English Colonial Society and Governance PPT 2 SSUSH 2
English Colonial Society
and Governance PPT 2
SSUSH 2
Colonial Immigration
• Economic and political difficulties arise in England and Europe as a whole
• “Push factors” leading to immigration
• Political unrest
• High taxation
• Religious persecution
Development of Colonial Government
• Colonial Self-Government develops when local assemblies legislate on local
matters due to:
• distance between the colonies and England
• Structure of colonies
• Large number of eligible voters in the colonies
Beginnings of Self-Governance
• Colonial Self-Governance began with the Mayflower Compact
• House of Burgesses sets precedent for colonial legislatures
• Fundamental Orders of Connecticut is first colonial constitution
House of Burgesses
• legislative assembly established by the Virginia Co. in 1617
• similar to England’s Parliament, called the House of Burgesses
• first self governing colonial legislative body in English colonies
• the representatives appointed by the company’s governor and elected by land-owning males of Virginia
• first self-government in the colonies.
Founding Fathers
• House of Burgesses met until the
American Revolution in 1776
• Many of America’s founding
fathers gained political experience
in these colonial assemblies
Basic Colonial Gov’t structure
• Governor and elected legislature
• Colonial Legislatures:
• Representatives: landowning white males
• Made local policies
• Levied taxes on colony
• Levy: impose
Who Votes?
• Colonial voters:
• Landowning white males
• Larger number of eligible voters in the colonies than in other countries, including
ENGLAND
Bacon’s Rebellion: 1676
• Colonists began to expect that the colonial legislatures would look after
everyone, not just the wealthy
• In Jamestown, former indentured servants after serving their debt were
forced to purchase land on the outskirts of a town, in the frontier area close
to the American Indians
• This caused them to face conflict and problems with American Indians
Bacon’s Rebellion
• Although they paid taxes to the House of Burgesses and expected protection in exchange, they were not given it
• Nathanael Bacon leads the poorer citizens (former indentured servants) against the wealthy Jamestown colonists, including the Royal Governor William Berkeley
• wanted harsher action against the Native Americans in retaliation for their attacks on outlying settlements.
• Rebellion ended by governor of Va.
• IMPORTANCE:
• Shows that colonists develop expectation that gov’t serves all citizens, not just wealthy
Bacon’s Rebellion: 1676
• The rebellion had the effect of further weakening the indenture system while
strengthening the reliance on slavery
• Planters didn’t want to use indentured servants who were given land, thus
making them a stronger group of citizens who could threaten political
and social stability
• To stop this, the planter elite begin to import slaves
• No threat because they were never released from servitude
• Cheaper source of labor
Growth of the African Population
• Tobacco farmers and other cash-crop farmers begin to prosper so
they expanded the size of their farms.
• Most cash crops are labor intensive, so they need more
workers available to plant, grow, and harvest the crops
• First use American Indians, Indentured Servants, but move
towards slave labor in 1600s
• First African slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619
The Middle Passage
• Sea voyage that carried Africans to North America was called the Middle Passage
• It was the middle portion of a three-way voyage made by the European ships
• Three hundred to four hundred slaves were crammed into low cargo spaces with no standing room and forced to lie side by side.
• Diseases were common
• Two of every ten slaves died during the passage.
Triangular Trade Route
African American Culture
• No single African culture
• Slaves from West Africa had different cultures.
• In an effort to control the slaves, slave owners attempted force the culture of the region on to their slave populations
• Physical isolation of slaves from their masters led to the creation of a new blended culture rather than the replacement of one culture over another.
African American Culture
• Effect: creation of a unique African-American culture
• Foods, such as okra, watermelon, yams (sweet potatoes), rice are blend of African and
European agriculture
• Blending different African tribes on a single plantation led to the creation of blended
language
• Creole in Louisiana
• Gullah in coastal Georgia and the Carolinas
• Economically coastal colonial South Carolina and Georgia owed its prosperity to the
introduction of rice that was propagated by West African and West Indian slaves.
Architecture
• Slaves built their quarters and slave
masters’ homes
• Some influence can been seen in
style, shot-gun style homes seen in
Haiti, and materials, use of tabby
similar to mud and clay techniques
Trans-Atlantic Trade
• Trans-Atlantic Trade: three step voyage around the Atlantic rim: England to Africa to American Colonies, in which each region traded and received specific goods from the other region
Mercantilism
• Mercantilism:
• Economic theory that the best way for a nation to become strong was to acquire the
most gold and silver (wealth equals power)
Mercantilism
• Colonies are vital to Great
Britain because they have raw
materials not available to the
mother country
• Great Britain imports these
raw materials and sell
finished goods to
accumulate more wealth
• In turn, the British used the
colonists as a ready market for
manufactured goods:
• All finished goods were sold by the
British to the colonists at a higher
price
• To ensure that the colonies only sold to the British, which protects the mercantile system of Britain, Parliament passed laws called Navigation Acts :
• Forced colonists to send all goods to Britain on British ships
• Any good that was exported from the colonies had to go to Britain to be taxed before being sent to other European countries
• Forced colonists to sell some goods to Britain only
Navigation Acts:1690s
Navigation Acts:1690s
• Impact of Navigation Acts on colonies:
• Restricted the profits of the colonists (forced to sell without market competition)
• Restricted development of manufacturing in colonies
• Forced colonists to pay higher prices for goods they were only allowed to purchase
from England
• Increased smuggling of goods into colonies by colonists
• Created a demand for New England shipbuilding as colonists could only send goods on
colonial or British ships
Salutary Neglect
• Colonies become more economically productive if not restricted by policies
that limit their ability to trade (ie Navigation Acts)
• From 1720s until 1760s England allows the colonies to build up their own
trade networks and govern themselves (through colonial governments)
• As long as England was receiving the colonial resources they needed
under the mercantile system then they loosen their oversight of the
colonies trade and colonial self-governance practices
• This is called Salutary Neglect:
• Salutary: producing good effects; beneficial.
• Neglect: a disregard of duty
• England looks the other way when the colonies don’t
follow the rules
• Salutary Neglect
Salutary Neglect
• How will this affect colonists views of themselves and their rights going
forward?
The Great Awakening
• Religious movement influenced by
revivals sweeping England and
Europe in 1730s
• Revival placed an emphasis on
individual religious experience
rather than traditional church
experience
The Great Awakening
• Causes:
• Partly in reaction to the
Enlightenment, which stressed
scientific study
• Colonists wanted to have more a
role in their religion
The Great Awakening
• Ministers such Jonathan Edwards, William Tennent, and George Whitefield began to urge Christians to adopt a more emotional involvement in Christianity:
• Through prayer and personal study of the Bible
• Their sermons were more emotional, appealing to the heart not just the head.
• Believed that church members could have an emotional and personal relationship with God, without needed the ministers of the church
The Great Awakening
• Effects:
• New denominations, Baptists, Methodists, gain members
• Religion became an emotional experience
• Enforces ideas of autonomy from England as colonial churches appoint their own ministers and ran their own churches (a break from the England influence of the past)
• This independence reinforced the political ideas of John Locke and Thomas Paine during coming years