of America

The colonial history of the United States covers the history of European settlements from the start of colonization of America until their incorporation into the United States. In the late 16th century, England, France, Spain and the Netherlands launched major colonization programs in eastern North America. Small early attempts -- such as the English Lost Colony of Roanoke -- often disappeared; everywhere the death rate of the first arrivals was very high. Nevertheless successful colonies were established. European settlers came from a variety of social and religious groups. No aristocrats settled permanently, but a number of adventurers, soldiers, farmers, and tradesmen arrived. Diversity was an American characteristic as the Dutch of New Netherland, the Swedes and Finns of New Sweden, the English Quakers of Pennsylvania, the English Puritans of New England, the English settlers of Jamestown, and the "worthy poor" of Georgia, came to the new continent and built colonies with distinctive social, religious, political and economic styles. Occasionally one colony took control of another (during wars between their European parents). Only in Nova Scotia (now part of Canada) did the conquerors expel the previous colonists. Instead they all lived side by side in peace.

There were no major civil wars among the 13 colonies, and the two chief armed rebellions (in Virginia in 1676 and in New York in 1689-91) were short-lived failures. Wars between the French and the British--the French and Indian Warsand Father Rale's War--were recurrent, and involved French-support for Wabanaki Confederacy attacks on the frontiers. By 1760 France was defeated and the British seized its colonies.

The four distinct regions were: New England, the Middle Colonies, the Chesapeake Bay Colonies (Upper South) and the Lower South. Some historians add a fifth region, the Frontier, which was never separately organized.

By the time European settlers arrived around 1600-1650, the majority of the Native Americans living in the eastern United States had been decimated by new diseases, introduced to them decades before by explorers and sailors.

colonization tax revolution

2. Goals of colonization and mercantilism

Colonizers came from European kingdoms with highly developed military, naval, governmental and entrepreneurial capabilities. The Spanish and Portuguese centuries-old experience of conquest and colonization during the Reconquista, coupled with new oceanic ship navigation skills, provided the tools, ability, and desire to colonize the New World. England, France and the Netherlands started colonies in both the West Indies and North America. They had the ability to build ocean-worthy ships, but did not have as strong a history of colonization in foreign lands as did Portugal and Spain. However, English entrepreneurs gave their colonies a base of merchant-based investment that needed much less government support.

Mercantilism

Mercantilism was the basic policy imposed by Britain on its colonies from the 1660s. Mercantilism meant that the government and merchants based in England became partners with the goal of increasing political power and private wealth, to the exclusion of other empires and even merchants based in its own colonies. The government protected its London-based merchants--and kept others out--by trade barriers, regulations, and subsidies to domestic industries in order to maximize exports from and minimize imports to the realm. The government had to fight smuggling, especially by American merchants, some of whose activities (which included direct trade with the French, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese) were classified as such by the Navigation Acts.

The goal of mercantilism was to run trade surpluses, so that gold and silver would pour into London. Thus the British Navy captured New Amsterdam (New York) in 1664. The colonies were captive markets for British industry, and the goal was to enrich the mother country.

3. Religious persecution

The prospect of religious persecution by authorities of the crown and the Church of England prompted a significant number of colonization efforts. People fleeing persecution by King Charles I were responsible for settling most of New England, and the Province of Maryland was founded in part to be a haven for Roman Catholics.

Early colonial failures

Numerous colonies failed in the beginning of the settlement era. The colonists faced high rates of death because of disease, starvation, inefficient resupply or wars with Native Americans or other European powers.

The French failed at Parris Island, South Carolina in 1562-1563; Fort Caroline, Florida, in 1564-1565; Saint Croix Island, Maine 1604-1605; and Fort Saint Louis, Texas in 1685-1689.

The most notable English failures were the "Lost Colony of Roanoke" (1587-90) in North Carolina and Popham Colony in Maine (1607-1608). It was at the Roanoke Colony that the first English child, Virginia Dare, was born in the Americas; her fate is unknown.

4. Spanish colonies (Florida, New Mexico, California)

At one time, Spain claimed and controlled North America west of the Mississippi and south of the Canadian border. Additionally, east of the Mississippi River, Spain claimed what is now the state of Florida and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Florida

Spain established several small outposts in Florida. The most important, St. Augustine, Florida, founded in 1565, was repeatedly attacked and burned, but was the first permanent European settlement in what is now the continental United States. Pirate attacks were unrelenting against small outposts as well as St. Augustine. The British and their colonies repeatedly made war with Spain and its colonies and outposts. South Carolina launched large scale raiding expeditions in the early 18th century, which effectively destroyed the Spanish mission system. St. Augustine and Pensacola survived, but English-allied Indians such as the Yamasee conducted slave raids throughout Florida, killing or enslaving most of the region's natives. In the mid-18th century, invading Seminoles from Georgia killed most of the remaining local Indians. Florida had about 3,000 Spaniards when Britain took control in 1763. Nearly all quickly left. Even though control was restored to Spain in 1783, Spain sent no more settlers or missionaries to Florida. The inhabitants of West Florida revolted against the Spanish in 1810 and formed the Republic of West Florida, which was quickly annexed by the United States. The United States took possession of the remainder, East Florida, in 1819.

