The Eighteenth-Century World
1700 –1775

>> What were the some of the choices that individual men and women made in the eighteenth century — for example, where to live, how to work, what to purchase, what to believe —and how did those choices affect their society?
>> How did such choices make everyday life more democratic? What were the forces that worked against such democratization?
>> How were free Americans able to become wealthier even without significant technological innovations?
>> How did the consumer revolution affect American society and culture?
>> As the colonial population became more diverse and complex, with separate regional cultures and an increasing variety of beliefs and religious practices, were there other experiences that colonial
Americans had in common? Is it possible yet, on the eve of the
American Revolution, to talk about a common American experience or culture?
>> Was the Revolution caused by American unity or diversity?
Both?

1700-1775
• Overview
• The Population Explosion of the Eighteenth Century
• The Transatlantic Economy: Producing and
Consuming
• The Varieties of Colonial Experience
• The Head and the Heart in America: The
Enlightenment and Religious Awakening

“This population boom was both the product of American prosperity and the precondition for its further growth.”
• The Dimensions of Population Growth
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• Scope and scale
How did this expansion alter British North American society?
• Ethnic makeup
• Economic activity: consumerism
• Bound for America: European Immigrants
• Who were the European immigrants?
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Origins
Destinations
• Occupations

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• Urban
• Rural
• Rich and poor
• White and slave
• Through immigration, slave importations, and natural increase (free and slave)
• 90% of immigrants between 1580 and 1775 were unfree (slaves, indentures)

• 425,000 European immigrants to colonies in the 1700s
• Scotch-Irish – majority
• to middle and southern colonies
• To back-country: cheap land, less control, conflicts with Indians
• English
• Welsh
• German: Pennsylvania, Maryland, etc.
• Most European immigrants were unfree (to an extent)
• Indentured servants or redemptioners
• Convicts
• What ideas or movements would have appealed to the unfree or previously unfree?

Territorial Expansion of original colonies:
Yellow = by 1759
Pink = by 1769
Purple = by 1776
What issues arose as a result of population growth and territorial expansion?
Results?

• Bound for America
• Over 300,000 slaves transported to English N.A. colonies by 1760
• Origins: mostly taken from West Africa
• Destinations: all colonies, but majority to upper and lower south
• Conditions: Captivity, Transport, and Occupations
• The African Slave Trade
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Slavery within Africa
Slave forts on West African coast
Cooperation of African elites, intermixture with European traders
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• Great expansion of demand with Atlantic trade
Effects on Africans: war, instability, death, dependence

Slaves in the Original Thirteen Colonies (1750-1860)

Slaves as Percentage of Southern Population (1750-1860)

Slaves as Percentage of Southern Population (1750-1860

Producing and Consuming
“In the eighteenth century, as the colonies matured, they became capitalist societies, tied increasingly into an Atlantic trade network.”
• The Nature of Colonial Economic Growth
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Growth fueled by various factors
• Population growth
Environment – productive use of farms, timber, ports
Labor Productivity – free vs. slave, upper vs. lower south
• What role, if any, did technological innovations play?

• Economic regions of British North America
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South: Tobacco, Cereals (Rice), and Indigo
Middle: Grains (Wheat)
North: Agriculture, Furs/Hides
• How did labor compare?
• How did slave life compare in the Chesapeake versus South
Carolina?
• Different labor needs for different crops
• Where was wealth concentrated in each of these regions?

Major Colonial Exports, c. 1770

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Different crops in two regions
Different crops = different labor conditions for slaves
Upper south (VA & MD) = tobacco, corn, and wheat
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Seasonal labor, meticulous attention to tobacco
Better climate
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Natural increase among slaves
Constant surveillance/contact with whites
Lower south (SC, GA, LA) = rice, indigo, sugar
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Hot, humid, mosquitoes
Hard gang labor in irrigation canals, flooded fields
High death rate
– similar to Caribbean slavery
High demand for more slaves shipped from Africa
Slave majorities: more independence in work, culture
Both regions dominated by planter elites
• In Lower South, elites were absentee landlords, living in higher elevations or in towns – healthier environment

