Chapter Themes


With the Restoration in 1660, Great Britain began a second wave of colonial expansion on the North American mainland, acquiring the Carolinas, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Although they began as proprietary undertakings, by 1729 all but Pennsylvania were under direct royal control.

In England the Stuart monarchs adopted a policy of royal centralization. In 1685 the Dominion of New England was created. English fear of Stuart inclinations toward Catholicism brought the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Bill of Rights in 1689. In America the governor of the Dominion of New England was overthrown and the dominion dismantled. In New York the downfall of Stuart authority also involved a struggle over local leadership. Maryland temporarily became a royal province in 1691. The overall effect of the revolution of 1688 changed the colonies' political climate by reestablishing legislative government, ensuring religious freedom for Protestants, allowing the colonial elite to reassert control over local affairs, and encouraging American political leaders to identify their interests with those of Great Britain. Several wars in Europe had their counterparts in the colonies, in which Native Americans, particularly the Iroquois, played a Key role in determining the balance of power in the Northeast. French and Spanish control over their respective territories continued to limit English expansion and the wars reinforced the colonial sense of dependence on Great Britain.

When the War of the Spanish Succession ended in 1713, France aggressively resumed expanding and strengthening its North American empire, focusing particularly on the colony of Louisiana. The French then sought to counter British influence in the Ohio Valley, establishing an immense domain by 1750, one that relied on maintenance of good relations with Native Americans.

Spain established its presence in Texas and New Mexico and offered large land grants there. While endeavoring to maintain its empire in the face of Native American, French, and British adversaries, Spain spread its language and culture over much of North America, especially in the Southwest. Thinly spread throughout a vast region, Spain, too, depended heavily on Indian goodwill.

All European nations regulated trade according to mercantilist principles, which held that a country's prosperity depended on a self-sufficient economy that produced a favorable balance of trade. Britain's numerous Navigation Acts passed by 1750 created a commercial structure that provided mutual advantages for Britain and the colonies. They limited all imperial trade to British ships, with positive effects on the shipping industry in both Britain and America. They controlled trade in certain "enumerated" goods and provided government bounties to encourage production of needed materials. And they made the colonies a protected market for certain exports from Britain. Colonial living standards rose dramatically from 1700 to 1770. By the mid-eighteenth century, the standard of living in the American colonies was higher than in Scotland or Ireland and approximately as high as in England and Wales. The economic development of the French and Spanish colonies paled beside that of British North America. While all three nations were governed according to mercantilist principles, France and Spain remained societies in which most wealth was controlled by the monarch, the mobility, and the church, while England had made the transition to a mercantile-commercial economy.

Before 1700 the colonial population grew largely through immigration. Once life expectancy and family size in the South increased, British North America's growth rate far outpaced England's. In the forty years after Queen Anne's War, the colonies also absorbed 350,000 immigrants, of whom 40 percent were Africans. Immigration from England, which provided 90 percent of all Europeans before 1700, dropped as rising employment and higher wages in England reduced the number of those who migrated to North America. From Ireland came 100,000 immigrants, two-thirds of whom were Scotch-Irish. And Germany sent 65,000 refugees from the Rhine Valley, where overpopulation was extreme. The main port of arrival was Philadelphia; from there settlement proceeded into Pennsylvania and then southward into western Maryland and the Shenandoah Valley. Georgia was founded to shield South Carolina from Spanish attack from Florida and as a haven for debtors, few of whom actually joined the colony.

The colonies offered economic opportunity in the 1700s, but success was hard-won. Land was acquired by careful saving while working as a farm laborer. New families then rented. Finally, they bought, carrying a heavy mortgage. Farmers supplemented their income with seasonal and part-time work. After 1740 economic success proved increasingly difficult for the 4 percent of colonists who lived in cities, as wages declined and prices rose. Poverty grew from insignificant levels before 1700 into a major problem. For the one-fifth of the population who were slaves, economic progress by 1750 meant little more than lessening their poverty. Most slaves led lives of drudgery with few physical comforts. Salve autonomy varied from colony to colony, but as black populations grew, racial tensions mounted. The 1739 Stono Rebellion in South Carolina led to harsher slave codes.

The gentry dominated politics. Even so, most males in America were qualified to vote by age forty, whereas two-thirds of all men in England and nine-tenths in Ireland would never vote. The most important political development after 1700 was the rise of the assembly as the dominant force in American government. Since Parliament had passed the Bill of Rights in 1689 and Americans saw their assemblies as miniature Houses of Commons, the assemblies gained power at the expense of the governors. The British government let the colonies become in effect self-governing in most respects except for trade regulation, restrictions on printing money, and declaring war. But Anglo-America was nevertheless rife with economic, religious, and racial tensions as it entered the second half of the eighteenth century.

The European Enlightenment significantly influenced American intellectuals. By the mid-1700s, when perhaps only 35 percent of British males were illiterate, about 90 percent of the men and over 40 percent of the women in New England could read and write. Philadelphia became a cosmopolitan cultural center, and even on isolated plantations, southern gentlemen devoted time to study. Deism became a significant religious influence, especially for upper class Americans. Anglican, Presbyterian, and Congregational clergy were influenced by Enlightenment rationalism. Most churchgoers, however, found "rational" religion empty, and their growing sense of spiritual unease led to a massive religious revival, the Great Awakening, in the late 1730s and 1740s. The more traditional clergy, or Old Lights, opposed revivalists, known as New Lights. The Old Lights were shocked by the emotionalism that the revivalists displayed. The Great Awakening started the long-term decline of the influence of the Quakers, Anglicans, and Congregationalists in favor of the Presbyterians, Baptists, and later Methodists. It also stimulated a desire to establish divinity schools that vastly expanded college education. It marked the real emergence of black Protestantism as New Lights reached out to the slaves. And the Great Awakening encouraged increased religious toleration.