Political Additional Reading "Shmoop- Looking at the Past through the Lens of Politics"
During the last two decades of the sixteenth century, the English Crown granted various proprietors and chartered companies authority to establish colonies in America. These grants formed the basis for an extraordinary devolution of political authority from the English Crown to separate polities in the New World. In the following century, this process led to the creation on the North American continent of twelve colonies stretching from South Carolina north to New Hampshire. In 1713, the British wrested Nova Scotia from the French, and in the early 1730s a group of government-sponsored trustees established Georgia.
Except for New Hampshire and Nova Scotia, both of which were started under the direct supervision of the Crown, these colonies were private ventures little supervised by the English. The welter of institutions devised by their sponsors to govern the colonies varied enormously. By the late seventeenth century, however, most of their political systems were roughly similar. This development was largely the result of the gradual conversion, between 1624 and 1729, of the majority of the colonies into royal provinces, but it also occurred in the private colonies--the three proprietaries, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, and the two corporate colonies, Connecticut and Rhode Island. This pattern was clearly derived from English political institutions. The governorship, the colonial equivalent of the Crown, was filled by appointees, except in Connecticut and Rhode Island, where it was elective. As the chief representatives of Britain, governors were responsible for enforcing British trade laws and carrying out other directives. As viceroys of the Crown, they were invested with its vast prerogative powers, powers that in theory extended well beyond those exercised by the Crown itself in Britain following the restrictions imposed after the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689.
As chief executives, governors were responsible for executing colonial laws, administering justice, and appointing most administrative and judicial officers. As commanders in chief, they were responsible for provincial defense and diplomatic relations with the Indians and the other colonies. As one of three branches of the legislature, they had veto power over all laws and took an active role in the legislative process. Finally, they held the exclusive power to grant lands from the enormous royal or proprietary domains.
The governor's advisory councils took on the functions performed in Britain by the Privy Council and the House of Lords. Like the former, they served as an advisory body whose approval was required for most executive actions, and in a few colonies they acted as a superior court. Like the latter, they constituted in every colony except Pennsylvania after 1701 an upper house of the legislature whose consent was necessary for the passage of laws. In three colonies these bodies were elected by the lower houses of the legislature. Elsewhere, they were composed of usually twelve royal or proprietary appointees.
The lower houses of the colonial assemblies were the equivalents of the British House of Commons. Composed of elected representatives from local constituencies, they were the primary instruments for the expression of political demands. Though limited in the royal colonies and Pennsylvania by the requirement that all statutes be sent to Britain for review, their lawmaking powers were as extensive in their spheres as was that of the Commons in Britain, and their consent was required for all taxes.
Variations among colonies were greatest at the level of local government. Everywhere, in the English fashion, justices of the peace operating through local courts had primary responsibility for the administration of justice. For handling other areas of local administration, three main systems emerged. From North Carolina north to New York and in Nova Scotia, the county was the central unit of local government and was administered by county courts composed of justices of the peace appointed by the governors. In South Carolina and Georgia, the parish was the main component and was overseen by parish officers, all of whom were appointed by governors. In the four New England colonies, the town was the primary local unit and was administered by selectmen and other officials elected (usually annually) by a town meeting.
Colonists expected remarkably little from government. Budgets and taxes were low; paid full-time officials few; civil, judicial, and police establishments small, part-time, and unprofessional; and military establishments temporary. Hence, politics provided little scope for the active involvement of citizens. Outside New England, where some town offices were elective as were some provincial offices in Connecticut and Rhode Island, only representatives to the lower houses were not appointed, and the franchise was limited to independent property-owning adult males. Because property was relatively easily available, however, a large majority (up to 80 to 90 percent) of free white males in most colonies could expect to acquire enough property to meet suffrage requirements.
For several generations in most colonies, politics was relatively primitive. Leadership and institutional structures were weak and undefined, levels of political expertise and socialization low, and political consciousness undeveloped. Under such conditions, public life was volatile, and would-be leaders jockeyed with one another for power, wealth, and prestige. In a few places for brief periods, this primitive politics of competition resulted in the triumph of restrictive oligarchies.
Beginning in the 1720s and 1730s, these primitive forms gave way to traditional modes more like those of Britain. The hallmarks of this new type of politics were the muting of fundamental issues that divided the body politic, the dominance of broad elites who were roughly representative of or sensitive to the needs and interests of all important segments of free society, and the reduction of political strife to relatively low levels. In the few colonies in which these conditions could not be sustained and levels of conflict remained high, notably New York and Rhode Island, a more modern type of polity began to emerge around 1750 with the development of semipermanent political parties.
However politics developed, public life everywhere after 1720 became more settled. Levels of political socialization and consciousness rose, and institutional and leadership structures became more sharply articulated. Civil disorder was rare and tended to be confined to particular situations: when a political system failed to perform its expected functions; political leaders did not act on issues deemed important by a significant section of the population; strong contending parties disagreed over some fundamental issue, such as land titles or currency; or the traditional rights and privileges of the community seemed threatened.
