Reading+Notes+-+Chapter+4


 * CHAPTER 4 Experience of Empire: Eighteenth-Century America**


 * LEARNING OBJECTIVES**

After mastering this chapter, your students should be able to:

1. Assess the reasons behind the phenomenal population growth of the colonies. 2. Discuss reasons for colonial economic expansion and patterns of settlement. 3. Explain the differences and importance of Scotch-Irish and German settlement. 4. Determine the nature of and problems relating to the Spanish North American empire. 5. **Describe the influence of the Great Awakening on American religion, common interest, and "nationality."** 6. Explain the rise of the colonial assemblies and the governing problems they faced. 7. Discuss the different advantages and disadvantages of the British American colonists and the French in the wars for mastery of the North American continent. 8. Determine Pitt's (British) overall plan and strategy for victory in the Seven Years’ War. 9. **Summarize the "fruits of victory" for the British and also possible seeds of discontent and distrust in Britain's relationship with the colonies.**


 * SUMMARY**

Colonial Americans in the eighteenth century were aware of living on the edge of a great and growing empire. Even as American society became more diverse, England exerted a more dominant political, economic and cultural force. As the colonists became more British, they became American for the first time.

Between 1700 and 1750, the population of the colonies increased from 250,000 to over 2 million, much of it through natural increase, but also through the immigration of non- English Europeans.
 * I. GROWTH AND DIVERSITY**

The Scots, many of whom came from Northern Ireland, concentrated on the Pennsylvania frontier and filled the Shenandoah Valley. They were often regarded as a disruptive element because they refused to pay rent or taxes.
 * A. Scots-Irish Flee English Oppression**

Many Germans left their homeland because of the wars that racked Germany, and settled mainly in Pennsylvania. Because there were so many of them and because Germans attempted to preserve their own customs, they aroused the prejudice of their English neighbors.
 * B. Germans Searching for a Better Life**

After 1715, the English government began transporting convicts to the colonies. The colonists generally resented the policy and ended it during the American Revolution, but not before about 50,000 felons had arrived.
 * C. Convict Settlers**

The immigration of non-English people added to the diversity of American society, but so did Native Americans who had survived conquest and disease. Many Indians moved into the trans-Appalachian region, a "middle ground" where no colonial power was yet established. In this middle ground, remnants of different Indian peoples regrouped and formed new nations that successfully interacted with each other and with Europeans. In time, however, the lure of European goods encouraged Indians to deal individually with traders, thus weakening collective resistance to European aggression.
 * D. Native Americans Stake Out a Middle Ground**


 * II. SPANISH BORDERLANDS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY**

Spain still occupied a large part of America north of Mexico and developed there a unique culture.

The Spanish had explored and colonized the area north of Mexico in the sixteenth century, but Indian resistance and a lack of interest limited the Spanish presence.
 * A. Conquering the Northern Frontier**

Spain never had a secure political or military hold on her borderlands, but Spanish cultural influence persisted, especially in architecture and language. Those Indians who agreed to live under Spanish rule suffered economic discrimination, but not racial segregation.
 * B. Peoples of the Spanish Borderlands**


 * III. THE IMPACT OF EUROPEAN IDEAS ON AMERICAN CULTURE**

The seaboard colonists also lived in an expanding, changing world.

The vast majority of Americans lived in small towns or isolated farms, but some urban areas began to develop. Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston had lifestyles distinct from rural America. Their economies were geared to commerce; they were not industrial centers. Because of their more frequent contacts with Europe, city people led the way in the adoption of new fashions and the latest luxuries. Emulating British architecture, they built grand homes and filled them with fine furniture. However, American cities could merely hint at the grandeur of London, and it was to that city that talented colonists, such as John Singleton Copley, traveled for opportunity and inspiration.
 * A. Provincial Cities**

Unlike the European Enlightenment, the colonial American version was less radical. Science was esteemed, but mainly because of its practical uses, and only if it did not threaten religious ideas.
 * B. American Enlightenment**

Benjamin Franklin (1706--1790) epitomized provincial, urban culture. Enraptured as a boy by British literature, Franklin became a writer himself, offering practical advice in a witty way. Uninterested in religion, he dedicated himself to reason and science, always with the practical use of scientific theory in mind.
 * C. Benjamin Franklin**

America's prosperity created a rising demand for English and West Indian goods. The colonists paid for their imports by exporting tobacco, wheat, and rice and by purchasing on credit. Because so much of their standard of living depended on commerce, the colonists resented English regulations. In addition to the laws described in Chapter 3, England restricted colonial manufacture or trade of timber, sugar, hats and iron.
 * D. Economic Transformation**

As England entered the Industrial Revolution and began to mass-produce items of everyday use, American imports of English goods rose, and wealthy Americans began to build up large debts to English merchants. Americans also traded extensively with the West Indies and with each other. These trades usually earned a surplus and enabled the colonists to pay for English imports. Inter-colonial commerce also gave Americans a chance to learn about one another.
 * E. Birth of a Consumer Society**


 * IV. RELIGIOUS REVIVALS IN PROVINCIAL SOCIETIES**

The Great Awakening, a series of religious revivals, occurred at different places at different times. These revivals, like the one led by Jonathan Edwards at Northampton, Massachusetts, encouraged the "awakened" to question their own values and the values of their society.

