I. The Politics of Empire, 1660–1713
A.
The Restoration Colonies
1.
Charles II gave the
of
2.
James took possession of New Netherland and named it
3.
The proprietors of the new colonies sought to create a traditional social order
with a gentry class and an established Church of
4.
The Fundamental Constitutions of
5.
Poor families in
6.
South Carolinians imposed their own design of government and attacked Indian
settlements
to acquire
slaves for trade.
7.
1720s.
8.
policy
toward the Native Americans and became prosperous.
9.
Quakers believed that people were imbued by God with an inner light of grace
and understanding that opened salvation to everyone.
10.
Penn’s Frame of Government (1681)
guaranteed religious freedom for all Christians and allowed all property-owning
men to vote and hold office. 11. Ethnic diversity, pacifism, and freedom of
conscience
made
B.
From Mercantilism to Dominion
1.
In the 1650s the English government imposed mercantilism, via the Navigation
Acts, which regulated colonial commerce and manufacturing. 2. The Revenue Act
of 1673 imposed a “plantation duty” on sugar and tobacco exports and created a
staff of customs officials to collect it.
3.
In commercial wars between 1652 and 1674, the English ended Dutch supremacy in
the West African slave trade. The English also dominated Atlantic commerce.
4.
Many Americans resisted the mercantilist laws as burdensome and intrusive. To
enforce the laws, the Lords of Trade pursued a punitive legal strategy:
in 1679,
they denied the claim of
creating
5.
When James II succeeded to the throne, his insistence on the “divine right” of
kings
prompted
English officials to create a centralized imperial system in
6.
In 1686 the
7.
Two years later,
8.
Sir Edmund Andros, governor of the Dominion, was empowered to abolish existing
legislative assemblies and rule by decree.
9.
10.
The Puritans protested to the king regarding
C.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688
1.
In 1688, James’s Catholic wife gave birth to a son, raising the prospect of a
Catholic heir to the throne.
2.
Fearing political persecution, Protestant Parliamentary leaders carried out a
bloodless coup known as the “Glorious Revolution.”
3.
Mary, James’s Protestant daughter by his first wife, and her husband William of
Orange were enthroned.
4.
Queen Mary II and William III accepted a Bill of Rights that limited royal
prerogatives and increased personal liberties and parliamentary powers.
5.
Parliamentary leaders relied upon John Locke’s Two
Treatises on Government (1690) to justify their
coup. Locke rejected divine right theories of monarchical rule.
6.
Locke’s celebration of individual rights and representative government had a
lasting influence in
7.
The Glorious Revolution sparked colonial rebellions against royal governments
in
8.
In 1689, Andros was shipped back to
9.
The monarchs did not restore Puritan dominated government; instead they created
a new royal colony of Massachusetts whose new charter granted religious freedom
to members of the Church of England and gave the vote to all male property
owners instead
of
Puritans only.
10.
The uprising in
taxes and
high fees imposed by wealthy Catholic proprietary officials.
11.
In
and
political conflict.
12.
The uprisings in
13.
In
14.
Colonies that were of minor economic or political importance (
D.
Imperial Wars and Native Peoples
1.
Between 1689 and 1815,
2.
These wars involved a number of Native American warriors armed with European
weapons.
3.
The War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713) pitted
4.
So that they might help to protect their English settlement, whites in the
Spanish
attacks.
5.
The Creeks took this opportunity to become the dominant tribe in the region.
6.
Native Americans also played a central role in the fighting in the Northeast;
aided by the French, the Abnakis and Mohawks took
revenge on the Puritans attacking settlements in
7.
The
8.
II.
The Imperial Slave Economy
A.
The
1.
The South Atlantic system was composed of land seized from the Indians, slave
labor from Africa, and investment capital from
2.
To provide labor for the sugar plantations, the British and French developed
African-run slave-catching systems that extended far into the interior of
3.
The Portuguese and Dutch developed sugar plantations in
4.
Due to the Navigation Acts, by 1750 re-exports of American sugar and tobacco
accounted for half of all British exports.
5.
The South Atlantic system brought wealth to the European economy, but it
brought economic decline, political change, and human tragedy to West Africa
and parts of
6.
The slave trade changed West African society by promoting centralized states
and military
conquest
by kingdoms such as
7.
Some African people of noble birth enslaved and sold those of lesser status;
however, slaving remained an act of choice for Africans, not a necessity.
8.
Due to slave taking, the resulting imbalance of the sexes allowed some African
men to take several wives, changing the nature of marriage.
9.
The Atlantic trade prompted harsher forms of slavery in
life.
10.
African slaves who were forced to endure the “Middle Passage” suffered the
bleakest fate; many were literally worked to death on the sugar plantations,
since it was cheaper to replace a dead slave than to keep him alive.