Producing and Consuming
• Merchants and Dependent Laborers in the
Transatlantic Economy
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• Shipbuilding in New England
Development of Major Port Towns: Boston, Newport,
New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston
• An affluent merchant class developed
• Consumer Choices and the Creation of Gentility
• A new “liberty” emerged for colonists as a result of the
British mercantilist system: Consumer Choice
• The Consumer Revolution
• Causes
• Social Impact

“Although the eighteenth-century industrial and consumer revolutions tied the peoples of the North
Atlantic world together, climate, geography, immigration, patterns of economic development, and population density made for considerable variety.”
• An Urban Public Sphere Developed
• Urban Expansion – population growth
• The Wealthy Class
• Urban Dwellers
• Social Life – institutions, govt., public life
• Attitudes: Identity and Politics
• The Diversity of Urban Life
• The urban poor and black slaves reacted to economic stratification of urban life
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Parades and civic involvement
Poor white voters
• Riots

The Enlightenment and Religious Awakening
“Although the movements might seem fundamentally opposite…both criticized established authority and valued the experience of the individual. Both contributed to the humanitarianism that emerged at the end of the century, and both were products of capitalism.”
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The Ideas of the Enlightenment
• The Enlightenment altered Europeans’ view of the world, and of knowledge in general
• Questioned “traditional” sources (institutions) of knowledge, such as the Bible
(church)
The Enlightenment and the Study of Political Economy
• John Locke
• Adam Smith
Enlightened Institutions
• Libraries for the Public
• How did Enlightenment optimism impact organized religions?

Printing presses in the colonies,
1760-1775

The Enlightenment and Religious Awakening
• Origins of the Great Awakening
• Ripe Conditions for an Awakening
• The Grand Itinerant: George Whitfield
• How did the Awakeners shake up the religious establishments of the colonies?
• Cultural Conflict and Challenges to Authority
• What was the widespread appeal of the Awakening?
• What the Awakening Wrought
• New denominational divides created by the Awakening

George Whitefield’s colonial itinerary, 1739-1741

George Whitefield: Evangelist for a Consumer Society
“Whitefield embodied the great contradictions of his age without threatening the political or economic order that sustained them….Whitefield’s strategy was to criticize the individual without attacking the system.”
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What was new and unique about Whitefield’s preaching?
• Style
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Message
Popular Following
Why was Whitefield such a hit sensation in the colonies?
• Social Conditions

George Whitefield , by
John Russell (died
1806), given to the
National Portrait Gallery,
London in 1917

Link to PBS Frontline video, “God in America: Part One: ‘A New Adam’”

Similarities
• Questioning authority
• Individualism
• Breaking down of barriers, social class, racial, hierarchy and power
• Equality
• Mass movements
• Revivals
• Increase writing, inventions, printing presses, rise literacy
Differences
• Rationality vs. religion
• Scientific proof vs. experience, spirituality

• Two great intellectual movements – Enlightenment and Great
Awakening were related in important ways
• Became a distinguishing characteristic of American life:
• Individual thought, questioning, and exploration
• Not always radical: individualist goals could be quite conservative:
• Economic success – at expense of others, community, even self
• Religious expression w/o questioning of social norms/problems
• For example: Belief in personal salvation, relationship with God, the world be damned or accepted as unimportant in long-term goal of Heaven
• But could also result in questioning of authority and conventions

• Debate over character of America
• Debate over character of American Revolution – what kind of revolution was it?
• What caused Americans to revolt and demand independence?
• Increasing unity?
• Disunity?
• Individualism?
• Group experiences?

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WORLD
1700-1775
• Revisiting the Common Threads
>> What were the some of the choices that individual men and women made in the eighteenth century —for example, about where to live, how to work, what to purchase, what to believe —and how did those choices affect their society?
>> How did such choices make everyday life more democratic? What were the forces that worked against such democratization?
>> How were free Americans able to become wealthier even without significant technological innovations?
>> How did the consumer revolution affect American society and culture?
>> As the colonial population became more diverse and complex, with separate regional cultures and an increasing variety of beliefs and religious practices, were there other experiences that colonial
Americans had in common? Is it possible yet, on the eve of the
American Revolution, to talk about a common American experience or culture?
>> Was the Revolution caused by American unity or diversity?
Both?