For the most part, however, the limited coercive powers of colonial polities, their small scale, their extreme susceptibility to constituent demands, a generally high degree of constituent trust in leaders, and a new level of civility in the public arena all helped to channel conflict into publicly acceptable forms. These factors promoted a conception of politics as an accommodative process in which the broad body of the people normally deferred to the leadership and decisions of an increasingly expert community of experienced elite politicians.
Except for New Hampshire and Nova Scotia, both of which were started under the direct supervision of the Crown, these colonies were private ventures little supervised by the English. The welter of institutions devised by their sponsors to govern the colonies varied enormously. By the late seventeenth century, however, most of their political systems were roughly similar. This development was largely the result of the gradual conversion, between 1624 and 1729, of the majority of the colonies into royal provinces, but it also occurred in the private colonies--the three proprietaries, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, and the two corporate colonies, Connecticut and Rhode Island. This pattern was clearly derived from English political institutions. The governorship, the colonial equivalent of the Crown, was filled by appointees, except in Connecticut and Rhode Island, where it was elective. As the chief representatives of Britain, governors were responsible for enforcing British trade laws and carrying out other directives. As viceroys of the Crown, they were invested with its vast prerogative powers, powers that in theory extended well beyond those exercised by the Crown itself in Britain following the restrictions imposed after the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689.
As chief executives, governors were responsible for executing colonial laws, administering justice, and appointing most administrative and judicial officers. As commanders in chief, they were responsible for provincial defense and diplomatic relations with the Indians and the other colonies. As one of three branches of the legislature, they had veto power over all laws and took an active role in the legislative process. Finally, they held the exclusive power to grant lands from the enormous royal or proprietary domains.
The governor's advisory councils took on the functions performed in Britain by the Privy Council and the House of Lords. Like the former, they served as an advisory body whose approval was required for most executive actions, and in a few colonies they acted as a superior court. Like the latter, they constituted in every colony except Pennsylvania after 1701 an upper house of the legislature whose consent was necessary for the passage of laws. In three colonies these bodies were elected by the lower houses of the legislature. Elsewhere, they were composed of usually twelve royal or proprietary appointees.
The lower houses of the colonial assemblies were the equivalents of the British House of Commons. Composed of elected representatives from local constituencies, they were the primary instruments for the expression of political demands. Though limited in the royal colonies and Pennsylvania by the requirement that all statutes be sent to Britain for review, their lawmaking powers were as extensive in their spheres as was that of the Commons in Britain, and their consent was required for all taxes.
Variations among colonies were greatest at the level of local government. Everywhere, in the English fashion, justices of the peace operating through local courts had primary responsibility for the administration of justice. For handling other areas of local administration, three main systems emerged. From North Carolina north to New York and in Nova Scotia, the county was the central unit of local government and was administered by county courts composed of justices of the peace appointed by the governors. In South Carolina and Georgia, the parish was the main component and was overseen by parish officers, all of whom were appointed by governors. In the four New England colonies, the town was the primary local unit and was administered by selectmen and other officials elected (usually annually) by a town meeting.
Colonists expected remarkably little from government. Budgets and taxes were low; paid full-time officials few; civil, judicial, and police establishments small, part-time, and unprofessional; and military establishments temporary. Hence, politics provided little scope for the active involvement of citizens. Outside New England, where some town offices were elective as were some provincial offices in Connecticut and Rhode Island, only representatives to the lower houses were not appointed, and the franchise was limited to independent property-owning adult males. Because property was relatively easily available, however, a large majority (up to 80 to 90 percent) of free white males in most colonies could expect to acquire enough property to meet suffrage requirements.
For several generations in most colonies, politics was relatively primitive. Leadership and institutional structures were weak and undefined, levels of political expertise and socialization low, and political consciousness undeveloped. Under such conditions, public life was volatile, and would-be leaders jockeyed with one another for power, wealth, and prestige. In a few places for brief periods, this primitive politics of competition resulted in the triumph of restrictive oligarchies.
Beginning in the 1720s and 1730s, these primitive forms gave way to traditional modes more like those of Britain. The hallmarks of this new type of politics were the muting of fundamental issues that divided the body politic, the dominance of broad elites who were roughly representative of or sensitive to the needs and interests of all important segments of free society, and the reduction of political strife to relatively low levels. In the few colonies in which these conditions could not be sustained and levels of conflict remained high, notably New York and Rhode Island, a more modern type of polity began to emerge around 1750 with the development of semipermanent political parties.
However politics developed, public life everywhere after 1720 became more settled. Levels of political socialization and consciousness rose, and institutional and leadership structures became more sharply articulated. Civil disorder was rare and tended to be confined to particular situations: when a political system failed to perform its expected functions; political leaders did not act on issues deemed important by a significant section of the population; strong contending parties disagreed over some fundamental issue, such as land titles or currency; or the traditional rights and privileges of the community seemed threatened.
For the most part, however, the limited coercive powers of colonial polities, their small scale, their extreme susceptibility to constituent demands, a generally high degree of constituent trust in leaders, and a new level of civility in the public arena all helped to channel conflict into publicly acceptable forms. These factors promoted a conception of politics as an accommodative process in which the broad body of the people normally deferred to the leadership and decisions of an increasingly expert community of experienced elite politicians.
