Life in the English Colonies 1630-1770

1
Life in the English Colonies 1630-1770

• Chapter 4

2
Vocabulary

• Bicameral Legislature
• Town Meeting
• Libel
• Mercantilism
• Balance of Trade
• Imports
• Exports
• Duties

• Free Enterprise
• Triangular Trade
• Cash Crops
• Slave Codes
• Apprentices
• Staple Crops
• Revivals

3
Forms of Government

• Section 1

4
Colonial Governments

• English monarch owned all colonies and granted
  charters.
• Three charters are proprietary, company, and
  royal.
• A group called the Privy Council set English
  policies in the colonies.
• Most colonies were allowed to run their own
  affairs as long as their laws followed those of
  England.
• Each colony had a governor with an advisory
  council.
• In royal colonies, the King and Queen selected
  the governor and council members.
• In proprietary colonies, the proprietors chose
  the officials.
• A few colonies, such as Connecticut, the people
  elected the governor.

5
Colonial Assemblies

• People elected representatives to help make laws
  and set policy.
• They based themselves on Parliament, Englands
  national legislature, or lawmaking body.
• Parliament is a bicameral legislature a
  lawmaking body made up of two houses, or groups.
  
• Colonial Assemblies worked like the lower house.
  
• They raised taxes and organized local
  governments.
• They controlled the military with the governor.
• The laws were first approved by the advisory
  council and then the governor.
• Finally, the Privy Council reviewed the laws to
  make sure they followed English laws.

6
Colonial Assemblies (cont.)

• Virginia had the first assembly in 1619.
• It was a one house legislature, but then split in
  two.
• The first house was the Council of State
  selected by the governors advisory council and
  the Virginia Company.
• The second house was the House of Burgesses
  elected by the colonists to represent Virginias
  plantations and towns.
• In the New England colonies, town meetings
  existed as well.
• In these meetings, people talked about and
  decided issues of local interests, such as paying
  for schools.
• In the southern colonies, decisions were made at
  the county level because everyone lived so far
  from each other.
• In the middle colonies, used county and town
  meetings.

7
Colonial Courts

• Courts are an important part of communities.
• Courts were used to support the interests and
  ideas of their communities.
• For example, many laws in Massachusetts enforced
  the Puritans religious views.
• Sometimes courts protected individual freedoms.
• For example, the case of John Peter Zenger.
• John Peter Zenger was accused of printing a false
  written statement that damaged the governors
  reputation.
• This was known as libel and occurred in 1733.
• The deals with the issue of freedom of the press.
  
• The chief justice felt that it was wrong for
  Zenger to print malicious information even if it
  was true, but the jury did not find him guilty of
  anything.

8
The Dominion of New England

• 1686 King James II felt the New England
  colonies were too independent.
• He united the northern colonies under one
  government called the Dominion of New England.
• Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
  New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island.
• James appointed Sir Edmund Andros as royal
  governor of the Dominion and chose a royal
  council as well.
• The colonists were upset that they could not
  control their own affairs the way they wished.
• 1687 many residents of Ipswich, Massachusetts
  protested Andross taxation policy.
• Five were arrested and jailed.
• To prevent further protests, Andros used his
  royal authority to limit the powers of town
  meetings in 1688.

9
The Glorious Revolution

• People were upset with James in England as well.
  
• Parliament felt threatened when James tried
  changing England from Protestant back to
  Catholic.
• They asked James's daughter Mary and her husband
  William of Orange to rule England.
• William, the leader of the Netherlands, landed
  in England with his army in the fall of 1688 and
  James left the country.
• This overthrow of James became known as the
  Glorious Revolution.
• The citizens of the Dominion removed Andros as
  governor and sent him back to England.
• The political ideas of the Glorious Revolution
  led Parliament to pass the English Bill of Rights
  in 1689.
• Under this act, the powers of the monarch were
  reduced while those of Parliament were increased.
  

10
The Growth of Trade

• Section 2

11
English Trade Laws

• Trade was a main reason for founding the American
  colonies.
• The colonies made up a full third part of the
  whole Trade and Navigation of England.
• England practiced mercantilism.
• Nations created and maintained wealth by
  carefully controlling trade.
• Nations needed to create a good balance of trade.
  
• They needed to have few imports (goods bought
  from other countries) than exports (goods sold to
  other countries.
• Between 1650-1696, Parliament passed a series of
  Navigation Acts.
• These acts required colonists to do the bulk of
  trading with England.
• These acts also set duties, or import taxes, on
  some trade products.

12
Free Enterprise

• The colonies wanted more freedom to buy or sell
  goods in whatever markets offered the best
  prices.
• Within the colonies, many merchants practiced
  free enterprise.
• Free enterprise is economic competition with
  little government control.
• Local demand for colonial goods compared to
  foreign demand for colonial products.
• English laws limited free enterprise by
  preventing colonists from selling or buying goods
  directly to or from many foreign countries.
• This led to an unfavorable balance of trade for
  the colonies.

13
Colonial Trade

• 1733 Parliament passed the Molasses Act.
• This act placed duties on sugar, molasses, and
  rum.
• Some colonists began bringing in these goods
  illegally.
• This was known as smuggling, but the government
  did very little to punish them.
• By this time, Great Britain was trading
  worldwide.
• The colonists traded with Great Britain or the
  West Indies (other British colonies).
• Triangular Trade this is a trade route with
  several mixed into one.
• For example, colonies sold goods like fish,
  grain, beef, and horses to plantation owners in
  the West Indies. In exchange, merchants received
  sugar and molasses. These goods were then
  shipped to Britain.

