LECTURE 2-2: THE THIRTEEN COLONIES AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE II, 1607-1754
The British colonies participated in political, social, cultural, and economic exchanges with Great Britain that
encouraged both stronger bonds with Britain and resistance to Britain’s control.
I.
Restoration Colonies
A. South Carolina
i. In 1670, in the southern Carolinas, a few colonists from England and some planters from
the island of Barbados founded a town named for their king.
ii. Initially, the southern economy was based on trading furs and providing food for the
West Indies. By the middle of the 18th century, South Carolina’s large rice-growing
plantations worked by enslaved Africans resembled the economy and culture of the West
Indies.
B. North Carolina
i. In the northern part of the Carolinas, farmers from Virginia and New England established
small, self-sufficient tobacco farms.
ii. The region had few good harbors and poor transportation; therefore, compared to South
Carolina, there were fewer large plantations and less reliance on slavery.
C. New York
i. Charles II wished to consolidate English holdings along the Atlantic Coast. He granted
his brother, the Duke of York, the lands between New England and the Chesapeake
colonies.
ii. The Duke of York, who went on to become King James II, ousted the Dutch from New
Netherland though the settlers were allowed to stay.
iii. James ordered new taxes without seeking the consent of a representative assembly. This
taxation without representation brought about so much opposition that New York’s
governor granted broad rights, including the right to form a colonial legislature.
D. New Jersey
i. New York was split in 1664 because it was deemed too large for one governor to
manage. The territory Southwest of New York City became known as New Jersey.
ii. To attract settlers, the proprietors of New Jersey made generous land offers and allowed
religious freedom and an assembly.
iii. The middle colonies supported a flourishing export economy based on cereal crops and
attracted a broad range of European migrants, leading to societies with greater cultural,
ethnic and religious diversity and tolerance.
E. Pennsylvania
i. Quakers
a. The Religious Society of Friends, known as Quakers, believed in the equality of
all men and women. Quakers were pacifists who refused to bear arms. They
advocated freedom of worship and accepted a greater role for women in church
services.
b. Their views posed a radical challenge to established authority. Therefore,
Quakers were persecuted and jailed for their beliefs.
ii. William Penn
II.
a. Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, a Quaker. Penn’s father was owed a
large debt by the royal family, which they paid to William in the form of a land
grant for a colony in 1681 that became known as Pennsylvania.
iii. “Holy Experiment”
a. Penn created an unusually liberal colony, which included a representative
assembly elected by the landowners.
b. In order to attract settlers, Pennsylvania granted freedom of religion and did not
have a state-supported church.
c. Quakers opposed slavery and were among America’s first abolitionists. They also
attempted to treat American Indians fairly and avoided cheating them when
purchasing their land.
F. Delaware
i. Delaware became a separate colony in 1702 when William Penn granted the lower part of
Pennsylvania its own assembly.
G. Georgia
i. Georgia was settled by James Oglethorpe in 1733. It was the only colony to receive
direct financial support from England.
ii. Britain used Georgia as a defensive buffer to protect the prosperous South Carolina
plantations from the threat of Spanish Florida.
iii. Thousands of people in England were being imprisoned for debt in the early 18th century.
Wealthy philanthropists thought it would relieve the overcrowded jails if debtors were
shipped to an American colony to start life over.
Mercantilism and the Empire
A. Overview
i. Mercantilism was England’s most dominant economic philosophy during the 17th and
18th centuries. The goal of mercantilism was for England to have a favorable balance of
trade. To achieve this goal, the colonies were expected to export raw materials and
import finished goods.
ii. Mercantilism was designed to protect English industry and promote England’s prosperity.
Therefore, the mercantilist system led to the subordination of the colonial economy to
that of the mother country.
B. Acts of Trade and Navigation
i. The Navigation Acts were part of the British policy of mercantilism. They listed colonial
products that could be shipped only to England. These attempts to regulate colonial trade
were often ignored and defied.
ii. Trade to and from the colonies could be carried only by English or colonial-built ships,
which could be operated only by English or colonial crews.
iii. All goods imported into the colonies, except for some perishable goods, could pass only
through ports in England.
iv. Specified or “enumerated” goods from the colonies could be exported to England only.
Tobacco was the original enumerated good, but over a period of years, the list was
expanded to included most colonial products.
C. Impact on the Colonies
i. Positive
a. New England shipbuilding prospered.
