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The American Yawp, Volume 1, edited by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the original free This shelf’s study material is shared under the same license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Chapter 6 · pp. 165–198
This chapter looks at how people lived, worked, traded, worshipped, and governed themselves in the British colonies of North America and the Caribbean before the American Revolution. It covers trade and consumer goods, the sugar islands, city life, slavery in each region, colonial politics and families, print culture, the Great Awakening, Indigenous nations, and the Seven Years' War. It ends with how the war's costs pushed Britain to tax the colonies and pushed the colonies together. This first part begins with buying, selling, and the Atlantic economy.
In the 1600s and 1700s, many everyday items stopped being things colonists made at home. Tools, clothes, and utensils were increasingly produced by specialized artisans and manufacturers, and colonists bought them. Historians call this shift the "consumer revolution." It happened because manufacturing and transportation improved, credit became easier to get, incomes rose, and prices fell. Goods once seen as luxuries became common. Being able to afford them even became a sign of respectability. (pp. 165–166)
This trade ran in both directions. The colonies sent Britain raw materials such as lumber and tobacco, and colonists bought British-made goods in return. Britain grew rich, and many colonists enjoyed a high standard of living. The exchange made colonists feel part of British culture. That feeling lasted until the 1760s, when political changes and the costs of war strained trade. Only then did colonists begin to question the connection. (pp. 165–166)
Settlers arrived with very little British money. They found no gold or silver, and they lacked the Crown's authority to mint coins. So they solved the shortage in steps:
In 1690, Massachusetts became the first place in the Western Hemisphere to issue paper money. These bills of credit were backed by the colony's credit, were issued for limited periods, and came in different denominations. They gave colonists a medium of exchange beyond barter and commodities, and other colonies later issued their own. (p. 166)
Paper money created new difficulties:
Colonists and British officials also argued over whether mere paper should replace gold or silver at all. Because of these problems, the Board of Trade limited paper money in the Currency Acts of 1751 and 1763. Paper was never the only option. Colonists still used metal coins, barter, and credit, including bills of exchange, which worked much like modern personal checks. Even so, the lack of standard money continued to hamper trade between colonies. (p. 166)
Businesses on both sides of the Atlantic advertised their goods along with offers of credit. Steady access to credit let families of modest means buy items that only elites could once afford. Middle-class colonists could follow the clothing, food, and home-decor trends of the aristocracy. Londoners often viewed Anglo-Americans as provincial. By buying and showing off British goods, those colonists could present themselves as lords and ladies of their own communities. (pp. 166–167)
There was a cost. A writer in the Boston Evening Post warned that credit tempted many people to buy things they could easily do without. Colonists increasingly owed money, whether to a local shopkeeper or a powerful London merchant. Debt created new feelings of dependence. (p. 167)
The thirteen continental colonies were less important to the Crown than the sugar islands of the Caribbean, including Jamaica, Barbados, the Leeward Islands, Grenada, St. Vincent, and Dominica. These islands devoted almost all their land to sugarcane, which was extremely profitable. Britain therefore valued the islands' wealth above the mainland's. (p. 167)
The two regions depended on each other. Because the islands grew sugar instead of food, the mainland colonies sold them surplus food and raw materials. Lumber was in especially high demand in Barbados, where planters had nearly stripped the island of trees to make room for cane. Barbadians even ordered prefabricated house frames from New England, which were shipped over and carried to plantations. The islands also bought cattle and horses from the mainland. In return, mainlanders received sugar and mahogany. New England merchants imported the mahogany and had it made into fine furniture for buyers who could afford it. The most profitable exchange of all was the slave trade, and its consequences were disastrous. (pp. 167–168)
British colonists in the Caribbean began growing sugar in the 1640s, and it quickly spread across the Atlantic World. Britons everywhere used it to sweeten tea and food. By 1680, the tiny island of Barbados exported more sugar, by value, than all the continental colonies exported combined. The Crown acquired Jamaica in 1655, and late in the 1600s Jamaica passed Barbados in sugar production. (pp. 167–168)
Women were central to buying and selling in eighteenth-century cities. They ran market stalls, traded goods, bought on credit, and placed newspaper ads. Abigail Stoneman, a tavern owner, is one example. She attracted customers with billiards tables and bought and sold goods from Atlantic merchants, many of whom lodged at her tavern. She was unusually successful, but women with smaller businesses used the same methods. Trade and consumption in the cities depended on women. (p. 168)
Trade with Native nations also made the empire richer. Indigenous buyers wanted guns, alcohol, kettles, knives, and woolen blankets. Europeans wanted furs, deer hides, handicrafts, copper, and food. (p. 168)
