THE IMPERIAL SYSTEM AND CHANGING CULTURE
OF THE COLONIES
MERCANTILISM
 Mercantilism: a set of ideas on how a Country should conduct economics
 Accumulate as much gold and silver as possible (usually through colonies and trade)
 Self-sufficient in raw materials
 Prevented colonies from selling goods to other nations (only mother country could)
THE NAVIGATION ACTS
 1660, Charles II takes over throne
 Wanted to regulate trade in colonies
 Parliament passes Navigation Acts (1660)
 The Navigation Acts: required all goods imported or exported from the colonies to be carried on English ships,
also contained lists of raw materials that could be sold only to England
 List included sugar, tobacco, lumber, cotton, wool, and indigo
 Forced colonists to deal with English merchants only, whom of which would raise prices high for profit
THE STAPLE ACT
 Three years after Navigation Acts (1663)
 Staple Act: required everything the colonists imported to come through England first
 All merchants from other countries had to stop in England, pay taxes, and then travel to the colonies
 Caused other goods to be more expensive for colonists
TOLERATION ACT
 English Bill of Rights produced after William and Mary succeed throne in the Glorious Revolution of 1688
 English Bill of Rights: granted more power to Parliament and restricted Kings and Queens with certain duties
(taxes, gave freedom of speech, banned cruel and unusual punishment)
 Toleration Acts were also passed later that year with the English Bill of Rights
 Toleration Acts: granting freedom of worship to almost all Protestants but not to Catholics or Jews
 English Bill of Rights would foreshadow the creation of the U.S. Bill of Rights
JOHN LOCKE
 Wrote Two Treatises of Government
 Believed in political obligation to human rights and justified revolutions of Governments
 All people are born with natural rights given by God
 Government’s and the people were in social contracts (if violated by Government, the people had the right to
overthrow it)
POPULATION GROWTH IN COLONIES
 Average of 7 children per household
 From 1640-1700, population increased from 25,000 to more than 250,000 people in Colonies
 By the American Revolution, the population would be 2.5 million people
IMMIGRATION
 Besides high numbers of births, immigration played a major part in the population growth
 German, Scottish, Irish, and Jewish populations all looked to America for religious freedom, freedom from
oppression, and/or economic opportunities
 Immigrants would settle in major cities and would also expand Westward for cheaper and more available land
AFRICANS IN COLONIAL AMERICA
 Independent African culture due to slavery and lack of influence around other cultures
 Traditional religious beliefs mixed with Christian values to create to ideologies on religion
 Music became deeply rooted in African American culture
 Separated families happened regularly, thus African American’s began to use more unique names in order to pass
on their family name and heritage
 Were beaten, branded, treated like animals, even killed if tried to run away or rise up against the violence and
mistreatment
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
 Enlightenment thinkers believed that natural laws applied to social, political, and economic relationships
 This emphasis on logic and reasoning was known as rationalism
 John Locke was a member of the Enlightenment Movement
 Another Enlightenment member was Baron Montequieu
 In his work, Spirit of the Laws, believed that Government had 3 parts –executive, legislative, and judicial (sound
familiar???)
THE GREAT AWAKENING
 Colonists began to experience pietism
 Pietism: an European movement that stressed individual devoutness and an emotional union with God (individual
being key)
 Preacher sermons spread the word of Pietism through Revivals
 Revivals: large public meetings for preaching and prayer
 Caused spread of more Protestant religious sects such as Methodists and Baptists
 Supported individualism (focus on ones self) just as Enlightenment period had