Chapter 8: British Empire in America: Growth and Conflict (1650–1750)

Important Keywords:

• Mercantilism: An economic system practiced by European powers in the late seventeenth century stating that economic self-sufficiency was crucial; as a result, colonial empires were important for raw materials.
• Navigation Acts (1660): Acts passed by the British Parliament increasing the dependence of the colonies on the English for trade.
  • These acts caused great resentment in the American colonies but were not strictly enforced.
• Triangular trade system: Complex trading system that developed in this era between Europe, Africa, and the colonies.
  • Europeans purchased slaves in Africa and sold them to the colonies, raw materials from the colonies went to Europe, while European finished products were sold in the colonies.
• Middle Passage: Voyage taken by African slaves on horribly overcrowded ships from Africa to the Americas.
• Salem Witch Trials (1692): Trials in Salem, Massachusetts, after which 19 people were executed as witches; historians note the class nature of these trials.
• Salutary neglect: Early eighteenth-century British policy relaxing the strict enforcement of trade policies in the American colonies.

Key Timeline

• 1651: First of several Navigation Acts approved by British parliament
• 1676: Bacon’s Rebellion takes place in Virginia
• 1682: Dutch monopoly on slave trade ends, greatly reducing the price of slaves coming to the Americas
• 1686: Creation of Dominion of New England
• 1688: Glorious Revolution in England; James II removed from the throne
• 1689: Beginning of the War of the League of Augsburg
• 1692: Witchcraft trials take place in Salem, Massachusetts
• 1702: Beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession
• 1733: Enactment of the Molasses Act
• 1739: Stono (slave) Rebellion in South Carolina
• 1740: George Whitefield tours the American colonies—the high point of the Great Awakening

Part of an Empire

• Most European leaders supported mercantilism.
• Mercantilists believed a state's economic health depended on a favorable trade balance.
• Governments encouraged exports and discouraged imports with high tariffs.
• Colonies produced cheap raw materials and staples and consumed the mother country's finished goods.
• Mercantilists believed that the world's wealth was finite and that governments had to maximize their share.
• Tobacco, rice, fish, and lumber from the American colonies supplied England in this mercantilist scheme.
• The first law regulating American trade was passed by Parliament in 1651.
• In 1660 and 1663, King Charles II passed the Navigation Acts, which were revised in the 1670s.
  • These acts boosted English trade while hurting Dutch competitors.
  • These acts restricted English goods to English ships with majority-English crews.
  • Tobacco, sugar, and rice shipped to Europe had to first be taxed in England.
• The Navigation Acts raised colonists' living and business costs.
• In 1684, an English court convicted the Massachusetts Bay Colony of violating the Navigation Acts because New England ignored English trade regulations.
• In 1686, King James II created the from New England, New York, and New Jersey.
  • Sir Edmund Andros, the king's appointed governor, had more power under this new structure.
• Planters blamed the Navigation Acts when tobacco prices fell in the 1660s.
  • Western Virginians believed that Sir William Berkeley was more interested in profiting from his office than protecting the colonists from Native American raids.
• In 1676, a landowner named Nathaniel Bacon raised the standard of rebellion.
  • Bacon's Rebellion was a 400–500-man army that attacked Native American settlements, some of which had been at peace with the colonists, to intimidate the colonial government.
  • At one point, Bacon’s men burned down Jamestown. After Bacon died of dysentery, Berkeley defeated the rebels and hanged 23 of them.

Growth of Slavery

• In 1662, a law was passed in Virginia declaring that the child of a slave mother was also a slave.
• In 1682, their monopoly ended, lowering slave prices in the English colonies.
• A labor force of enslaved Africans became increasingly attractive to prosperous planters.
• Portuguese explorers and merchants began trading with west African slavers in the 1440s.
• In the 17th and 18th centuries, the triangular trade system relied on the slave trade.
  • This Atlantic-wide trade and economic interdependence linked Africa, the Caribbean, South and North America, and Europe.
• European goods were traded for African slaves, who were sold in the Western Hemisphere to produce staple goods for Europe.
• The Middle Passage transported African slaves to the Americas.
  • Disease in these cramped quarters killed slaves and crews.
• Most African slaves were sent to South America or the Caribbean.
  • The British North American colonies' slave populations grew through natural reproduction.
  • Slaves developed an African-European culture over time.
  • They also mixed African and Christian beliefs.
• In 1739, South Carolina's Stono Rebellion was the largest slave uprising in British colonies.
  • 100 slaves revolted and killed isolated planters.
  • Most rebels were killed or executed after losing a pitched battle against militiamen.
  • After this rebellion, slave laws were tightened.

