Colonial Life in the 18th Century
Religion
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.
Ethnicity
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
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.
Government
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 (), 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 (), involving conflicts between the British, French, and Spanish in North America.
War of Jenkins’ Ear: A conflict between Great Britain and Spain (), 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, aimed at favoring British West Indies producers.
Culture
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 (), which depicted American society and the concept of an American identity.
Slave Trade
Introduction to the Atlantic Slave Trade (0:30): The video highlights the staggering numbers involved, with 10 to 12 million Africans forcibly moved to the Americas between 1500 and 1880 CE, and about 15% dying during the journey. The Caribbean and Brazil received the majority of these slaves, while the U.S. imported a relatively small percentage (5%).
1619 (white lion) specifically- not slaves yet, Virginia had no basis for slave trade yet
indentured servant- worked for the right for a home
Chattle Slavery- 1660s (from Portuguese and spanish) Think Cattle not people (you can do as you wish with the property, think of animal cruelty
These laws are the Barbados Slave Codes, allows for slavery to occur
inherited by children so children could
West africa already understood slavery
European Slave Trade History (1:12): Before the Atlantic trade, Europeans had a history of trading slaves, notably after the Fourth Crusade in 1204, when Italian merchants imported thousands of Armenian, Circassian, and Georgian slaves. Many of these slaves worked in sugar processing, a crop later cultivated by African slaves in the Caribbean.
Enslavement of Africans (1:54): Europeans obtained African slaves through trade with other Africans, exchanging goods like metal tools, textiles, or guns. Slaves were considered valuable property in many African societies.
Living Conditions of Enslaved People (2:55): The video details the brutal conditions on slave ships, where each person had an average of four square feet of space. Once in the Americas, slaves were branded and subjected to grueling work, primarily as agricultural laborers, especially in sugar plantations. The average life expectancy for a Brazilian sugar plantation slave in the late 18th century was 23 years. While conditions were slightly better in British colonies and the U.S., leading to natural population increases, this meant slave owners could exploit children born into slavery.
Defining Slavery (6:45): The video distinguishes Atlantic chattel slavery as unique due to its nature as movable property and dehumanization. It draws upon Orlando Patterson's definition of slavery as "the permanent violent and personal domination of natively alienated and generally dishonored persons."
Other Models of Slavery (7:26): The video explores various historical models of slavery that contributed to the characteristics of Atlantic slavery:
Greek Slavery: Emphasized "otherness" and the belief that some people were naturally slaves.
Roman Slavery: Introduced large-scale plantations (latifundia) and slaves made up a significant portion of the population.
Judeo-Christian and Muslim Models: Used biblical justifications for hereditary slavery and linked slavery to human sin. Muslim Arabs were among the first to import large numbers of Bantu-speaking Africans as slaves, fostering racist attitudes.
Global Participation (10:06): The video concludes by stressing that Atlantic slavery was a monstrous tragedy in which the whole world participated, a culmination of millennia of dehumanizing "the other.