New Mexico

Throughout the 16th century, Spain explored the southwest from Mexico with the most notable explorer being Francisco Coronado whose expedition rode throughout modern New Mexico and Arizona. The Spanish, moving north from Mexico, settled villages in the upper valley of the Rio Grande, including much of the western half of the present-day state of New Mexico. The capital was Santa Fe. Local Indians expelled the Spanish for 12 years following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680; they returned in 1692 in the "bloodless" reoccupation of Santa Fe. Control was by Spain (223 years) and Mexico (25 years) until 1846, when the American Army of the West took over in the Mexican-American War. About of a third of the population in the 21st century descends from the Spanish settlers.

California

Spanish explorers sailed along the coast of present day California from the early 16th century to the mid-18th century, but no settlements were established over those centuries.

Spain, from 1769 until the independence of Mexico in 1820, sent missionaries and soldiers to Alta California who created a series of missions operated by Franciscan priests. They also operated presidios (forts), pueblos (settlements)s, and ranchos (land grant ranches), along the southern and central coast of California. Father Junнpero Serra, founded the first missions in Spanish upper Las Californias, starting with Mission San Diego de Alcalб in 1769. Through the Spanish and Mexican eras they eventually comprised a series of 21 missions to spread Christianity among the local Native Americans, linked by El Camino Real ("The Royal Road"). They were established to convert the indigenous peoples of California, while protecting historic Spanish claims to the area. The missions introduced European technology, livestock, and crops. The Indian Reductions converted the native peoples into groups of Mission Indians; they worked as laborers in the missions and the ranchos. In the 1830s the missions were disbanded and the lands sold to Californios. The indigenous Native American population was around 150,000; the Californios (Mexican era Californians) around 10,000; with the rest immigrant Americans and other nationalities involved in trade and business in California.

5. French colony - Louisiana and Netherlands colony - New Netherland

Louisiana

French Louisiana, first settled at Mobile in 1702, started its growth when 7,000 French immigrants arrived in New Orleans in 1718. There was little economic development because the city lacked a large hinterland. The areas around New Orleans and west of the Mississippi were given to Spain in 1769. Louisiana was taken back by France and sold to the United States in 1803 in the Louisiana Purchase.

New Netherland

Nieuw-Nederland, or New Netherland, chartered in 1614, was a colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands in what became New York State and parts of neighboring states. The peak population was less than 10,000. The Dutch established apatroon system with feudal-like rights given to a few powerful landholders; they also established religious tolerance and free trade. The colony's capital, New Amsterdam, founded in 1625 and located at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan, would grow to become a major world city. The city was captured by the English in 1664; they took complete control of the colony in 1674 and renamed it New York. However the Dutch landholdings remained, and the Hudson River Valley maintained a traditional Dutch character until the 1820s.; however, traces of Dutch influence, such as homes, family surnames, and the names of roads and whole towns remain in present-day northern New Jersey and south eastern New York State

6. Russian colonies and English colonies (Virginia, New England, Dominion of New England, Middle Colonies, Carolinas, East and West Florida)

Russia explored the area that became Alaska starting with the Second Kamchatka expedition in the 1730s and early 1740s. Their first settlement was founded in 1784 by Grigory Shelikhov. The Russian-American Company was formed in 1799 with the influence of Nikolay Rezanov for the purpose of buying sea otters for their fur from native hunters. In 1867 the U.S. purchased Alaska and nearly all Russians abandoned the area except a few missionaries of the Russian Orthodox Church working among the natives.

7. British colonial government and unification of the British colonies

England made its first successful efforts at the start of the 17th century for several reasons. During this era, English proto-nationalism and national assertiveness blossomed under the threat of Spanish invasion, assisted by a degree of Protestant militarism and the energy of Queen Elizabeth. At this time, however, there was no official attempt by the English government to create a colonial empire. Rather, the motivation behind the founding of colonies was piecemeal and variable. Practical considerations, such as commercial enterprise, overpopulation and the desire for freedom of religion, played their parts. The main waves of settlement came in the 17th century. After 1700 most immigrants to Colonial America arrived as indentured servants--young unmarried men and women seeking a new life in a much richer environment. Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, the British shipped an estimated 50,000 convicts to its American colonies. The first convicts to arrive pre-dated the arrival of the Mayflower.

