Becoming America

1
Becoming America

• Ethnicity and Material Life

2
Ethnicity

• Native American Diversity

3
Ethnicity

• Diverse European settlement
• Mostly English
• French
• Scot, Scotch-Irish
• Irish
• German
• Swedish
• Dutch
• Finn
• Spanish

4
Ethnicity

• Changes in immigration moving from the 1600s to
  the 1700s.

5
Ethnicity

• African migration
• Largest immigrant group in the 1700s.
• South Carolina only colony where slaves
  outnumbered free.

6
Ethnicity

• Why slavery?
• Better conditions in Europefewer indentured
  servants.
• 1698 end of British Royal African Company slave
  trade monopolymore slaves available.
• Southern agriculture made slavery cheaper.
• 1676 Bacons Rebellion the need for a class
  under poor whites, plus no need to provide land
  to slaves.
• Slaves perceived to be hardier in the South.

7
Ethnicity

• Native Americans population decrease.
• 1680 160 distinct cultural groups 1800 75.
• Death by disease and warfare aggregation and
  assimilation.
• Southern colony Indian population 1685 200k
  1800 60k.
• New England 1600 25k 1700 300.

8
Ethnicity

• 1760
• New England 70 English.
• Middle and Southern Colonies 30-45 English (in
  the south the primary non-English ethnic group
  was African).

9
Ethnicity

• The building of the Old South
• Europeans and Africans among Indians

10
Ethnicity

• Southern Indian/European Trade
• To Indians guns, alcohol, other manufactured
  goods.
• From Indians furs (esp. deer and beaver),
  slaves.
• Indian slaves traded perhaps 24k-51k from late
  1600s to 1715.

11
Ethnicity

• Problems with Indian trade
• Warfare among Indians to obtain slaves.
• Enslavement by Europeans of allied Indians.
• Other (fraud, physical abuse, debt)
• 1715 Yamasee War broke out.

12
Ethnicity

• Yamasee War
• Colonial government sent delegation to negotiate.
• April, 1715 negotiations failed, perhaps
  sabotaged.
• 400 colonists died, worst war in colonial history
  in percentage of population killed?
• Yamasee defeated by northern colonists and their
  Indian allies.

13
Ethnicity

• Long-term impact of Yamasee War
• Indian migration leads to open space for
  plantation agriculture.
• Decrease in Indian trade, especially slave trade,
  leads to other economic activity.
• Need for more African slaves.
• Elite whites unite to control volatile slave
  population.
• Building of southern racial slave system, in
  place for major African slave migration.
• Result the Old South.

14
Material Life
Economy

• Still mostly agricultural 75-85 of people
  worked on farms.
• But increasingly market oriented, rather than
  subsistence based agriculture.
• Produced for themselves, but also for markets
• Neighbors and regional markets.
• Also sell to merchants who ship to Europe and
  Caribbean.
• Rice exports in SC in 1698 10k pounds. In
  1740, 43 mil.

15
Material Life
16
Material Life

• Some consequences of commercial agriculture
• Vulnerable to market fluctuations.
• Increase value of womens labor.
• Increase value of slave labor to southern cash
  crops.
• Increase in local craft production.
• Increase in merchant class. Philadelphia In
  1700 50 merchants, in 1774, 300 merchants.

17
Material Life

• Creation of a merchant elite.
• in Boston, the top 10 of the citys taxpayers
  owned 46 percent of its wealth in 1687, but 63
  in 1771.
• Formation of an aristocracy lite.
• By 1774, per capita wealth among European
  colonists (without slaves) stood at 38 pounds for
  the northern colonies, 44.1 for the middle
  colonies, and 61.6 for the southern colonies.
  When slaves are included in wealth, northern per
  capita wealth stood at 38.2 pounds, 45.8 in the
  middle, and 92.7 in the south (which in turn, did
  not come close to Jamaica, where the enormous
  slave pop pushed Euro wealth to 1,200 pounds!).

18
Material Life
Material Life

• Increase in wealth inequality.
• General prosperity (for white colonists) due to
  slave labor, abundance of land and firewood, less
  population density, better diet.
• One guesstimate economy grew from around 25
  million GNP in 1650 to about 1.8 billion in
  1774, in 1980 dollars.
• Wealth 13 pounds per capita annual income in
  colonies, 11 pounds in Great Britain, and 6
  pounds in France.
• The average colonist stood 2-3 inches taller than
  Europeans, with the tallest colonists found in
  the South.

19
Material Life

• Landscape
• Changes to forests.
• Swamps and forests to farmland (and farmland to
  forests)
• Building of cities.
• In 1775 Phily and NY had about 25k.
• Boston about 16k.
• Charles Town about 12k.
• Newport, RI 11k.
• Norfolk, VA, 6.25k
• Baltimore, MD, 6k
• The last three were built in the mid-1700s.

20
Material Life
Charleston at mid-18th century.
21
Material Life

• Rhys Isaacs hierarchy of buildings in Virginia.

22
Material Life

• Churches17th Century

23
Material Life

• Churches18th century. Christ Church in
  Philadelphia (l) and St. Michaels Church in
  Charles Town, SC (r).

24
Material Life

• 18th century urban laborers housing
  (Philadelphia).

25
Material Life

• Charles Town wealthier housing (c. 1743)

26
Becoming America

• By the time of the Revolution, the American
  colonies were growing extensively in
• Population.
• Diversity, though a bit less Native American.
• Dependency on a racial system of slavery.
• Wealth and material luxury.
• Urban.
• Becoming America externally. Next Becoming
  America internally.