Economic Additional Reading "Shmoop- Looking at the Past through the Lens of Economy"
The American colonial economy was export-driven, although by far the largest share of output was consumed internally. English merchant-capitalists financed the settlement of American colonies, hoping that they would gain profits from their investments. Notwithstanding the English navigation laws, which attempted to ensure the profits of English capital by restricting American manufacturing and mandating the markets for exports of colonial crops, colonists sought self-sufficiency, not only growing most of their own food but making many of the crude tools they used in production. Colonial economic development should be seen as the result of both foreign commerce and dynamically growing local economies.
Joint stock companies, founded by English merchants and landlords, financed the initial conquest of New England and the Chesapeake colonies. Expecting profits from the riches of the New World, these investors wound up merely paying the colonists' bills. Ultimately, after several decades of experimentation, colonists discovered that agricultural goods (corn, wheat, tobacco, rice, indigo, naval stores) were in great demand in England and Europe. By the mid-seventeenth century, trade under England's umbrella was mutually beneficial: the English navy protected colonial commerce, and colonists gained a guaranteed market in England and access to English and Scottish credit and manufactured goods; the English gained markets for manufactured goods, profits from the sale of colonial staples on the Continent, and interest payments on the credit they extended.
Although a majority of free and indentured white colonial migrants came from towns (where they had been artisans and wage laborers), the colonies were overwhelmingly agricultural. As many as four-fifths of all colonists, including their families, servants, and slaves, were farmers. Most of the rest provided such essential services for farm communities as shopkeeping, blacksmithing, or carpentry. Such behavior suggests that urban people sought the independence that farming entailed. At first, however, there was remarkably little land available to colonists to farm. During the seventeenth century, the Indian "menace" restricted quantities of land available for exploitation, but after disease and warfare decimated Indian populations, millions of "widowed" acres awaited cultivation.
A few towns developed in the eighteenth century--Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston--but they served mostly to collect agricultural goods from the countryside and disperse English manufactured goods to farmers. Such commercial activity, bounded by rural needs, not only employed merchants but also such artisans as coopers and shipbuilders. As trade grew, town populations increased, and the internal life of towns (newspapers, government, petty shopkeepers) rose as well. But since most manufacturing and credit came from England, towns stayed small. Philadelphia, the largest town, and its suburbs counted less than forty thousand people on the eve of the Revolution.
Each colonial region developed its own peculiar economy. Staple export economies, using unfree indentured or slave labor, developed in the southern colonies. Booming tobacco prices in the 1620s led Virginia planters to export the crop, and production spread throughout the Chesapeake region (Maryland, Virginia, and adjacent North Carolina) before the end of the century. Notwithstanding lower prices and slow diversification of crops, most planters in that region still exported tobacco on the eve of the Revolution. After experimenting with livestock production and naval stores, planters in coastal South Carolina (perhaps aided by the skills of their slaves) took up rice cultivation, developing large plantations that persisted through the colonial era. Farmers in southern mountains and valleys, however, produced mostly grains and livestock, and entered the export economy only gradually.
The northern colonies developed more diversified economies, relying less upon the export of staples. Northern frontier settlers engaged in the fur trade, but that trade diminished rapidly because of overhunting. Although some New England farmers exported grain and livestock, many could barely feed themselves and their families. New Englanders therefore turned to alternative occupations, trading with the West Indies and developing vigorous fishing, small manufacturing, and shipbuilding industries. Farmers in the Mid-Atlantic, in contrast, sent flour and grain (wheat, corn) to the West Indies in great quantities from the beginning of colonization, thereby encouraging the growth of Philadelphia and New York. Nonetheless, many of these farmers participated in grain commodity markets only in occasional years of high prices until the 1760s and 1770s, when wars and crop failures in Europe opened new markets in southern Europe for grain, enticing farmers to greater market production.
Farm operators relied heavily upon their families for labor. While fathers and older sons cleared land and planted, cultivated, and harvested grain or other staples, mothers and older daughters operated the dairy and vegetable gardens. The greater the level of staple production, the higher the likelihood that farm operators had access to labor beyond the family. The great majority of farm families in New England owned few slaves and infrequently hired wage laborers, but wealthy men in the Mid-Atlantic colonies (including Quakers before the 1770s) owned slaves and indentured servants in some numbers. Although Chesapeake planters at first used English and Irish indentured servants, by the early eighteenth century a significant (and increasing) minority of southern tobacco planters and nearly all rice planters owned slaves.
Notwithstanding the importance of international market exchange to the colonies, farm families, especially in the North, invented a complex system of local "gift" exchange, which sheltered them, to a degree, from the vagaries of the market. Farm women and farm men traded labor for goods or goods for goods (fieldwork for corn, mutual help with the harvest, eggs for wool, weaving for spinning), expecting eventual repayment in kind, but charging no interest. Such neighborliness permitted households to procure food and cloth that they could not produce themselves. Families with insufficient resources to participate in such exchange networks had to sell their labor or personal goods to feed and clothe themselves.
The American colonies, affected by the vagaries of the North Atlantic economy, experienced booms and busts, much like England. Nonetheless, the colonial economy grew cumulatively at a slow rate. Starting with few possessions, typical colonials owned goods worth $1,150 (1976 dollars) in 1650. After a century of slow growth (.3-.4 percent annually), average colonists owned property valued at over $1,500; a quarter of a century later, after faster growth (.5 percent), per capita wealth reached almost $1,800.