Virginia

The first successful English colony was Jamestown, established May 14, 1607 near Chesapeake Bay. The business venture was financed and coordinated by the London Virginia Company, a joint stock company looking for gold. Its first years were extremely difficult, with very high death rates from disease and starvation, wars with local Indians, and little gold. The colony survived and flourished by turning to tobacco as a cash crop. By the late 17th century, Virginia's export economy was largely based on tobacco, and new, richer settlers came in to take up large portions of land, build large plantations and import indentured servants and slaves. In 1676, Bacon's Rebellion occurred, but was suppressed by royal officials. After Bacon's Rebellion, African slaves rapidly replaced indentured servants as Virginia's main labor force.

The colonial assembly shared power with a royally appointed governor. On a more local level, governmental power was invested in county courts, which were self-perpetuating (the incumbents filled any vacancies and there never were popular elections). As cash crop producers, Chesapeake plantations were heavily dependent on trade with England. With easy navigation by river, there were few towns and no cities; planters shipped directly to Britain. High death rates and a very young population profile characterized the colony during its first years.

New England

The Pilgrims were a small Protestant sect based in England and the Netherlands. One group sailed on the Mayflower and settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. After drawing up the Mayflower Compact by which they gave themselves broad powers of self-governance, they established the small Plymouth Colony. William Bradford was their main leader. Providence Plantation was founded in 1636 by Rev. Roger Williams on land provided by the Narragansett sachem Canonicus. Williams, fleeing from religious persecution in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, agreed with his fellow settlers on an egalitarian constitution providing for majority rule "in civil things" and "liberty of conscience".

Other colonists who disagreed with Puritans in Massachusetts settled to the north, mingling with adventurers and profit-oriented settlers to establish more religiously diverse colonies in New Hampshire and Maine. These small settlements were absorbed by Massachusetts when it made significant land claims in the 1640s and 1650s, but New Hampshire was eventually given a separate charter in 1679.

Dominion of New England

Under King James II of England, the New England colonies (as well as New York and the Jerseys) were briefly united as the Dominion of New England (1686-89). The administration eventually led by Governor Sir Edmund Andros seized colonial charters, revoked land titles, and ruled without local assemblies, causing anger among the population. The 1689 Boston revolt, inspired by England's Glorious Revolution against James II, caused Andros, Boston Anglicans, and senior dominion officials to be arrested by the Massachusetts militia. Andros was jailed for several months, then returned to England. The Dominion of New England was dissolved and governments resumed under their earlier charters. However, the Massachusetts charter had been revoked in 1684, and a new one was issued in 1691 that combined Massachusetts and Plymouth into the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Although King William III sought at least to unite the New England colonies militarily (for example, by appointing the Earl of Bellomont to three simultaneous governorships, and military command over Connecticut and Rhode Island), these attempts at unified control failed.

Middle Colonies

The Middle Colonies, consisting of the present-day states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, were characterized by a large degree of diversity--religious, political, economic, and ethnic. The Dutch colony of New Netherland was taken over by the British and renamed New York but large numbers of Dutch remained in the colony. New Jersey began as a division of New York, and was for a time divided into the proprietary colonies of East and West Jersey. Many German and Irish immigrants settled in these areas, as well as in Connecticut. A large portion of the settlers who came to Pennsylvania were German. Philadelphia became the center of the colonies; by the end of the colonial period 30,000 people lived there, having come from diverse nations and practicing numerous trades.

Pennsylvania was founded in 1681 as a proprietary colony of the Quaker William Penn. It came to include the territory of Delaware, which had once been part of New Netherland; Delaware had a government independent of that established in Philadelphia, but was never a separate colony.

Carolinas

The first attempted English settlement south of Virginia was the Province of Carolina. It was a private venture, financed by a group of English Lords Proprietors, who obtained aRoyal Charter to the Carolinas in 1663, hoping that a new colony in the south would become profitable like Jamestown. Carolina was not settled until 1670, and even then the first attempt failed because there was no incentive for emigration to that area. Eventually, however, the Lords combined their remaining capital and financed a settlement mission to the area, a mission led by Sir John Colleton. The expedition located fertile and defensible ground at what was to become Charleston (originally Charles Town for Charles II of England), thus beginning the English colonization of the mainland. The original settlers in South Carolina established a lucrative trade in provisions, deerskins and Indian captives with the Caribbean islands. The settlers came mainly from the English colony of Barbados and brought African slaves with them. Barbados, as a wealthy sugarcane plantation island, was one of the early English colonies to use large numbers of Africans in plantation style agriculture. The cultivation of rice was introduced during the 1690s via Africans from the rice-growing regions of Africa. North Carolina remained a frontier throughout the early colonial period.