III.
b. Chesapeake tobacco had a monopoly in England.
c. English military forces protected the colonies from potential attacks by the French
and Spanish.
ii. Negative
a. Colonial manufacturing was severely limited.
b. Chesapeake farmers received low prices for their crops.
c. Colonists had to pay high prices for manufactured goods from England.
d. Mercantilist regulations were unnecessary since England would have been the
colonists’ primary trading partner regardless. Economic advantages obtained
from the Navigation Acts were more than offset by the negative political effects
on British-colonial relations.
D. Enforcement of the Acts
i. The North American colonies took advantage of Great Britain’s policy of salutary neglect
to work out trade agreements so they could acquire needed products from other countries.
ii. Salutary neglect led to American individualism, self-reliance, and the ideal of
independence.
E. The Dominion of New England
i. The Dominion of New England (1686) was Britain’s first effort to unify the American
colonies. It was a unified administrative unit consisting of all New England colonies as
well as New York and New Jersey.
ii. It fell prey to the policy of salutary neglect, proving too large for a single governor to
manage. In 1689 the colonies returned to their previous forms of government.
The Institution of Slavery
A. Overview
i. Like other European empires in the Americas that participated in the Atlantic slave trade,
the English colonies developed a system of slavery that reflected the specific economic,
demographic, and geographic characteristics of those colonies.
ii. All the British colonies participated to varying degrees in the Atlantic slave trade due to
the abundance of land and a growing European demand for colonial goods, as well as a
shortage of indentured servants. Small New England farms used relatively few enslaved
people, and the emerging plantation systems of the Chesapeake and the southernmost
Atlantic coast had large numbers of enslaved workers, while the great majority of
enslaved Africans were sent to the West Indies.
iii. The colonies of the southernmost Atlantic coast and the British West Indies used long
growing seasons to develop plantation economies based on exporting staple crops. They
depended on the labor of enslaved Africans, who often constituted the majority of the
population in these areas and developed their own forms of cultural and religious
autonomy.
B. Increased Demand for Slaves
i. Indentured servants played a key role in the growth of the tobacco plantation system in
Virginia and Maryland. They were the chief source of agricultural labor in both of these
colonies before 1675. Planters in Virginia and Maryland used the “headright” system to
encourage the importation of indentured servants. Whoever paid the passage of a laborer
received the right to acquire 50 acres of land. Masters thus enjoyed the benefits of this
system.
ii. The first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619. The breakup of the Royal African
Company’s monopoly in the late 17th century stimulated the slave trade, as they were
now easy to obtain and very profitable.
iii. Slave labor in colonial Virginia spread rapidly in the late 17th century, as Blacks
displaced White indentured servants in the tobacco fields.
iv. In 1676, over a thousand backcountry Virginians revolted against Governor William
Berkeley’s lenient policies toward Indians. Berkeley monopolized the fur trade with the
Indians in the area and refused to retaliate for Indian attacks on frontier settlements.
Bacon’s Rebellion exposed tensions between the former indentured servants, who were
poor, and the gentry, who were rich. It showed the potential power of the lower orders.
v. As planters became more suspicious of their former indentured servants, they turned to
slaves as more reliable sources of labor. Thus, the number of slaves increased
dramatically in the last quarter of the 17th century. The supply of indentured servants
from England became insufficient by the late 17th century. The spread of tobacco
cultivation westward created a demand for labor.
vi. Slavery was legally established in all 13 colonies by the early 1700s. Few 17th and early
18th-century White colonists viewed human bondage as morally unacceptable.
C. Slave Laws
i. As chattel slavery became the dominant labor system in many southern colonies, new
laws created a strict racial system that prohibited interracial relationships and defined the
descendants of African American mothers as black and enslaved in perpetuity.
ii. Slave Codes were introduced in 1662. These made Blacks and their children property for
the life of their White masters. In some colonies, it was a crime to teach a slave to read
or write.
iii. Africans developed both overt and covert means to resist the dehumanizing aspects of
slavery and maintain their family and gender systems, culture, and religion.
iv. The Stono Rebellion (1739) was one of the earliest known acts of rebellion against
slavery in America. It was organized and led by slaves living south of Charleston, South
Carolina. The slaves tried to flee to Spanish Florida, where they hoped to gain their
freedom.
D. Triangular Trade
i. After the monopoly of the British Royal African Company, which traded in slaves,
expired in the late 17th century, many New England merchants entered the lucrative slave
trade. Merchant ships would regularly follow a triangle as they traded raw materials,
finished products, and slaves.
ii. The triangular trade took part between Africa, the West Indies, North America (the
plantation colonies as well as the New England colonies), and Europe.
iii. The most horrendous leg of the journey was known as the Middle Passage, whereby
hundreds of enslaved Africans would be shipped into the West Indies.