By the 1750s, horses were changing this trade, especially in the West. A nation with many horses could dominate nations with fewer. The Ute and Comanche alliance, for example, regularly raided the Navajo, Pawnee, and Jicarilla Apache in what is now Arizona and New Mexico. Horses also made men's work and women's work more different from each other. Among the Oceti Sakowin, this helped shift society from tracing descent through mothers (matrilineal) to tracing it through fathers (patrilineal). (p. 168)
All of these trade networks were meant to benefit Britain. Parliament passed the Navigation Acts, which taxed trade so that profits would flow home. Before 1763, though, the laws were weakly enforced. Enforcing them often cost more than the duties brought in. Customs officials took bribes easily, and Dutch, French, and West Indian ships carrying banned goods were a common sight in colonial ports. When a smuggler was caught, a jury of fellow colonists often let him go. British officials guessed that about £700,000 worth of illegal goods entered the colonies each year, and pirates helped by acting as a go-between for merchants and foreign ships. (pp. 168–169)
After 1764 this loose system tightened. The Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, and the Townshend Acts taxed sugar, paper, lead, glass, and tea. These were goods colonists associated with polite, refined living (gentility). Colonists answered with nonimportation agreements, promising not to buy British imports, and went back to making goods at home. Women such as the Daughters of Liberty turned homespun cloth into a political statement. A 1769 newspaper writer said the spinning wheel had never had more power to influence public affairs. This shows how buying habits had become tied to politics. (p. 169)
The consumer revolution helped cities grow. They were crossroads where people and goods met, and by 1775 about one colonist in twenty lived in a city. Some cities grew without a plan. New York and Boston had crooked seventeenth-century streets, much like medieval European towns. Philadelphia and Charleston were laid out in regular blocks and squares. In Annapolis and Williamsburg, planners created order by placing government, civic, and educational buildings with care. (pp. 169–170)
The five biggest cities in 1775 were Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. Philadelphia had about 40,000 people, New York 25,000, Boston 16,000, and Charleston 12,000. (p. 170)
City society had clear layers:
Enslaved people lived in both Northern and Southern cities. Many worked as household servants or in skilled trades, such as distilleries, shipyards, lumberyards, and ropewalks (where rope was made). Between 1725 and 1775, slavery became more important in the North because city residents wanted a larger share of the sea-based economy. Enslaved people were nearly 8 percent of Philadelphia's people in 1770. Across the colonies, enslaved people, rural and urban together, made up most of the working population just before the Revolution. (pp. 170–171)
By 1750 slavery was legal in every colony, but it took different forms in different places. Virginia brought in its first enslaved Africans in 1619. Two inheritance rules helped great planters stay on top. Under primogeniture, an estate went to the eldest son. Under entail, an estate could not be split up or sold. Together they kept land and wealth in a few hands and supported a tobacco economy. By 1750 about 100,000 enslaved Africans lived in Virginia, at least 40 percent of the population. Most worked under the gang system: they labored from dawn to dusk in supervised groups, driven by a white overseer or an enslaved driver who could use force. (p. 171)
Virginia's laws were designed to protect enslavers and raise their profits. Under partus sequitur ventrem ("follows the womb"), a child born to an enslaved mother was enslaved. Converting to Christianity did not bring freedom. An enslaver could free someone only by sending that person out of the colony. The 1705 slave code gathered these rules into one comprehensive law. Killing an enslaved person was not murder, yet a Black Virginian who merely struck a white colonist faced a severe whipping. (pp. 171–172)
South Carolina was a slave colony from the start. The 1669 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, co-written by John Locke, made slavery legal. Early settlers from Caribbean sugar islands brought harsh slave codes with them. By 1740, killing a rebellious enslaved person was no crime. By 1750 South Carolina was the only mainland colony where enslaved Africans were the majority. Georgia, founded by trustees including James Oglethorpe, first banned slavery but allowed it by 1750. (pp. 172–173)
Rice, the main crop, was widely grown in West Africa. Planters asked merchants for enslaved people who already knew its difficult cultivation, and people from Senegambia were especially sought. That knowledge belonged to the enslaved, and it helped make Carolina one of the richest colonies. (p. 173)
Rice fields were swampy, and malaria spread there. Wealthy planters, who often owned several plantations, lived in Charleston townhouses to avoid the disease. Many West Africans had some resistance to malaria because of a genetic trait also linked to sickle cell anemia. Planters misread this as proof that Africans were naturally suited to work in tropical places, a racist belief. With owners away, enslaved workers in Carolina were watched less closely than those in the Chesapeake. (p. 173)
South Carolina's enslavers ran a harsh system, yet several conditions let enslaved people there claim more independence in daily life than in most other mainland colonies (p. 173).