At first, South Carolina was politically divided. Its ethnic makeup included the original settlers, a group of rich, slave-owning English settlers from the island of Barbados; andHuguenots, a French-speaking community of Protestants. Nearly continuous frontier warfare during the era of King William's War and Queen Anne's War drove economic and political wedges between merchants and planters. The disaster of the 1715 Yamasee War, which threatened the colony's viability, set off a decade of political turmoil. By 1729, theproprietary government had collapsed, and the Proprietors sold both colonies back to the British crown.

East and West Florida

In 1763, Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain, which established the colonies of East and West Florida. The Floridas remained loyal to Great Britain during the American Revolution. They were returned to Spain in 1783 (in exchange for the Bahamas), at which time most of the British left. The Spanish then neglected the Floridas: few Spaniards lived there when the US bought the area in 1819.

British colonial government

Each colony had a paid colonial agent in London to represent its interests.

The three forms of colonial government in 1776 were provincial, proprietary, and charter. These governments were all subordinate to the king in London, with no explicit relationship with the British Parliament. Beginning late in the 17th century, the administration of all British colonies was overseen by a Board of Trade.

Provincial colonies

New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and eventually Massachusetts, were provincial colonies.

The provincial government was governed by commissions created at pleasure by the monarch. A governor (and in some provinces his council) were appointed by the crown. The governor was invested with general executive powers, and authorized to call a locally elected assembly. The governor's council would sit as an upper house when the assembly was in session in addition to its role in advising the governor. Assemblies were made up of representatives elected by the freeholders and planters (landowners) of the province. The governor had the power of absolute veto, and could prorogue (i.e., delay) and dissolve the assembly.

The assembly's role was to make all local laws and ordinances, ensuring that they were not inconsistent with the laws of England. In practice this did not always occur, since many of the provincial assemblies sought to expand their powers and limit those of the governor and crown. Laws could be examined by the Board of Trade, which also held veto power of legislation. Proprietary colonies

Pennsylvania (which included Delaware), New Jersey, and Maryland were proprietary colonies. They were governed much as royal colonies except that lord proprietors, rather than the king, appointed the governor. They were set up after the Restoration of 1660 and typically enjoyed greater civil and religious liberty.

Charter colonies

Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Providence Plantation, and Connecticut were charter colonies. The Massachusetts charter was revoked in 1684, and was replaced by a provincial charter that was issued in 1691.

Charter governments were political corporations created by letters patent, giving the grantees control of the land and the powers of legislative government. The charters provided a fundamental constitution and divided powers among legislative, executive, and judicial functions, with those powers being vested in officials.

Political culture

As Bonomi shows, the most distinctive feature of colonial society was the vibrant political culture, which attracted the most talented and ambitious young men into politics.First, suffrage was the most widespread in the world, with every man who owned a certain amount of property allowed to vote. While fewer than 1% of British men could vote, a majority of white American men were eligible. The roots of democracy were present, although deference was typically shown to social elites in colonial elections. Second, in the colonies a very wide range of public and private business was decided by elected bodies, especially the assemblies and county governments in each colony. They handled land grants, commercial subsidies, and taxation, as well as oversight of roads, poor relief, taverns, and schools. Americans sued each other at a very high rate, with binding decisions made not by a great lord but by local judges and juries. This promoted the rapid expansion of the legal profession, so that the intense involvement of lawyers in politics became an American characteristic by the 1770s.

Thirdly, the American colonies were exceptional in the world because of the representation of many different interest groups in political decision-making. Unlike Europe, where aristocratic families and the established church were in control, the American political culture was open to economic, social, religious, ethnic and geographical interests, with merchants, landlords, petty farmers, artisans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Quakers, Germans, Scotch Irish, Yankees, Yorkers, and many other identifiable groups taking part. Elected representatives learned to listen to these interests because 90% of the men in the lower houses lived in their districts, unlike England where it was common to have a member of Parliament and absentee member of Parliament. Finally, and most dramatically, the Americans were fascinated by and increasingly adopted the political values of Republicanism, which stressed equal rights, the need for virtuous citizens, and the evils of corruption, luxury, and aristocracy. Republicanism provided the framework for colonial resistance to British schemes of taxation after 1763, which escalated into the Revolution.

None of the colonies had stable political parties of the sort that formed in the 1790s, but each had shifting factions that vied for power, especially in the perennial battles between the appointed governor and the elected assembly. There were often "country" and "court" factions, representing those opposed to and in favor of, respectively, of the governor's actions and agenda. Massachusetts, which from its 1691 charter had particularly low requirements for voting eligibility and strong rural representation in its assembly, also had a strong populist faction that represented the province's lower classes.

Up and down the colonies non-English ethnic groups had clusters of settlements. The most numerous were the Scotch Irish and the Germans. Each group assimilated into the dominant English, Protestant commercial and political culture, albeit with local variations. They tended to vote in blocs and politicians negotiated with group leaders for votes. They generally retained their historic languages and cultural traditions, even as they merged into the emerging American culture.

