Lecture 4:  Life in the English Colonies

 

Outline of Lecture

Introduction

 

Making a Living in Colonial America

What enterprises provided a living for colonial Americans, and how did they fit into the imperial economy”  Whereas southern agriculture fit in well, northern subsistence farming did not.  Extractive industries of the forest and sea, manufacturing, and ocean-going commerce all had to find their place within the system known as mercantilism.

Religion (and Religious Freedom)

Religion was an important concern to colonial Americans.  They wanted religious freedom for themselves, but often denied it to others.  Puritanism was the most severe of the established churches.  William Penn was a voice for religious liberty.

Opportunity, Ambition, and the Frontier

Headrights made landholding possible for many.  Historian Frederick Jackson Turner argues that a frontier of free land had a shaping effect on the ambitious American character.  This circumstance, along with the changing demographics of the colonies, posed thorny issues for imperial authority.

 

Assignments

Tocqueville

Chapter 2:  “Democratic Social Condition of the Anglo-Americans.”  This continues Tocqueville's line of thought about why the American colonists became more and more democratic.

 

•         Two terms you need to be able to define:  primogeniture and partible inheritance.

 

•         What are the effects of these two systems of inheritance, primogeniture and partible inheritance, on a society, on democracy?

 

•         Take a look at the paragraph on p. 53 that begins, "In America, there are but few wealthy persons; nearly all Americans have to take a profession."  Tocqueville here is talking about the effects of democracy on intellectual life. Now see if you can relate this paragraph to how the curriculum of the university is structured.

 

•         What is the effect of the social condition of equality on the political life of a nation? Is there a danger to it?

WWW

Frederick Jackson Turner, Prof. Isern’s page on this influential historian’s theses

 

Salem Witch Museum—for the story of the Salem witch trials

 

HIST 103 Home Page