Life in the English Colonies 1630-1770

1. Life in the English Colonies 1630-1770 Chapter 4

2. Vocabulary • Bicameral Legislature • Town Meeting • Libel • Mercantilism • Balance of Trade • Imports • Exports • Duties • Free Enterprise • Triangular Trade • Cash Crops • Slave Codes • Apprentices • Staple Crops • Revivals

3. Forms of Government Section 1

4. Colonial Governments • English monarch owned all colonies and granted charters. • Three charters are proprietary, company, and royal. • A group called the Privy Council set English policies in the colonies. • Most colonies were allowed to run their own affairs as long as their laws followed those of England. • Each colony had a governor with an advisory council. • In royal colonies, the King and Queen selected the governor and council members. • In proprietary colonies, the proprietors chose the officials. • A few colonies, such as Connecticut, the people elected the governor.

5. Colonial Assemblies • People elected representatives to help make laws and set policy. • They based themselves on Parliament, England’s national legislature, or lawmaking body. • Parliament is a bicameral legislature – a lawmaking body made up of two houses, or groups. • Colonial Assemblies worked like the lower house. • They raised taxes and organized local governments. • They controlled the military with the governor. • The laws were first approved by the advisory council and then the governor. • Finally, the Privy Council reviewed the laws to make sure they followed English laws.

6. Colonial Assemblies (cont.) • Virginia had the first assembly in 1619. • It was a one house legislature, but then split in two. • The first house was the Council of State – selected by the governor’s advisory council and the Virginia Company. • The second house was the House of Burgesses – elected by the colonists to represent Virginia’s plantations and towns. • In the New England colonies, town meetings existed as well. • In these meetings, people talked about and decided issues of local interests, such as paying for schools. • In the southern colonies, decisions were made at the county level because everyone lived so far from each other. • In the middle colonies, used county and town meetings.

7. Colonial Courts • Courts are an important part of communities. • Courts were used to support the interests and ideas of their communities. • For example, many laws in Massachusetts enforced the Puritans’ religious views. • Sometimes courts protected individual freedoms. • For example, the case of John Peter Zenger. • John Peter Zenger was accused of printing a false written statement that damaged the governor’s reputation. • This was known as libel and occurred in 1733. • The deals with the issue of freedom of the press. • The chief justice felt that it was wrong for Zenger to print malicious information even if it was true, but the jury did not find him guilty of anything.

8. The Dominion of New England • 1686 – King James II felt the New England colonies were too independent. • He united the northern colonies under one government called the Dominion of New England. • Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. • James appointed Sir Edmund Andros as royal governor of the Dominion and chose a royal council as well. • The colonists were upset that they could not control their own affairs the way they wished. • 1687 – many residents of Ipswich, Massachusetts protested Andros’s taxation policy. • Five were arrested and jailed. • To prevent further protests, Andros used his royal authority to limit the powers of town meetings in 1688.

9. The Glorious Revolution • People were upset with James in England as well. • Parliament felt threatened when James tried changing England from Protestant back to Catholic. • They asked James's daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange to rule England. • William, the leader of the Netherlands, landed in England with his army in the fall of 1688 and James left the country. • This overthrow of James became known as the Glorious Revolution. • The citizens of the Dominion removed Andros as governor and sent him back to England. • The political ideas of the Glorious Revolution led Parliament to pass the English Bill of Rights in 1689. • Under this act, the powers of the monarch were reduced while those of Parliament were increased.

10. The Growth of Trade Section 2

11. English Trade Laws • Trade was a main reason for founding the American colonies. • The colonies made up a full third part of the whole Trade and Navigation of England. • England practiced mercantilism. • Nations created and maintained wealth by carefully controlling trade. • Nations needed to create a good balance of trade. • They needed to have few imports (goods bought from other countries) than exports (goods sold to other countries. • Between 1650-1696, Parliament passed a series of Navigation Acts. • These acts required colonists to do the bulk of trading with England. • These acts also set duties, or import taxes, on some trade products.

12. Free Enterprise • The colonies wanted more freedom to buy or sell goods in whatever markets offered the best prices. • Within the colonies, many merchants practiced free enterprise. • Free enterprise is economic competition with little government control. • Local demand for colonial goods compared to foreign demand for colonial products. • English laws limited free enterprise by preventing colonists from selling or buying goods directly to or from many foreign countries. • This led to an unfavorable balance of trade for the colonies.

13. Colonial Trade • 1733 – Parliament passed the Molasses Act. • This act placed duties on sugar, molasses, and rum. • Some colonists began bringing in these goods illegally. • This was known as smuggling, but the government did very little to punish them. • By this time, Great Britain was trading worldwide. • The colonists traded with Great Britain or the West Indies (other British colonies). • Triangular Trade – this is a trade route with several mixed into one. • For example, colonies sold goods like fish, grain, beef, and horses to plantation owners in the West Indies. In exchange, merchants received sugar and molasses. These goods were then shipped to Britain.