Ethnocultural factors were most visible in Pennsylvania. During 1756-1776, the Quakers were the largest faction in the legislature, but they were losing their dominance to the emerging Presbyterian faction based on Scotch-Irish votes, supported by Germans.

Unification of the British colonies

Efforts at common defense of the colonies (principally against shared threats from Indians, the French, and the Dutch) began as early as the 1640s, when the Puritan colonies of New England formed a confederation to coordinate military and judicial matters. From the 1670s several royal governors, notably Sir Edmund Andros (who at various times governed New York, New England, and Virginia) and Francis Nicholson (governed Maryland, Virginia, Nova Scotia, and Carolina) proposed or attempted to implement means to coordinate defensive and offensive military matters. After King Phillips War, Andros successfully negotiated the Covenant Chain, a series of Indian treaties that brought relative calm to the frontiers of the middle colonies for many years.

The northern colonies (particularly present-day Maine and New Hampshire) experienced numerous assaults from the Wabanaki Confederacy and the French from Acadia during the four French and Indian Wars as well as Father Rale's War and Father Le Loutre's War.

One event that reminded colonists of their shared identity as British subjects was the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) in Europe. This conflict spilled over into the colonies, where it was known as "King George's War". The major battles took place in Europe, but American colonial troops fought the French and their Indian allies in New York, New England, and Nova Scotia with the Siege of Louisbourg (1745). At the Albany Congress of 1754, Benjamin Franklin proposed that the colonies be united by a Grand Council overseeing a common policy for defense, expansion, and Indian affairs. While the plan was thwarted by colonial legislatures and King George II, it was an early indication that the British colonies of North America were headed towards unification.

8. French and Indian War

The French and Indian War (1754-1763) was the American extension of the general European conflict known as the Seven Years' War. Although previous colonial wars in North America had started in Europe and then spread to the colonies, the French and Indian War is notable for having started in North America and then having spread to Europe. Increasing competition between Britain and France, especially in the Great Lakes and Ohio valley, was one of the primary origins of the war.

The French and Indian War took on a new significance for the British North American colonists when William Pitt the Elder decided that, in order to win the war against France, major military resources needed to be devoted to North America. For the first time, the continent became one of the main theaters of what could be termed a "world war". During the war, the position of the British colonies as part of theBritish Empire was made truly apparent, as British military and civilian officials took on an increased presence in the lives of Americans. The war also increased a sense of American unity in other ways. It caused men, who might normally have never left their own colony, to travel across the continent, fighting alongside men from decidedly different, yet still "American", backgrounds. Throughout the course of the war, British officers trained American ones (most notably George Washington) for battle--which would later benefit the American Revolution. Also, colonial legislatures and officials had to cooperate intensively, for the first time, in pursuit of the continent-wide military effort. The relations between the British military establishment and the colonists were not always positive, setting the stage for later distrust and dislike of British troops. In the Treaty of Paris (1763), France formally ceded the eastern part of its vast North American empire to Britain (having secretly given the territory of Louisiana west of the Mississippi River to Spain the previous year). Before the war, Britain held the thirteen American colonies, most of present-day Nova Scotia, and most of the Hudson Bay watershed. Following the war, Britain gained all French territory east of the Mississippi River, including Quebec, the Great Lakes, and the Ohio River valley. Britain also gained Spanish Florida, from which it formed the colonies of East and West Florida. In removing a major foreign threat to the thirteen colonies, the war also largely removed the colonists' need of colonial protection.

The British and colonists triumphed jointly over a common foe. The colonists' loyalty to the mother country was stronger than ever before. However, disunity was beginning to form. British Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder had decided to wage the war in the colonies with the use of troops from the colonies and tax funds from Britain itself. This was a successful wartime strategy, but after the war was over, each side believed that it had borne a greater burden than the other.

The British elite, the most heavily taxed of any in Europe, pointed out angrily that the colonists paid little to the royal coffers. The colonists replied that their sons had fought and died in a war that served European interests more than their own. This dispute was a link in the chain of events that soon brought about the American Revolution.

9. Ties to the British Empire

Although the colonies were very different from one another, they were still a part of the British Empire in more than just name.

Socially, the colonial elite of Boston, New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia saw their identity as British. Although many had never been to Britain, they imitated British styles of dress, dance, and etiquette. This social upper echelon built its mansions in the Georgian style, copied the furniture designs of Thomas Chippendale, and participated in the intellectual currents of Europe, such as the Enlightenment. To many of their inhabitants, the seaport cities of colonial America were truly British cities.