14
The Middle Passage

• New England traders began exchanging tum for
  slaves on the West African coast.
• These traders then sold these enslaved Africans
  to the West Indies for molasses or brought them
  back to sell to the American colonies.
• This was known as the slave trade and it brought
  about 10 million Africans across the Atlantic
  Ocean.
• The voyage was known as the Middle Passage.
• They were brought over in chains and stuffed
  between the upper and lower decks of a ship in
  spaces just a few feet (16 inches wide and 5 ½
  feet long).
• Some colonists opposed the slave trade.
• However, slave labor was very important
  especially in the southern colonies, where
  tobacco and rice production required many
  workers.

15
The Colonial Economy

• Section 3

16
Agriculture in the Southern Colonies

• The economy of the southern colonies depended
  greatly on agriculture.
• According to dictionary.com, agriculture is the
  science, art, or occupation concerned with
  cultivating land, raising crops, and feeding,
  breeding, and raising livestock farming.
• These colonies had many small farms and some
  large plantations.
• Farms did well because the South enjoyed a warm
  climate and long growing season.
• Many farms grew cash crops that were sold for
  profit.
• The most important cash crops were tobacco, rice,
  and indigo (used to make blue dye).
• Eliza Lucas Pinckney introduced indigo when she
  learned to grow it on her familys plantation.
• These crops required many workers and therefore,
  many slaves were needed.
• Slave Codes laws to control slaves.
• South Carolinas code said that slaves could not
  hold meetings or own weapons.

17
Industry and Trade in New England

• Trade was extremely important in this area.
• New England entrepreneurs people who undertake
  new businesses to make a profit traded goods
  locally, with other colonies, and overseas.
• Fishing and shipbuilding became two of the
  regions leading industries.
• Merchants exported dried fish.
• Whaling provided valuable oil for lighting and
  the meat became an important part of the colonial
  diet.
• Shipbuilding prospered because the region had
  plenty of forests and the local fishing industry
  needed ships.
• This helped to create great ports for trade.
• Since so many people needed to learn all these
  crafts, families sent young boys to live with a
  master craftsman to learn how to do things.
• These young boys were called apprentices.

18
The Middle Colonies

• These colonies combined what the other colonies
  did.
• They had a good area for growing crops.
• They grew staple crops, or crops that are always
  needed.
• These crops included wheat, barley, and oats.
• Some farmers also raised and sold livestock.
• Slaves were more important here than in the New
  England colonies.
• They worked in cities as skilled laborers and on
  farms, dockyards, and on board ships.
• Trade and free enterprise were very important
  here.
• Merchants in Philadelphia and New York City
  exported colonial goods to markets in Britain and
  the West Indies.

19
Women and the Economy

• Women ran farms and businesses, such as clothing
  and grocery stores, bakeries, and drugstores
  (corner store).
• Some women practiced medicine, often as nurses
  and midwives.
• Colonial laws limited some of what women could
  do.
• A married woman could not work outside the home
  without her husbands permission.
• A man also had the right to keep the money his
  wife earned.

20
The Great Awakening

• Section 4

21
Words of the Great Awakening

• In the early 1700s many church leaders worried
  that colonists were losing their religious faith.
  
• Church leaders were committed to finding a way to
  restore faith in all.
• The middle colonies began holding revivals,
  emotional gatherings where people came together
  to hear sermons and declare their faith.
• Many colonists experienced a great awakening in
  their religious lives.
• This Great Awakening reached its height in the
  1730s and 1740s.
• It was a widespread Christian movement involving
  sermons and revivals that emphasized faith in
  God.
• The Great Awakening also changed social and
  political life.
• Jonathon Edwards was an important leader of the
  Great Awakening.
• His dramatic sermons urged sinners to seek
  forgiveness for their sins or face punishment in
  Hell forever.

22
Words of the Great Awakening (cont.)

• 1739 British minister George Whitefield made a
  trip to America.
• He held revivals from Georgia to New England and
  became one of the most popular ministers.
• The ministers of the Great Awakening preached
  that all people were born sinners who could only
  be saved by the will of God.
• However, the opportunity to be saved was
  available to all rich and poor alike who
  confessed their sins and accepted Gods grace.

23
Old and New Lights

• Not all colonists believed in these new religious
  ideas and some church congregations divided
  because of disagreements.
• There were traditionalists (Old Lights) and those
  who followed the new ministers (New Lights).
• Gilbert Tennent, a Presbyterian minister, was a
  leader of the new movement.
• His sermons attacked traditionalist and his
  church spread as well (Old Side and New Side).
• Much church growth occurred between the Baptists
  and Methodists.

24
The Great Awakening and Society

• Before the Great Awakening there was little
  communication between the colonies.
• Ministers changed all this.
• People of different backgrounds were called by
  the Great Awakening.
• Educational opportunities improved as many
  colleges were founded to provide religious
  instruction.
• The Great Awakening promoted ideals that may also
  have affected colonial politics.
• Sermons about spiritual equality of all people
  led some colonists to begin demanding more
  political equality.
• Revivals became popular places to talk about
  political and social issues.
• As a result of sharing new ideas, some colonists
  began to question the authority of existing
  institutions.