George Whitefield, an itinerant minister from England, made revivalism a mass movement. Using his abilities as an orator, Whitefield preached outdoor sermons to thousands of people in nearly every colony. Whitefield and his many imitators urged congregations to desert unconverted ministers, thereby disrupting established churches. Laypeople, including women and blacks, finally had a chance to shape their own religious institutions. The Awakening thus promoted a democratic, evangelical union of national extent before there was an American political nation.
 * A. The Great Awakening**

Some of the revivalists were anti-intellectual fanatics, but most were well-trained ministers whose concern for learning led them to found several colleges: Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown and Rutgers. In addition, most of the revivalists had optimistic attitudes toward America's religious role in world history, thus fostering American patriotism and preparing for the development of a revolutionary mentality.
 * B. The Voice of Popular Religion**


 * V. CLASH OF POLITICAL CULTURES**

The colonials tried to copy British political institutions, but in doing so, discovered how different they were from the English people.

The British Constitution was universally admired because it seemed to perfectly balance monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, thus guaranteeing the liberties of the people.
 * A. The English Constitution**

In reality, very few of the English people were represented in the political system. Over 80 percent of the adult males had no right to vote, and members of Parliament were notorious for corruption and bribery. "Commonwealthmen," like John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, railed against the degeneracy of English politics and urged a return to a truly balanced constitution.
 * B. The Reality of British Politics**

Americans liked to think that their colonial governments were replicas of Parliament, but they were not. Royal governors, as a rule, were incompetent political hacks who could not have governed the colonies even if they had taken an interest. They were so bound by instructions from England and had so little patronage with which to buy votes that they were, in effect, given the task of ruling as despots without having the power to force their will on the colonists.
 * C. Governing the Colonies: The American Experience**

The colonial assemblies bore no resemblance to the House of Commons. Most white males could vote in America, so elected officials knew they could not do something too unpopular without suffering at the polls. The assemblies were, therefore, more interested in pleasing their constituents than in obeying the governor.

The assemblies controlled all means of raising revenue and quickly protested any infringement of their rights. When a governor did succeed in controlling an assembly, the public reacted with alarm and flooded the colonial press with arguments for a return to balanced government.
 * D. Colonial Assemblies**

America's ties with the mother country became closer in the eighteenth century, especially in the law courts, where English usage became more common. Americans grew increasingly aware that they shared similar political ideas, institutions and problems with England and with each other.


 * VI. CENTURY OF IMPERIAL WAR**

In the eighteenth century the colonies participated in four major imperial wars that pitted England against France. The Americans, with English aid, attempted to take Canada, but were unsuccessful, despite the fact that they vastly outnumbered the French in Canada. French Canada was later subdued in 1759 by an English army. This section shows how the wars led to greater inter-colonial association and cooperation.

From 1689 to 1713, England and France struggled for the mastery of Europe, and their colonists fought one another in America. These wars settled nothing, and the grounds for a new conflict were laid when France extended her American empire from Canada into Louisiana.
 * A. King William's and Queen Anne's Wars**

From 1743 to 1748, another imperial war dragged Americans into conflict. New England troops won an impressive victory when they captured Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, but the fort was returned to France in the peace treaty.
 * B. King George's War and Its Aftermath**

In the 1750s both sides realized the strategic importance of the Ohio Valley, which became the cockpit for the next round of skirmishes. The French built a fort at the head of the Ohio River, at present-day Pittsburgh. Virginia considered the area its own and sent its militia under a young officer, George Washington, to expel the French. Washington was defeated.

Some Americans, such as Ben Franklin, realized that France could not be defeated by a single colony. He proposed, in 1754, a new arrangement between Great Britain and her colonies that would give America a central government (the Albany Plan). Neither the English government nor the colonial assemblies liked the plan, and it came to nothing.
 * C. Albany Congress and Braddock's Defeat**

In 1755, England sent an army under General Edward Braddock to drive the French out of the Ohio Valley. On his march west, Braddock fell into an ambush, and his army was destroyed.

In 1756 England declared war on France and the two nations fought in every corner of the globe. The English, led by William Pitt, concentrated their efforts in North America and captured Quebec in 1759. The century of struggle for control of the wealth of a continent was now ended.
 * D. Seven Years' War**

The English and Americans learned two opposite lessons during the imperial wars. The colonists realized how strong they could be when they worked together; the English learned that the Americans took forever to organize and that it was easier to just command them to obey orders.
 * E. Perceptions of War**


 * VII. CONCLUSION: RULE BRITANNIA?**

In 1763, most colonial Americans believed that they were bound in brotherhood with the English people. British culture, British consumer goods, British evangelists and British military victories swept all Americans, even the non-English, into what seemed to be a great empire tied together by admiration and affection.