Republicanism

Many of the political structures of the colonies drew upon the republicanism expressed by opposition leaders in Britain, most notably the Commonwealth men and the Whigtraditions. Many Americans at the time saw the colonies' systems of governance as modeled after the British constitution of the time, with the king corresponding to the governor, the House of Commons to the colonial assembly, and the House of Lords to the Governor's council. The codes of law of the colonies were often drawn directly from English law; indeed, English common law survives not only in Canada, but also throughout the United States. Eventually, it was a dispute over the meaning of some of these political ideals, especially political representation, and republicanism that led to the American Revolution.

Consumption

Another point on which the colonies found themselves more similar than different was the booming import of British goods. The British economy had begun to grow rapidly at the end of the 17th century, and by the mid-18th century, small factories in Britain were producing much more than the nation could consume. Finding a market for their goods in the British colonies of North America, Britain increased her exports to that region by 360% between 1740 and 1770. Because British merchants offered generous credit to their customers, Americans began buying staggering amounts of British goods. From Nova Scotia to Georgia, all British subjects bought similar products, creating and anglicizing a sort of common identity.

Atlantic world

In recent years historians have enlarged their perspective to cover the entire Atlantic world in a subfield now known as Atlantic history. Of special interest are such themes as international migration, trade, colonization, comparative military and governmental institutions, the transmission of religions and missionary work, and the slave trade. It was the Age of the Enlightenment, and ideas flowed back and forth across the Atlantic, with Philadelphian Benjamin Franklin playing a major role. Warfare was critical, for as Furstenberg, (2008) explains, from 1754 to 1815, the major imperial players - Britain, the American colonies, Spain, France, the First Nations (Indians) and the United States fought a series of conflicts that can be called a "Long War for the West" over control of the region. Women played a role in the emergence of the capitalist economy in the Atlantic world. The types of local commercial exchange in which they participated independently - especially markets in dairy and produce commodities - were well integrated with the trade networks between colonial merchants throughout the Atlantic region. For example, local women merchants were important suppliers of foodstuffs to transatlantic shipping concerns.

10. Tax protests lead to Revolution

In the colonial era, Americans insisted on their rights as Englishmen to have their own legislature raise all taxes. Tax loads in practice were very light, and far lower than in England. Beginning in 1765 the British Parliament asserted its supreme authority to lay taxes, and a series of American protests began that led directly to the American Revolution. The first wave of protests attacked the Stamp Act of 1765, and marked the first time Americans from each of the 13 colonies met together and planned a common front against illegal taxes. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 dumped British tea into Boston Harbor because it contained a hidden tax Americans refused to pay. The British responded by trying to crush traditional liberties in Massachusetts, leading to the American revolution starting in 1775.

The idea of independence steadily became more widespread, after being first proposed and advocated by a number of public figures and commentators throughout the Colonies. One of the most prominent voices on behalf of independence was Thomas Paine, in his pamphlet Common Sense published in 1776. Another group which called for independence was the Sons of Liberty, which had been founded in 1765 in Boston by Samuel Adams and which was now becoming even more strident and numerous

The Parliament attempted a series of taxes and punishments which met more and more resistance: First Quartering Act (1765); Declaratory Act (1766); Townshend Revenue Act(1767); and Tea Act (1773). In response to the Boston Tea Party Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts: Second Quartering Act (1774); Quebec Act (1774); Massachusetts Government Act (1774); Administration of Justice Act (1774); Boston Port Act (1774); Prohibitory Act (1775). By this point the 13 colonies had organized themselves into the Continental Congress and began setting up shadow governments and drilling their militia in preparation for war.

11. Colonial life

Women's roles

The experiences of women during the colonial era varied greatly from colony to colony. In New England, the Puritan settlers brought their strong religious values with them to the New World, which dictated that a woman be subordinate to her husband and dedicate herself to rearing God-fearing children to the best of her ability. Hispanic women were at the center of family life in New Mexico and California.

There were ethnic differences in the treatment of women. Among Puritan settlers in New England, wives almost never worked in the fields with their husbands. In German communities in Pennsylvania, however, many women worked in fields and stables. German and Dutch immigrants granted women more control over property, which was not permitted in the local English law. Unlike English colonial wives, German and Dutch wives owned their own clothes and other items and were also given the ability to write wills disposing of the property brought into the marriage. Much later on in the colonial experience, as the values of the American Enlightenment were imported from Britain, the philosophies of such thinkers as John Locke weakened the view that husbands were natural "rulers" over their wives and replacing it with a (slightly) more liberal conception of marriage. Women also lost most control of their property when marrying. Even single women could not sue anyone or be sued, or make contracts, and divorce was almost impossible until the late eighteenth century.