Average growth rates and income and wealth levels obscure both increased prosperity and great poverty among Americans. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of white male farmers owned the land they cultivated; they and their families enjoyed not only the fruits of their labors but progressively higher levels of consumption of consumer goods (amenities like ceramic plates and knives and forks) over the eighteenth century. But many other families were poor, and nearly a quarter of all Americans were enslaved and consumed very little. Moreover, inequality in property ownership among free people had been high since the outset of settlement, and probably grew somewhat more concentrated in older regions over the eighteenth century, with the wealthiest tenth of the population owning between one-third and two-thirds of the total wealth.
Joint stock companies, founded by English merchants and landlords, financed the initial conquest of New England and the Chesapeake colonies. Expecting profits from the riches of the New World, these investors wound up merely paying the colonists' bills. Ultimately, after several decades of experimentation, colonists discovered that agricultural goods (corn, wheat, tobacco, rice, indigo, naval stores) were in great demand in England and Europe. By the mid-seventeenth century, trade under England's umbrella was mutually beneficial: the English navy protected colonial commerce, and colonists gained a guaranteed market in England and access to English and Scottish credit and manufactured goods; the English gained markets for manufactured goods, profits from the sale of colonial staples on the Continent, and interest payments on the credit they extended.
Although a majority of free and indentured white colonial migrants came from towns (where they had been artisans and wage laborers), the colonies were overwhelmingly agricultural. As many as four-fifths of all colonists, including their families, servants, and slaves, were farmers. Most of the rest provided such essential services for farm communities as shopkeeping, blacksmithing, or carpentry. Such behavior suggests that urban people sought the independence that farming entailed. At first, however, there was remarkably little land available to colonists to farm. During the seventeenth century, the Indian "menace" restricted quantities of land available for exploitation, but after disease and warfare decimated Indian populations, millions of "widowed" acres awaited cultivation.
A few towns developed in the eighteenth century--Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston--but they served mostly to collect agricultural goods from the countryside and disperse English manufactured goods to farmers. Such commercial activity, bounded by rural needs, not only employed merchants but also such artisans as coopers and shipbuilders. As trade grew, town populations increased, and the internal life of towns (newspapers, government, petty shopkeepers) rose as well. But since most manufacturing and credit came from England, towns stayed small. Philadelphia, the largest town, and its suburbs counted less than forty thousand people on the eve of the Revolution.
Each colonial region developed its own peculiar economy. Staple export economies, using unfree indentured or slave labor, developed in the southern colonies. Booming tobacco prices in the 1620s led Virginia planters to export the crop, and production spread throughout the Chesapeake region (Maryland, Virginia, and adjacent North Carolina) before the end of the century. Notwithstanding lower prices and slow diversification of crops, most planters in that region still exported tobacco on the eve of the Revolution. After experimenting with livestock production and naval stores, planters in coastal South Carolina (perhaps aided by the skills of their slaves) took up rice cultivation, developing large plantations that persisted through the colonial era. Farmers in southern mountains and valleys, however, produced mostly grains and livestock, and entered the export economy only gradually.
The northern colonies developed more diversified economies, relying less upon the export of staples. Northern frontier settlers engaged in the fur trade, but that trade diminished rapidly because of overhunting. Although some New England farmers exported grain and livestock, many could barely feed themselves and their families. New Englanders therefore turned to alternative occupations, trading with the West Indies and developing vigorous fishing, small manufacturing, and shipbuilding industries. Farmers in the Mid-Atlantic, in contrast, sent flour and grain (wheat, corn) to the West Indies in great quantities from the beginning of colonization, thereby encouraging the growth of Philadelphia and New York. Nonetheless, many of these farmers participated in grain commodity markets only in occasional years of high prices until the 1760s and 1770s, when wars and crop failures in Europe opened new markets in southern Europe for grain, enticing farmers to greater market production.
Farm operators relied heavily upon their families for labor. While fathers and older sons cleared land and planted, cultivated, and harvested grain or other staples, mothers and older daughters operated the dairy and vegetable gardens. The greater the level of staple production, the higher the likelihood that farm operators had access to labor beyond the family. The great majority of farm families in New England owned few slaves and infrequently hired wage laborers, but wealthy men in the Mid-Atlantic colonies (including Quakers before the 1770s) owned slaves and indentured servants in some numbers. Although Chesapeake planters at first used English and Irish indentured servants, by the early eighteenth century a significant (and increasing) minority of southern tobacco planters and nearly all rice planters owned slaves.
Notwithstanding the importance of international market exchange to the colonies, farm families, especially in the North, invented a complex system of local "gift" exchange, which sheltered them, to a degree, from the vagaries of the market. Farm women and farm men traded labor for goods or goods for goods (fieldwork for corn, mutual help with the harvest, eggs for wool, weaving for spinning), expecting eventual repayment in kind, but charging no interest. Such neighborliness permitted households to procure food and cloth that they could not produce themselves. Families with insufficient resources to participate in such exchange networks had to sell their labor or personal goods to feed and clothe themselves.