14. The Middle Passage • New England traders began exchanging tum for slaves on the West African coast. • These traders then sold these enslaved Africans to the West Indies for molasses or brought them back to sell to the American colonies. • This was known as the slave trade and it brought about 10 million Africans across the Atlantic Ocean. • The voyage was known as the Middle Passage. • They were brought over in chains and stuffed between the upper and lower decks of a ship in spaces just a few feet (16 inches wide and 5 ½ feet long). • Some colonists opposed the slave trade. • However, slave labor was very important especially in the southern colonies, where tobacco and rice production required many workers.

15. The Colonial Economy Section 3

16. Agriculture in the Southern Colonies • The economy of the southern colonies depended greatly on agriculture. • According to dictionary.com, agriculture is “the science, art, or occupation concerned with cultivating land, raising crops, and feeding, breeding, and raising livestock; farming.” • These colonies had many small farms and some large plantations. • Farms did well because the South enjoyed a warm climate and long growing season. • Many farms grew cash crops that were sold for profit. • The most important cash crops were tobacco, rice, and indigo (used to make blue dye). • Eliza Lucas Pinckney introduced indigo when she learned to grow it on her family’s plantation. • These crops required many workers and therefore, many slaves were needed. • Slave Codes – laws to control slaves. • South Carolina’s code said that slaves could not hold meetings or own weapons.

17. Industry and Trade in New England • Trade was extremely important in this area. • New England entrepreneurs – people who undertake new businesses to make a profit – traded goods locally, with other colonies, and overseas. • Fishing and shipbuilding became two of the region’s leading industries. • Merchants exported dried fish. • Whaling provided valuable oil for lighting and the meat became an important part of the colonial diet. • Shipbuilding prospered because the region had plenty of forests and the local fishing industry needed ships. • This helped to create great ports for trade. • Since so many people needed to learn all these crafts, families sent young boys to live with a master craftsman to learn how to do things. • These young boys were called apprentices.

18. The Middle Colonies • These colonies combined what the other colonies did. • They had a good area for growing crops. • They grew staple crops, or crops that are always needed. • These crops included wheat, barley, and oats. • Some farmers also raised and sold livestock. • Slaves were more important here than in the New England colonies. • They worked in cities as skilled laborers and on farms, dockyards, and on board ships. • Trade and free enterprise were very important here. • Merchants in Philadelphia and New York City exported colonial goods to markets in Britain and the West Indies.

19. Women and the Economy • Women ran farms and businesses, such as clothing and grocery stores, bakeries, and drugstores (corner store). • Some women practiced medicine, often as nurses and midwives. • Colonial laws limited some of what women could do. • A married woman could not work outside the home without her husband’s permission. • A man also had the right to keep the money his wife earned.

20. The Great Awakening Section 4

21. Words of the Great Awakening • In the early 1700s many church leaders worried that colonists were losing their religious faith. • Church leaders were committed to finding a way to restore faith in all. • The middle colonies began holding revivals, emotional gatherings where people came together to hear sermons and declare their faith. • Many colonists experienced a great awakening in their religious lives. • This Great Awakening reached its height in the 1730s and 1740s. • It was a widespread Christian movement involving sermons and revivals that emphasized faith in God. • The Great Awakening also changed social and political life. • Jonathon Edwards was an important leader of the Great Awakening. • His dramatic sermons urged sinners to seek forgiveness for their sins or face punishment in Hell forever.

22. Words of the Great Awakening (cont.) • 1739 – British minister George Whitefield made a trip to America. • He held revivals from Georgia to New England and became one of the most popular ministers. • The ministers of the Great Awakening preached that all people were born sinners who could only be saved by the will of God. • However, the opportunity to be saved was available to all – rich and poor alike – who confessed their sins and accepted God’s grace.

23. Old and New Lights • Not all colonists believed in these new religious ideas and some church congregations divided because of disagreements. • There were traditionalists (Old Lights) and those who followed the new ministers (New Lights). • Gilbert Tennent, a Presbyterian minister, was a leader of the new movement. • His sermons attacked traditionalist and his church spread as well (Old Side and New Side). • Much church growth occurred between the Baptists and Methodists.

24. The Great Awakening and Society • Before the Great Awakening there was little communication between the colonies. • Ministers changed all this. • People of different backgrounds were called by the Great Awakening. • Educational opportunities improved as many colleges were founded to provide religious instruction. • The Great Awakening promoted ideals that may also have affected colonial politics. • Sermons about spiritual equality of all people led some colonists to begin demanding more political equality. • Revivals became popular places to talk about political and social issues. • As a result of sharing new ideas, some colonists began to question the authority of existing institutions.