New England

In New England, the Puritans created self-governing communities of religious congregations of farmers, or yeomen, and their families. High-level politicians gave out plots of land to male settlers, or proprietors, who then divided the land amongst themselves. Large portions were usually given to men of higher social standing, but every white man--who wasn't indentured or criminally bonded--had enough land to support a family. Every male citizen had a voice in the town meeting. The town meeting levied taxes, built roads, and elected officials who managed town affairs. The towns did not have courts--that was a function of a larger unit, the county, whose officials were appointed by the state government. The Congregational Church, the church the Puritans founded, was not automatically joined by all New England residents because of Puritan beliefs that God singled out specific people for salvation. Instead, membership was limited to those who could convincingly "test" before members of the church that they had been saved. They were known as "the elect" or "Saints" and made up less than 40% of the population of New England.

Farm life

A majority of New England residents were small farmers. Within these small farm families, and English families as well, a man had complete power over the property and his wife. When married, an English woman lost her maiden name and personal identity, meaning she could not own property, file lawsuits, or participate in political life, even when widowed. The role of wives was to raise and nurture healthy children and support their husbands. Most women carried out these duties. During the 18th century, couples usually married between the ages of 20-24 and 6-8 children were typical of a family, with three on average surviving to adulthood. Farm women provided most of the materials needed by the rest of the family by spinning yarn from wool and knitting sweaters and stockings, making candles and soap from ashes, and churning milk into butter.

Most New England parents tried to help their sons establish farms of their own. When sons married, fathers gave them gifts of land, livestock, or farming equipment; daughters received household goods, farm animals, and/or cash. Arranged marriages were very unusual; normally, children chose their own spouses from within a circle of suitable acquaintances who shared their race, religion, and social standing. Parents retained veto power over their children's marriages.

New England farming families generally lived in wooden houses because of the abundance of trees. A typical New England farmhouse was one-and-a-half stories tall and had a strong frame (usually made of large square timbers) that was covered by wooden clapboard siding. A large chimney stood in the middle of the house that provided cooking facilities and warmth during the winter. One side of the ground floor contained a hall, a general-purpose room where the family worked and ate meals. Adjacent to the hall was the parlor, a room used to entertain guests that contained the family's best furnishings and the parent's bed. Children slept in a loft above, while the kitchen was either part of the hall or was located in a shed along the back of the house. Because colonial families were large, these small dwellings had much activity and there was little privacy.

By the middle of the 18th century, New England's way of life was threatened by overpopulation, going from about 100,000 people in 1700 to 250,000 in 1725 and 375,000 in 1750 thanks to high birth rates and low overall life expectancy (a 15 year old boy in 1700 could expect to live to about 63) As colonists in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island continued to subdivide their land between farmers, the farms became too small to support single families. This overpopulation threatened the New England ideal of a society of independent yeoman farmers.

Some farmers obtained land grants to create farms in undeveloped land in Massachusetts and Connecticut or bought plots of land from speculators in New Hampshire and what later became Vermont. Other farmers became agricultural innovators. They planted nutritious English grass such as red clover and timothy-grass, which provided more feed for livestock, and potatoes, which provided a high production rate that was an advantage for small farms. Families increased their productivity by exchanging goods and labor with each other. They loaned livestock and grazing land to one another and worked together to spin yarn, sew quilts, and shuck corn. Migration, agricultural innovation, and economic cooperation were creative measures that preserved New England's yeoman society until the 19th century.

Town life

By the mid-18th century in New England, shipbuilding was a staple, particularly as the North American wilderness offered a seemingly endless supply of timber (by comparison, Europe's forests had been depleted and most timber had to be purchased from Scandinavia) The British crown often turned to the cheap, yet strongly built American ships. There was a shipyard at the mouth of almost every river in New England.

By 1750, a variety of artisans, shopkeepers, and merchants provided services to the growing farming population. Blacksmiths,wheelwrights, and furniture makers set up shops in rural villages. There they built and repaired goods needed by farm families. Stores selling English manufactures such as cloth, iron utensils, and window glass as well as West Indian products like sugar and molasseswere set up by traders. The storekeepers of these shops sold their imported goods in exchange for crops and other local products including roof shingles, potash, and barrel staves. These local goods were shipped to towns and cities all along the Atlantic Coast. Enterprising men set up stables and taverns along wagon roads to service this transportation system.

After these products had been delivered to port towns such as Boston and Salem in Massachusetts, New Haven in Connecticut, and Newport and Providence in Rhode Island, merchants then exported them to the West Indies where they were traded for molasses, sugar, gold coins, and bills of exchange (credit slips). They carried the West Indian products to New England factories where the raw sugar was turned into granulated sugar and the molasses distilled into rum. The gold and credit slips were sent to England where they were exchanged for manufactures, which were shipped back to the colonies and sold along with the sugar and rum to farmers.