The American colonies, affected by the vagaries of the North Atlantic economy, experienced booms and busts, much like England. Nonetheless, the colonial economy grew cumulatively at a slow rate. Starting with few possessions, typical colonials owned goods worth $1,150 (1976 dollars) in 1650. After a century of slow growth (.3-.4 percent annually), average colonists owned property valued at over $1,500; a quarter of a century later, after faster growth (.5 percent), per capita wealth reached almost $1,800.
Average growth rates and income and wealth levels obscure both increased prosperity and great poverty among Americans. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of white male farmers owned the land they cultivated; they and their families enjoyed not only the fruits of their labors but progressively higher levels of consumption of consumer goods (amenities like ceramic plates and knives and forks) over the eighteenth century. But many other families were poor, and nearly a quarter of all Americans were enslaved and consumed very little. Moreover, inequality in property ownership among free people had been high since the outset of settlement, and probably grew somewhat more concentrated in older regions over the eighteenth century, with the wealthiest tenth of the population owning between one-third and two-thirds of the total wealth.
Social Additional Reading "Shmoop- Looking at the Past through the Lens of Ideology and Culture"
Writing in 1782, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur tried to define "the American, this new man." He was, Crèvecoeur argued, "neither a European nor a descendant of a European" but an "American, who, leaving behind all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds." Crèvecoeur presumed that America was a melting pot, that the environment created a homogeneous American culture, with similar values, beliefs, and social practices. Such cultural uniformity is inherently plausible. After all, most white colonial Americans worked the soil, enjoying the fruits of their labor, and practiced similar Protestant faiths. Moreover, they believed in private ownership of the means of production by individual cultivators. Generations of scholars, following the lead of Frederick Jackson Turner in the early twentieth century, argued that free and open land on the frontier created an American people whose identity was shaped by the independence land ownership provided and whose ideology was characterized by individualism, democracy, and equality of opportunity.
Colonial cultures, however, were far less uniform than Crèvecoeur imagined. The women and men who peopled early America--Native Americans, Africans, East Anglians, Welsh, Germans, Dutch, among many others--invented conflicting popular cultures, meshing the beliefs and practices of their birthplaces with the demands of the American environment and the cultures of their neighbors. Indians and Africans, a substantial part of the colonial population, have been ignored in models of cultural uniformity. Even white Protestant immigrants created diverse cultures. While sharing a common religious vision, Puritans and Anglicans, Baptists and Quakers, differed vehemently in the particulars of their faiths. In America, without the pressure of a strong Anglican established church, the particularities of each group were accentuated. By the end of the seventeenth century, the main lines of most of American popular cultures could be clearly seen.
Notwithstanding continuing cultural differences among ethnic groups, there was some cultural convergence in the eighteenth century, a tendency for division among white colonists between a popular culture of the vast majority and a high culture of the ruling few who emulated their peers in England. Such cultural convergence within social classes had several sources. Waves of evangelical revivalism touched every colony at different times between the 1730s and 1780s, democratizing and personalizing religion, Christianizing the unchurched everywhere. Newly rich merchants, great planters, and lawyers received similar educations, built mansions in the English manner, and indulged in conspicuous consumption far beyond the reach of middling farmers.
The development of vernacular cultures in the colonial era depended upon two contrasting geographic facts: widely dispersed settlement and concentrated ethnic enclaves. Even on the eve of independence, most Americans--Indians and settlers alike--lived in isolated farm neighborhoods or villages, separated from neighbors a few miles away by almost impenetrable forests. Most were surrounded by people like themselves: Iroquois lived with Iroquois, Germans settled in Pennsylvania villages, East Anglians dominated many New England towns. Under such circumstances, contrasting popular cultures could flourish. An examination of three cultural indicators--forms of agriculture, patterns of social order, and family and gender mores--before colonization and after American settlement among Indians, New Englanders, white Virginians, and backcountry residents will suggest the ways that the interplay of received culture and environment made new popular cultures. Such an analysis, however, hardly exhausts the diversity of cultures in early America, ignoring, for example, African-Americans in the Chesapeake colonies and coastal South Carolina; Quakers, Dutch, and Scots in the Middle Colonies, and various Germanic ethnic groups. Moreover, there were class conflicts in all the seventeenth-century colonies that common regional cultures did little to hide.
Despite extraordinary differences among groups of Native Americans, they shared some general cultural similarities. Indians insisted upon communal ownership and sovereignty over land; temporary "ownership" came with use. Eastern Woodland Indians, with the exception of those living in the far Northeast, practiced subsistence agriculture, growing corn and vegetables to feed themselves, using extensive slash-and-burn techniques. Each year, men burned stubble and underbrush; then women did the planting, hoeing, and harvesting of crops. The work of women provided the vast majority of the food the tribes ate. Although they sometimes paid corn as tribute to chiefs, there was minimal exchange of agricultural goods beyond the community. While women farmed and cared for children, men hunted or went to war. Men killed animals for meat and skins (for clothing) for the community as well as pelts to trade with whites. Indians maintained social order through governance by tribal elders; although men made most decisions about war and peace, women participated in some tribes, such as the Iroquois. But white settlement profoundly affected Indian cultures. Indians traded with the first colonists, exchanging furs and corn for iron goods and cloth. As settlers farmed land, chasing animals away, and as they conquered the Indians' lands, Native Americans either had to move west to preserve their cultures or accommodate to the market economies and male agriculture of the whites.
