Colonial Life in the 18th Century

Religious toleration

The acceptance of people with different religious beliefs.

Jonathan Edwards

A Congregationalist preacher known for his role in the First Great Awakening, emphasizing human sinfulness and God's sovereignty.

George Whitefield

An English Anglican priest who helped spread the Great Awakening in the American colonies through his powerful sermons.

Great Awakening

A series of religious revivals in the American colonies during the 1730s and 1740s, emphasizing personal religious experience.

Old Lights

Traditional, conservative clergymen and their followers who were against the emotional excesses of the Great Awakening.

New Lights

Revivalist followers of the Great Awakening who embraced its more emotional and experiential approach to religion.

Praying towns

Settlements established by Puritans in New England to convert and assimilate Native Americans into Christian society.

Presbyterian Church

A Protestant denomination that adheres to a doctrine and organizational structure rooted in the teachings of John Calvin.

Quakers

Members of the Religious Society of Friends; a Christian movement devoted to peaceful principles and inner experience.

Scotch-Irish

Descendants of Lowland Scots who had settled in Ulster, Ireland, before migrating to America, primarily in the backcountry.

Germans

Numerous immigrants from various German states who settled in Pennsylvania and other colonies, often seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity.

Huguenots

French Protestants who fled religious persecution in Catholic France, with many settling in American colonies like South Carolina.

Swedes

Settlers from Sweden who established the colony of New Sweden along the Delaware River in the 17th century.

Dutch

Colonists from the Netherlands who established New Netherland, centered around New Amsterdam (present-day New York City), before English takeover.

Atlantic Slave Trade

The forced transportation of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, lasting from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

Triangular trade

A transatlantic trade network that involved the exchange of goods from Europe for enslaved people in Africa, who were then traded in the Americas for raw materials, which were shipped back to Europe.

Middle passage

The brutal and deadly sea journey endured by enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas during the Atlantic Slave Trade.

John Peter Zenger

A New York printer and journalist whose libel trial in 1735 helped establish the principle of freedom of the press in the American colonies.

King William’s War

The North American theater of the War of the Grand Alliance (1689-1697), primarily fought between French and English colonists and their Native American allies.

Queen Anne’s War

The North American theater of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713), involving conflicts between the British, French, and Spanish in North America.

War of Jenkins’ Ear

A conflict between Great Britain and Spain (1739-1748), primarily fought in the Caribbean and Georgia, over trade rights and territorial disputes.

Molasses Act

A British law passed in 1733 that imposed a tax on molasses, rum, and sugar imported from non-British colonies into North America.

Benjamin West

An American painter who became famous for his neoclassical historical paintings in Britain.

John Copley

An American painter renowned for his realistic portraits of prominent figures in colonial America.

Benjamin Franklin

A prominent Founding Father, polymath, and a leading figure in the American Enlightenment, known for his scientific discoveries, inventions, and political work.

Phillis Wheatley

An enslaved African-American poet who was the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry.

Crèvecoeur

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, a French-American writer known for his Letters from an American Farmer (1782), which depicted American society and the concept of an American identity.

Enslavement of Africans

Europeans obtained African slaves through trade with other Africans, exchanging goods like metal tools, textiles, or guns.

Living Conditions of Enslaved People

The brutal conditions on slave ships where each person had an average of four square feet of space and were subjected to grueling work upon arrival.

Defining Slavery

Atlantic chattel slavery is characterized as movable property and dehumanization, as defined by Orlando Patterson.

Global Participation

Atlantic slavery was a monstrous tragedy involving the participation of the whole world in dehumanizing 'the other.'