Other New England merchants took advantage of the rich fishing areas along the Atlantic Coast and financed a large fishing fleet, transporting its catch of mackerel and cod to the West Indies and Europe. Some merchants exploited the vast amounts of timber along the coasts and rivers of northern New England. They funded sawmills that supplied cheap wood for houses and shipbuilding. Hundreds of New England shipwrights built oceangoing ships, which they sold to British and American merchants. Many merchants became very wealthy by providing their goods to the agricultural population and ended up dominating the society of sea port cities. Unlike yeoman farmhouses, these merchants resembled the lifestyle of that of the upper class of England living in elegant 2 1?2 -story houses designed the new Georgian style. These Georgian houses had a symmetrical faзade with equal numbers of windows on both sides of the central door. The interior consisted of a passageway down the middle of the house with specialized rooms such as a library, dining room, formal parlor, and master bedroom off the sides. Unlike the multi-purpose space of the yeoman houses, each of these rooms served a separate purpose. In a Georgian house, men mainly used certain rooms, such as the library, while women mostly used the kitchen. These houses contained bedrooms on the second floor that provided privacy to parents and children.

12. Culture and education

Education was primarily the responsibility of families, but numerous religious groups, especially the Puritans in New England, established tax-supported elementary schools so their children could read the Bible. Nearly all the religious denominations set up their own schools and colleges to train ministers. Each city, and most towns, had private academies for the children of affluent families.

The practical sciences were of great interest to colonial Americans, who were engaged in the process of taming and settling a wild frontier country. While science could eventually be applied to political problems, the mainstream of intellectual activity in the colonies was on technological and engineering developments rather than more abstract topics such as politics or metaphysics. American scientific activity was symbolized by David Rittenhouse, who constructed the first planetarium in the Western Hemisphere, New York lieutenant governor Cadawaller Colden, botanist and anthropologist, and Dr. Benjamin Rush, the celebrated physician and social reformer and member of the American Philosophical Society founded by Benjamin Franklin, who had contributed important discoveries to physics such as electricity, but was more successful in his practical inventions such as stoves and lightning rods. The arts in colonial America were not as successful as the sciences. Literature in the European sense was nearly nonexistent, with histories being far more noteworthy. These included The History and present State of Virginia (1705) by Robert Beverly and History of the Dividing Line (1728-29) by William Byrd, which however was not published until a century later. Instead, the newspaper was the principle form of reading material in the colonies. Since printing was expensive, most publications focused on purely practical matters such as major news, advertisements, and business reports. Aside from newspapers, almanacs were very popular, Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac being the most famous. Literary magazines appeared at mid-century, but few were profitable and most went out of business after only a few years. While American publications never approached the intellectual quality of European writers, they were much more widespread and achieved a greater readership than anything produced by Voltaire, Locke, or Rousseau.

New Englanders wrote journals, pamphlets, books and especially sermons--more than all of the other colonies combined. Cotton Mather, a Boston minister published Magnalia Christi Americana (The Great Works of Christ in America, 1702), while revivalist Jonathan Edwards wrote his philosophical work, A Careful and Strict Enquiry Into...Notions of...Freedom of Will... (1754). Most music had a religious theme as well and was mainly the singing of Psalms. Because of New England's deep religious beliefs, artistic works that were insufficiently religious or too "worldly" were banned, especially the theater. The leading theologian and philosopher of the colonial era was Jonathan Edwards of Massachusetts, an interpreter of Calvinism, and the leader of the First Great Awakening.

Art and drama were somewhat more successful than literature. Benjamin West was a noteworthy painter of historical subjects and two first-rate portrait painters emerged in John Copley and Gilbert Stuart, yet all three men spent much of their lives in London. Theater was more developed in the Southern colonies, especially South Carolina, but nowhere did stage works attain the level of Europe. Puritans in New England and Quakers in Pennsylvania opposed theatrical performances as immoral and ungodly. Elementary education was widespread in New England. Early Puritan settlers believed it was necessary to study the Bible, so children were taught to read at an early age. It was also required that each town pay for a primary school. About 10 percent enjoyed secondary schooling and funded grammar schools in larger towns. Most boys learned skills from their fathers on the farm or as apprentices to artisans. Few girls attended formal schools, but most were able to get some education at home or at so-called "Dame schools" where women taught basic reading and writing skills in their own houses. By 1750, nearly 90% of New England's women and almost all of its men could read and write. Puritans founded Harvard College in 1636 and Yale College in 1701. Later, Baptists founded Rhode Island College (now Brown University) in 1764 and Congregationalists established Dartmouth College in 1769. Virginia founded schools the College of William and Mary in 1693; it was primarily Anglican. The colleges were designed for aspiring ministers, lawyers or doctors. There were no departments or majors, as every student shared the same curriculum, which focused on Latin and Greek, mathematics, and history, philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, oratory, and a little basic science. There were no sports or fraternities and few extracurricular activities apart from literary societies. There were no separate seminaries, law schools, or divinity schools. The first medical schools were founded late in the colonial era in Philadelphia and New York.