CHAPTER 4 Experience of Empire Eighteenth-Century America

1. CHAPTER 4Experience of Empire Eighteenth-Century America

2. Growth and Diversity • 1700-1750—colonial population rose from 250,000 to over two million • Much growth through natural increase

3. American Enlightenment • Age of Reason • The Enlightenment’s basic assumptions: • God set up the universe and human society to operate by natural laws • Those laws can be found through reason • Mixed reception in America • Americans defended church, embraced search for practical ways of improving life

5. Economic Transformation • England added to existing base of mercantilist rules from 1710s-1750s • Colonial manufacture/trade of timber, sugar, hats, and iron restricted • However, regulations not enforced (salutary neglect) • Trade was mainly with England and West Indies

6. Birth of a Consumer Society • English mass-production of consumer goods stimulated increase in colonial imports • Americans built up large debts to English merchants to finance increased imports

7. The Great Wagon Road

8. The Great Awakening • Spontaneous, evangelical revivals that weakened the authority of the old colonial religions • Led to optimistic view of future (a new birth for believers) • Fostered sense of American unity/identity

9. Jonathan Edwards Emphasized the Calvinistic teachings of the Puritans (emphasized the importance of personal religious experience)

10. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” --Jonathan Edwards • “There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any one moment, out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.” • “He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but he can most easily do it.” • “There is no fortress that is any defense from the power of God.” • “They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell.So that every unconverted man properly belongs to hell; that is his place.” • “The Use may be of Awakening to unconverted persons in this congregation.”

11. Governing the Colonies: Governors • More powers than king in England: • Veto legislation • Dismiss judges • Appoint colonial officials • Command provincial military

12. Governing the Colonies: Colonial Assemblies • Felt obligation to preserve colonial rights/liberties • Assemblies controlled colony’s finances • No incentive for assembly to cooperate with governors (sometimes even hostile toward them)

13. North America, 1750

14. The Albany Plan • Albany Congress, 1754 • Benjamin Franklin’s idea of central colonial government • Elected representatives decide defense matters • Could levy taxes to support its operations • Albany Plan failed, disliked by English and Americans

15. 1st Political Cartoon in an American Newspaper, 1754

16. Seven Years’ War • 1756—England declared war on France • Prime Minister William Pitt shifted strategy to focus on North America • Peace of Paris 1763: France lost war • British got all North America east of Mississippi • French only retained two Caribbean Islands • Spanish added Louisiana to their empire

17. Perceptions of War • Expanded horizons of colonists • Created trained officer corps that knew British vulnerabilities • British felt colonists ungrateful and not willing to bear their fair share of the cost of the war • Used this as justification for taxing colonies

18. Seven Years’ War, 1756–1763

19. North America after 1763

20. A Century of Conflict: Major Wars, 1689–1763

21. Benjamin Franklin • Franklin (1706-1790) regarded as Enlightenment thinker by Europeans • Made important scientific discoveries and inventions • Symbol of material progress through human ingenuity