27
Becoming America

• Mentality

28
Mentality

• Ned Landsman

29
Mentality

• Consumer Culture following English fashion.
• Storekeepers advertised superfine Broad Cloths
  of the Colours most in fashion in London, and
  Stays which are very much worn by young Ladies
  in England. Hairdressers and tailors likewise
  boasted of their ability to recreate the latest
  fashion from England. Ann Willson advertised in
  the South Carolina Gazette in 1738 that Ladies
  may have FANS mended and mounted after the newest
  Fashions.
• Careful! Still a long way to go to todays
  consumer culture.

30
Mentality

• T.H. Breen Because of this commercial
  experience, it was possible for
  mid-eighteenth-century Americans to imagine
  themselves in a genuine partnership with England
  that provided all subjects with commercial
  prosperity, military security, and individual
  liberty. For ordinary people, the palpable
  experience of participating in an expanding
  Anglo-American consumer market bolstered these
  often inchoate feelings of identity. Even
  colonists of modest means copied British
  fashions, following as best they could at a
  distance of several thousand miles what the
  people of London were currently acquiring.
  22-23.

31
Mentality

• Polite culture
• Associated with
• Pedigree.
• Generosity.
• Learning.
• Independence lack of dependence on others.
• Manners and deportment.
• Honesty and honor.
• Authenticity, or naturalness.
• Demonstrated by
• Generosity.
• Not showing work.
• Leisure and entertainment.
• Public confidence in office.
• Funded by wealth.

32
Mentality

• Often associated with Enlightenment
• Extension of scientific revolution (social
  concerns).
• Challenge traditional truths and sources of
  truths.
• Exaltation of the mind, freedom of the mind.
• a new constellation of formal and technical
  practices and institutions, or media. Such
  practices and institutions might include
  philosophical argument, but would encompass such
  diverse elements as salons, reading circles,
  erudition, scholarship and scholarly techniques,
  translations, book reviews, academies, new
  communication tools including journals and
  newspapers, new or revived techniques of data
  organization and storage (dictionaries,
  encyclopedias, taxonomies). Jonathan Sheehan,
  AHR, Oct 2003 (1075-76).

33
Mentality

• Colonial participation in the Enlightenment, as
  equal members of the Atlantic movement
• Philadelphia as one of the worlds leading
  centers of the arts and sciences, of commerce and
  of wealth the busy scene of educational,
  literary, philosophical, philanthropic, and
  medical progress of elegant manners, mansions,
  botanical gardens, art collections, private
  libraries, hospitals, printing houses. It was
  the peculiarly congenial home of the new spirit
  of electricity.
• Cotton Mather.
• Rural Enlightenment
• Royal Society of London for the Promotion of
  Natural Knowledge

34
Mentality

• The Great Awakening the Great Awakening was an
  evangelical revivalist movement of the mid-1700s,
  that, though rooted in local context, was united
  in purpose and general spirit by the English
  itinerant evangelist George Whitefield, who
  merged the burgeoning print and consumer culture
  with evangelical revivalism to create a
  trans-Atlantic phenomenon.

35
Mentality

• Evangelical
• Universality of human iniquity.
• Reliance on Gods grace for salvation.
• Need for a dateable salvation experience.
• Less emphasis on human reason and more emphasis
  on the human experience with the divine.
• More egalitarian than the Enlightenment, since
  less dependent on religious structures.
• More egalitarian in its emphasis on the reliance
  on Gods grace and human experience.

36
Mentality

• Revivalism though everyone at any time might
  experience Gods saving grace, there are special
  times when God pours out his grace in waves,
  hence, revivals.
• GA rooted in local context occurs in the 1730s
  and 40s in the middle and upper colonies (though
  not everywhere), and in the late 40s, 50s, and
  60s in the South. Depends in part on social
  concerns that we dont fully understand yet.

37
Mentality

• George Whitefield the Grand Itinerant
• Great orator.
• Immensely popular.
• Publicity through the newspapers.
• 90 editions of his Journals, with each print run
  totaling at least 1k copies.
• Published more volumes than did any other
  publisher.
• Franklin sold Whitefields Journals for 8 pence,
  and his own Almanac for 5 pence!
• George Whitefield as The Great Awakening.
• Evangelicalism rooted in America.

38
Mentality

• Conflict over polite society
• Arises from consumer society.
• Social hierarchy of colonial society
• Great Chain of Being.
• Royal Officials, wealthy landowners, wealthy
  merchants.
• Artisans and small landowners.
• Indentured servants.
• Slaves
• Student hierarchy

39
Mentality

• Social hierarchy continued
• Church seating.
• Conflict over titles.
• References by elite
• Common persons.
• Unthinking mob.
• Ignorant vulgar.
• Grazing multitude.
• Common Herd of Mankind.

40
Mentality

• 1738 Gazette, writer attacked the lifestyle of a
  certain Don Roberto Arenaso, or as tis
  Englishest, Robin Brazen-Nose, Younge was a fake
  gentleman the only Badges of Distinction which
  he knows, consist in Dress and a splendid
  Appearance and therefore the Glare of a fine
  Coat, a broad laced Hat and Jacket pass with him
  for certain Marks of real Merit, because they
  give him a conspicuous Figure in the Eyes of
  those who proportion their Respect to every Man
  according to the Gaudiness of his Apparel.

41
Mentality

• Newspaper handout.
• Evangelical attack on polite society, especially
  dress and entertainment.

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(No Transcript)
43
Mentality

• The Enlightenment and the Great Awakening
• Religion Reason
• Revivals
  Enlightenment

44
The Big Question

• How could this population unite behind
  independence?

45
The Bigger Question

• Why would this population unite behind
  independence?
• Answer the next session on the Revolution.