English colonists left East Anglia in the 1630s for New England to escape depression in the cloth trade and to create a covenanted society free from Anglican persecution. Mostly middling textile workers and farmers, they traveled in family groups. Once in New England, communal leaders readily formed communities and distributed land confiscated from Indians among the inhabitants by social rank, holding some land in common for future generations. Communal land thereby became private property, a pattern very different from that of Indians. After all the land had been distributed, those without left to found new communities. Using family labor, New England farmers grew crops for subsistence, trading small surpluses at local markets to pay for taxes and consumer goods. They devised a complex system of local exchange of labor and goods between area families. These exchanges were predicated upon a division of labor in which men farmed and governed while wom- en--considered subservient--gardened, cared for children, and acted as deputy husbands when their spouses were away. A strong sense of order pervaded the society: mutual obligations were expected to tie parents and children together, and when they overstepped communal norms, they faced discipline from church or town; disreputable outsiders were forced to leave the community.
English immigrants to the Chesapeake region in the mid-seventeenth century left highly stratified societies in London and the south of England to find greater economic opportunities. The migrants, mostly poor agricultural and urban wage laborers, had worked in London or Bristol or on large rural estates, producing grain for the market. Three-quarters of them, almost all men, came as indentured servants; once they arrived they cultivated tobacco for English markets and corn for subsistence. Everyone, free and servant, male and female, performed agricultural labor. After initial distribution of land by grant, sale, and headrights (acreage given for every adult brought to the colony), a capitalist land market developed. Despite the original widespread ownership of land, Chesapeake gentlemen soon built vast estates, which they populated with servants and (later) slaves. Given the high death rate and the relatively late age of marriage in the region (servants could not marry until they were free), widows, orphans, and complex families with step- and half-siblings became common, breaking down patriarchal authority in the family, and allowing orphans' courts to replace the father.
When slaves began to replace servants as laborers in the tobacco fields after 1680, Chesapeake culture was transformed. With more laborers, white women no longer had to cultivate tobacco; and with increasing life expectancy and lower ages of marriage among whites, male patriarchal authority increased. Africans, and especially their descendants, created their own culture with African and European elements, forming complex cross-plantation communities and intense extended families in the slave quarters. Within this bicultural society, with its strict class and racial boundaries, gentlemen gained political hegemony, insisting upon the liberty to rule others--their slaves, servants, families, and white social inferiors. Acquiescing in gentry rule, poorer planters expected occasional credit from gentlemen and legal support for their dominance over their own families.
The last major group of European migrants during the colonial era came from Scotland, Ulster, and the north of England during the middle half of the eighteenth century and moved to the back parts of the American colonies, from Pennsylvania to Georgia. Mostly herdsmen, cottagers, and traditional tenants, they moved to avoid proletarianization in regions of rapid capitalist transformation. They took with them a culture constrained by generations of conflicts along the borders of England that instilled a distrust of authority and an insistence upon honor and personal integrity. Since they moved to a frontier similar to their homeland, they could invent new societies reflecting their culture. Access to or ownership of land and the open range together provided them with the means of subsistence that was quickly disappearing in their homelands. Men and women shared all agricultural labor in the mountains and valleys they settled, yet each man maintained control over his wife and family through tradition, intimidation, and violence. Fathers instilled in sons pride and independence; mothers trained daughters to be industrious and subservient to men. Insisting upon limited government, they personally attacked anyone who challenged enjoyment of their property, sometimes banding together in vigilante groups.
Waves of evangelicalism that swept over the colonies from the late 1730s to the 1780s dissolved some of these cultural differences. Starting in New England in the 1730s, they spread to the Middle Colonies in the 1740s and to the South in the 1760s and 1770s. Evangelical preachers insisted upon the spiritual equality of all people, whatever their origin, class, race, or gender. All could participate in the direct, experiential religion they mandated. Ordinary people--small farmers in the Chesapeake, urban craftsmen (masters and journeymen), blacks--interpreted spiritual equality in secular terms, allowing the free people among them to contest the hegemony of the wealthy ruling class of merchants and great planters. Widespread participation in evangelical religion provided ordinary rural Americans with a common language, thereby mitigating differences between ethnic groups.
Once whites had expropriated millions of acres of Indian land, vast areas were open to whites for settlement. By the early eighteenth century, farm families, the majority of colonists, came to expect land ownership. Out of this expectation, a yeoman ideology developed throughout the colonies. Land provided farmers with a social and political identity. Small landowners insisted upon the right to secure land tenure, arguing that they had earned ownership through their own labor. This homestead ethic was sustained in a series of conflicts that covered nearly every colony from New York to South Carolina between the 1730s and the 1770s. Whenever landlords, creditors, or venal colonial officeholders challenged the farmer's title, insisted upon early collection of debts, raised taxes, or failed to protect them from Indians or bandits, one of these conflicts resulted.