B.
Slavery in the
1.
After 1700, planters in
2.
Slavery was increasingly defined in racial terms; in
3.
Living and working conditions in
4.
Some tobacco planters tried to increase their workforce through reproduction,
purchasing a high proportion of females and encouraging large families.
5.
By the middle of the 1700s, American-born slaves formed a majority among
6.
The slave population in
7.
Growing
rice required work amidst pools of putrid water, and mosquito-borne epidemic
diseases took thousands of African lives.
C.
African American Community and Resistance
1.
Slaves initially did not regard one another as “Africans” or “blacks” but as
members of a specific family, clan, or people.
2.
The acquisition of a common language and a more equal gender ratio were
prerequisites for the creation of an African American community.
3.
As enslaved blacks forged a new identity in
4.
African creativity was limited because slaves were denied education and had few
material goods.
5.
Slaves who resisted their rigorous work routine were punished with beatings,
whippings, and mutilation, including amputation.
6.
The extent of violence toward slaves depended on the size and the density of
the slave population; a smaller slave population usually meant less violence,
while predominantly African populated colonies suffered more violence.
7.
The Stono Rebellion (1739) in
8.
White militiamen killed many of the Stono rebels and
dispersed the rest, preventing a general uprising.
D.
The Southern Gentry
1.
As the southern colonies became slave societies, life changed for whites as
well as blacks.
2.
As men lived longer, patriarchy within the family reappeared.
3.
The planter elite exercised authority over yeomen and black slaves—the American
equivalent of oppressed peasants and serfs.
4.
To prevent rebellion, the southern gentry paid attention to the concerns of
middling and poor whites.
5.
By 1770 the majority of English Chesapeake families owned a slave, giving them
a stake in the exploitative labor system.
6.
Taxes were gradually reduced for poorer whites, and poor yeomen and some
tenants were allowed to vote.
7.
In return, the planter elite expected the yeomen and tenants to elect them to
office and defer to their power.
8.
By the 1720s the gentry took on the trappings of wealth, modeling themselves
after the English aristocracy.
9.
The profits of the
E.
The Northern Maritime Economy
1.
The South Atlantic system tied the whole
2.
West Indian trade created the first American merchant fortunes and the first
urban industries—in particular, shipbuilding and the distilling of rum from
3.
In the eighteenth century the expansion of Atlantic commerce in lumber and
shipbuilding fueled rapid growth in the North American interior as well as in
seaport cities and coastal towns.
4.
A small group of wealthy landowners and merchants formed the top rank of the
seaport society.
5.
Artisan and shopkeeper families formed the middle ranks of seaport society, and
laboring men, women, and children formed the lowest ranks.
6.
Between 1660 and 1750, involvement in the
III.
The New Politics of Empire, 1713–1750
A.
The Rise of Colonial Assemblies
1.
The triumph of the
2.
In
3.
American representative assemblies also wished to limit the powers of the crown
and maintain their authority over taxes.
4.
The colonial legislatures gradually won partial control of the budget and the
appointment of local officials.
5.
The rising power of the colonial assemblies created an elitist rather than a
democratic political system.
6.
Neither elitist assemblies nor wealthy property owners could impose unpopular
edicts on the people.
7.
Crowd actions were a regular part of political life in
8.
By the 1750s, most colonies had representative political institutions that were
responsive to popular pressure and increasingly immune to British control.
B.
Salutary Neglect
1.
“Salutary neglect,”more relaxed royal supervision of
internal colonial affairs, was a byproduct of the political system developed by
Sir Robert Walpole, a British Whig.
2.
Radical Whigs argued that
3.
Landed gentlemen argued that
4.
Colonists, maintaining that royal governors likewise abused their patronage
powers, tried to enhance the powers of provincial representative assemblies.
C.
Protecting the Mercantile System of Trade
1.
2.
3.
Resisting British expansion into Georgia and growing trade with
4.
5.
The War of Jenkins’ Ear became a part of the War of Austrian Succession
(1740–1749), bringing a new threat from
6.
The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) returned the French naval fortress of Louisbourg to
7.
Colonial merchants took advantage of a loophole in the Navigation Acts that
allowed Americans to own ships and transport goods. The loophole allowed
colonists to cut dramatically into commerce in the
8.
The Molasses Act of 1733 placed a high tariff on imports of cheap French
molasses to make British molasses competitive, but sugar prices rose in the
late 1730s, so the act was not enforced.
9.
The Currency Act (1751) prevented colonies from establishing new land banks and
prohibited the use of public currency to pay private debts. This was in
response to abuse of the land bank system by some colonial assemblies who issued
too much paper currency and then required merchants to accept the worthless
paper as legal tender.
10.
In the 1740s, British officials vowed to replace salutary neglect with rigorous
imperial control.