Political Unrest in the Colonies

• Massachusetts and the other New England colonies resented Sir Edmund Andros, the governor of the new Dominion of New England, taking their power.
• King James II was overthrown during the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England.
• William of Orange and Mary, became England's first constitutional monarchs by respecting Parliament's prerogatives.
  • The Glorious Revolution inspired political upheaval in the colonies.
• Protestant rebels overthrew Catholic Maryland leaders and imprisoned Governor Andros in Massachusetts.
• In New York, a militia officer named Jacob Leisler took control of the colony.
• Massachusetts became a royal colony with a royal governor after the monarchs abolished the Dominion of New England and restored most representative institutions.
• Jacob Leisler ran afoul of the new regime and was hanged as a rebel.
  • This showed that the royal government wanted to stay involved in colonial affairs.

Salem Witch Trials

• Salem's witch trials and executions were unprecedented in the colonies.
• A group of girls experienced inexplicable seizures and reported invisible force attacks.
• The girls accused witches of persecuting them, triggering a series of judicial investigations.
• Before the hysteria abated, over 100 people had been jailed and 20 executed.
  • Nineteen men and women were hanged, and one man was pressed to death.
  • Five other people, including an infant, died in prison.
• People began to doubt the accusers' claims that so many people were witches.
• A new governor put an official end to the proceedings.

Imperial Wars

• Louis XIV, the “Sun King” of France, attempted to dominate Europe.
• English and French wars began in 1689 and ended in 1815 with the Battle of Waterloo.
• From 1689 to 1697, America's King William's War was the League of Augsburg War.
• Schenectady, New York, was destroyed by French and Native American war parties.
  • In turn, colonists assisted the Iroquois tribe in attacking Canada.
• Massachusetts-based troops took Port Royal in Acadia from the French.
• Queen Anne's War in America (War of the Spanish Succession) lasted from 1702 to 1713.
• In 1704, French and Native Americans raided Deerfield, Massachusetts, killing 48 and capturing 112.
• Like King William's War, America had no decisive battles.
• The Treaty of Utrecht forced the French to give up Newfoundland, Acadia, and other American territories after Marlborough's European victories.

American Self-Government

• England and Scotland were formally united with the Acts of Union of 1706 and 1707.
• The British struggled to control North America in the early eighteenth century.
• Some colonies, like Connecticut and Rhode Island, elected their governors, while others, like the Carolinas, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, had proprietors who appointed governors.
• Self-government prevailed throughout British North America. Colonial assemblies were elected, but governors were appointed.
  • The “people” of this time were men who owned a certain amount of property.
  • This electorate was larger than that of Great Britain or any other European power.
• Starting in the 1720s with Massachusetts, the colonial assemblies resisted Great Britain's pressure to regularize royal governor salaries.
  • This gave assemblies "the power of the purse" in disputes with governors.

Salutary Neglect

• George I and George II's British government focused on international relations and Europe's power balance.
  • These kings from the Electorate of Hanover focused on Germany and central Europe.
  • The British government's main goal with its colonies was economic growth.
• British officials prevented Americans from making textiles, hats, and iron goods.
• American merchants flourished after the Navigation Acts allowed English colonists to own ships and trade.
• The Molasses Act of 1733 raised duties on foreign sugar because Parliament was worried about the American sugar trade with the French in the Caribbean.
• By 1750, a new generation of British colonial administrators wanted to tighten control over insubordinate Americans.

First Great American Religious Revival

• The First Great Awakening shaped American spiritual and intellectual values.
• The First Great Awakening challenged religious authorities and called for more personal and emotional worship.
• The Great Awakening criticized ministers' intellectual sermons.
• Jonathan Edwards preached on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," vividly describing hell and its horrors.
• In the 1740s, George Whitefield's sermons drew thousands to the colonies.
• The Great Awakening promoted personal equality in the American colonies by scorning the "establishment" and emphasizing fervor over ministerial learning.

Chapter 9: Resistance, Rebellion, and Revolution (1750–1775)