Notwithstanding continuing differences and the persistence of colonial loyalties, a high culture that transcended local peculiarities began to develop in the early eighteenth century. This high culture was predicated upon the rise of hereditary fortunes in every colony and the sustained dominance of these families in high political office. Men of wealth educated their sons at colonial colleges or in England, where students not only met their peers from other colonies but gained a taste for the writings, theater, and consumption patterns of wealthy English families. They made sure their daughters knew all the genteel female skills, from music to sewing. Thus the rich became "cultivated," building large houses, adorning their homes with the most fashionable furnishings, holding genteel assemblies, and patronizing the arts. Wherever a gentleman traveled in the colonies, he was sure to find similarly cultivated men.
The cultures of early America were complex. By the mid-eighteenth century class similarities among farmers and gentlemen pointed toward consolidated class cultures. But ethnic differences, transformed by varying economic uses colonists made of the American environment, persisted. American farmers continued to grow different crops with different forms of labor; women gained some rights in the North, but none in the South. Regional differences, within class cultures, would have a profound effect on American politics, leading ultimately to civil war.
Colonial cultures, however, were far less uniform than Crèvecoeur imagined. The women and men who peopled early America--Native Americans, Africans, East Anglians, Welsh, Germans, Dutch, among many others--invented conflicting popular cultures, meshing the beliefs and practices of their birthplaces with the demands of the American environment and the cultures of their neighbors. Indians and Africans, a substantial part of the colonial population, have been ignored in models of cultural uniformity. Even white Protestant immigrants created diverse cultures. While sharing a common religious vision, Puritans and Anglicans, Baptists and Quakers, differed vehemently in the particulars of their faiths. In America, without the pressure of a strong Anglican established church, the particularities of each group were accentuated. By the end of the seventeenth century, the main lines of most of American popular cultures could be clearly seen.
Notwithstanding continuing cultural differences among ethnic groups, there was some cultural convergence in the eighteenth century, a tendency for division among white colonists between a popular culture of the vast majority and a high culture of the ruling few who emulated their peers in England. Such cultural convergence within social classes had several sources. Waves of evangelical revivalism touched every colony at different times between the 1730s and 1780s, democratizing and personalizing religion, Christianizing the unchurched everywhere. Newly rich merchants, great planters, and lawyers received similar educations, built mansions in the English manner, and indulged in conspicuous consumption far beyond the reach of middling farmers.
The development of vernacular cultures in the colonial era depended upon two contrasting geographic facts: widely dispersed settlement and concentrated ethnic enclaves. Even on the eve of independence, most Americans--Indians and settlers alike--lived in isolated farm neighborhoods or villages, separated from neighbors a few miles away by almost impenetrable forests. Most were surrounded by people like themselves: Iroquois lived with Iroquois, Germans settled in Pennsylvania villages, East Anglians dominated many New England towns. Under such circumstances, contrasting popular cultures could flourish. An examination of three cultural indicators--forms of agriculture, patterns of social order, and family and gender mores--before colonization and after American settlement among Indians, New Englanders, white Virginians, and backcountry residents will suggest the ways that the interplay of received culture and environment made new popular cultures. Such an analysis, however, hardly exhausts the diversity of cultures in early America, ignoring, for example, African-Americans in the Chesapeake colonies and coastal South Carolina; Quakers, Dutch, and Scots in the Middle Colonies, and various Germanic ethnic groups. Moreover, there were class conflicts in all the seventeenth-century colonies that common regional cultures did little to hide.
Despite extraordinary differences among groups of Native Americans, they shared some general cultural similarities. Indians insisted upon communal ownership and sovereignty over land; temporary "ownership" came with use. Eastern Woodland Indians, with the exception of those living in the far Northeast, practiced subsistence agriculture, growing corn and vegetables to feed themselves, using extensive slash-and-burn techniques. Each year, men burned stubble and underbrush; then women did the planting, hoeing, and harvesting of crops. The work of women provided the vast majority of the food the tribes ate. Although they sometimes paid corn as tribute to chiefs, there was minimal exchange of agricultural goods beyond the community. While women farmed and cared for children, men hunted or went to war. Men killed animals for meat and skins (for clothing) for the community as well as pelts to trade with whites. Indians maintained social order through governance by tribal elders; although men made most decisions about war and peace, women participated in some tribes, such as the Iroquois. But white settlement profoundly affected Indian cultures. Indians traded with the first colonists, exchanging furs and corn for iron goods and cloth. As settlers farmed land, chasing animals away, and as they conquered the Indians' lands, Native Americans either had to move west to preserve their cultures or accommodate to the market economies and male agriculture of the whites.
English colonists left East Anglia in the 1630s for New England to escape depression in the cloth trade and to create a covenanted society free from Anglican persecution. Mostly middling textile workers and farmers, they traveled in family groups. Once in New England, communal leaders readily formed communities and distributed land confiscated from Indians among the inhabitants by social rank, holding some land in common for future generations. Communal land thereby became private property, a pattern very different from that of Indians. After all the land had been distributed, those without left to found new communities. Using family labor, New England farmers grew crops for subsistence, trading small surpluses at local markets to pay for taxes and consumer goods. They devised a complex system of local exchange of labor and goods between area families. These exchanges were predicated upon a division of labor in which men farmed and governed while wom- en--considered subservient--gardened, cared for children, and acted as deputy husbands when their spouses were away. A strong sense of order pervaded the society: mutual obligations were expected to tie parents and children together, and when they overstepped communal norms, they faced discipline from church or town; disreputable outsiders were forced to leave the community.
English immigrants to the Chesapeake region in the mid-seventeenth century left highly stratified societies in London and the south of England to find greater economic opportunities. The migrants, mostly poor agricultural and urban wage laborers, had worked in London or Bristol or on large rural estates, producing grain for the market. Three-quarters of them, almost all men, came as indentured servants; once they arrived they cultivated tobacco for English markets and corn for subsistence. Everyone, free and servant, male and female, performed agricultural labor. After initial distribution of land by grant, sale, and headrights (acreage given for every adult brought to the colony), a capitalist land market developed. Despite the original widespread ownership of land, Chesapeake gentlemen soon built vast estates, which they populated with servants and (later) slaves. Given the high death rate and the relatively late age of marriage in the region (servants could not marry until they were free), widows, orphans, and complex families with step- and half-siblings became common, breaking down patriarchal authority in the family, and allowing orphans' courts to replace the father.
When slaves began to replace servants as laborers in the tobacco fields after 1680, Chesapeake culture was transformed. With more laborers, white women no longer had to cultivate tobacco; and with increasing life expectancy and lower ages of marriage among whites, male patriarchal authority increased. Africans, and especially their descendants, created their own culture with African and European elements, forming complex cross-plantation communities and intense extended families in the slave quarters. Within this bicultural society, with its strict class and racial boundaries, gentlemen gained political hegemony, insisting upon the liberty to rule others--their slaves, servants, families, and white social inferiors. Acquiescing in gentry rule, poorer planters expected occasional credit from gentlemen and legal support for their dominance over their own families.
The last major group of European migrants during the colonial era came from Scotland, Ulster, and the north of England during the middle half of the eighteenth century and moved to the back parts of the American colonies, from Pennsylvania to Georgia. Mostly herdsmen, cottagers, and traditional tenants, they moved to avoid proletarianization in regions of rapid capitalist transformation. They took with them a culture constrained by generations of conflicts along the borders of England that instilled a distrust of authority and an insistence upon honor and personal integrity. Since they moved to a frontier similar to their homeland, they could invent new societies reflecting their culture. Access to or ownership of land and the open range together provided them with the means of subsistence that was quickly disappearing in their homelands. Men and women shared all agricultural labor in the mountains and valleys they settled, yet each man maintained control over his wife and family through tradition, intimidation, and violence. Fathers instilled in sons pride and independence; mothers trained daughters to be industrious and subservient to men. Insisting upon limited government, they personally attacked anyone who challenged enjoyment of their property, sometimes banding together in vigilante groups.
Waves of evangelicalism that swept over the colonies from the late 1730s to the 1780s dissolved some of these cultural differences. Starting in New England in the 1730s, they spread to the Middle Colonies in the 1740s and to the South in the 1760s and 1770s. Evangelical preachers insisted upon the spiritual equality of all people, whatever their origin, class, race, or gender. All could participate in the direct, experiential religion they mandated. Ordinary people--small farmers in the Chesapeake, urban craftsmen (masters and journeymen), blacks--interpreted spiritual equality in secular terms, allowing the free people among them to contest the hegemony of the wealthy ruling class of merchants and great planters. Widespread participation in evangelical religion provided ordinary rural Americans with a common language, thereby mitigating differences between ethnic groups.
Once whites had expropriated millions of acres of Indian land, vast areas were open to whites for settlement. By the early eighteenth century, farm families, the majority of colonists, came to expect land ownership. Out of this expectation, a yeoman ideology developed throughout the colonies. Land provided farmers with a social and political identity. Small landowners insisted upon the right to secure land tenure, arguing that they had earned ownership through their own labor. This homestead ethic was sustained in a series of conflicts that covered nearly every colony from New York to South Carolina between the 1730s and the 1770s. Whenever landlords, creditors, or venal colonial officeholders challenged the farmer's title, insisted upon early collection of debts, raised taxes, or failed to protect them from Indians or bandits, one of these conflicts resulted.
Notwithstanding continuing differences and the persistence of colonial loyalties, a high culture that transcended local peculiarities began to develop in the early eighteenth century. This high culture was predicated upon the rise of hereditary fortunes in every colony and the sustained dominance of these families in high political office. Men of wealth educated their sons at colonial colleges or in England, where students not only met their peers from other colonies but gained a taste for the writings, theater, and consumption patterns of wealthy English families. They made sure their daughters knew all the genteel female skills, from music to sewing. Thus the rich became "cultivated," building large houses, adorning their homes with the most fashionable furnishings, holding genteel assemblies, and patronizing the arts. Wherever a gentleman traveled in the colonies, he was sure to find similarly cultivated men.
The cultures of early America were complex. By the mid-eighteenth century class similarities among farmers and gentlemen pointed toward consolidated class cultures. But ethnic differences, transformed by varying economic uses colonists made of the American environment, persisted. American farmers continued to grow different crops with different forms of labor; women gained some rights in the North, but none in the South. Regional differences, within class cultures, would have a profound effect on American politics, leading ultimately to civil war.