Why oversight was thin. Rice was the main crop, and it was already grown widely in West Africa. Planters often asked merchants for enslaved workers who knew rice farming, and people from Senegambia were especially sought. Their skills helped make Carolina one of the richest colonies. But rice fields were swampy, and diseases such as malaria spread. Wealthy planters, who often owned several plantations, therefore lived in Charleston townhouses. Many West Africans had some immunity to malaria, which planters twisted into the racist claim that Africans were naturally suited to work in tropical places (p. 173). Because owners were away, enslaved laborers had less direct supervision than in the Chesapeake.
The task system. Many rice plantations used the task system. Each person got a set number of tasks for the day. When they finished, the rest of the day belonged to them. This differs from a dawn-to-dusk gang system, where work lasted as long as the overseer demanded. Many people used their free time to grow food on garden plots. Underground markets gave them some economic independence (p. 173).
African culture. Cultural independence plus the steady arrival of newly enslaved Africans kept many African practices alive. Gullah and Geechee are syncretic languages, meaning they blend sources, and they contain many African words. Basket weaving, sometimes mixed with Native American methods, still survives in the region (p. 173).
The Stono Rebellion (1739). In September 1739, on a Sunday when planters were at church, about eighty enslaved people set out toward Spanish Florida. They carried a banner reading "Liberty!", burned plantations, and killed at least twenty white settlers. Their goal was Fort Mose, a free Black settlement. Spain had offered freedom to people enslaved by the English, which encouraged them. The militia defeated the group, executed many, and sold others to West Indian sugar plantations. The revolt failed, but it showed that enslaved people would fight for freedom (pp. 173–174).
Mid-Atlantic colonies. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania never built plantation economies. Still, enslaved people worked on larger grain farms. In New York's Hudson Valley they worked next to European tenant farmers on patroonships, huge land grants given to a few early Dutch families. In port cities they filled maritime trades and household service. Slavery was so important in New York City that over 40 percent of its people were enslaved by 1700. In Pennsylvania the figure was 15 to 20 percent by 1750 (p. 174).
Rebellion and panic in New York. Many enslaved people lived close together in New York, and the European population was diverse. This created chances for people to connect, and it raised fears of revolt. In 1712 a rebellion in New York City killed 9 white colonists. In revenge, 21 enslaved people were executed, and 6 others died by suicide before they could be burned alive. In 1741 officials uncovered an alleged plot involving enslaved Africans and poor Black and white men. The panic ended only after 32 Black men and 5 poor white men had been executed and about 70 people deported, probably to West Indian sugar fields (pp. 174–175).
Quakers turn against slavery. Quakers were the first group to oppose slavery. Most people said slavery began with war, when captives were enslaved instead of killed. Pacifist Quakers therefore saw its foundation as illegitimate. Their belief in the equality of all souls also attacked the racial excuse for slavery. By 1758 Pennsylvania Quakers disowned members who took part in the slave trade. By 1772 Quakers who owned slaves could be expelled. Because Quaker meetings across the English-speaking world debated these rules, the effects reached beyond Pennsylvania. Free Black people in Philadelphia and other Northern cities also kept pushing against slavery (p. 175).
New England. Slavery as a labor system was limited here because there were no cash crops like tobacco or rice. In the 1760s only about 2 percent of Massachusetts was enslaved, mostly in Boston. The slave trade, however, was central to the economy. Every major port took part, and Newport, Rhode Island, alone had at least 150 ships in the trade by 1740. New England also sold food and manufactured goods to West Indian plantations (p. 175).
More participation than in Europe. Europe's governments were close to oligarchies, with only elites holding office. Even in Britain and the Dutch Republic, which held regular elections, few men could vote. In the colonies, white male suffrage was wider. Assemblies also held real power. They taxed, regulated business, built roads and bridges, sometimes helped the poor, and made most education decisions. Colonists sued often, which strengthened judges, raised the prestige of jury service, and made lawyers important in politics (pp. 175–176).
Factions, not parties. Less tightly controlled colonial society produced interest groups based on class, ethnicity, or religion. There were no distinct, lasting political parties, which is a major difference from modern politics. The most common fight was between elected assemblies and the royal governor. Legislatures split into factions that backed or opposed the governor's ideas (p. 176).
Three types of colony. Colonies fell into three groups, depending on who chose the governor (p. 176):
Council and assembly. Below the governor were two bodies. The council was like the governor's cabinet, made up of prominent men such as the militia head or the attorney general. The assembly was elected by and made up of property-owning men. It approved taxes and budgets and tried to stop governors from gaining too much power. Members came from local districts, so voters could hold them to their promises (pp. 176–177).
Civic duty and the social contract. Civic duty meant supporting government by voting, paying taxes, and serving in the militia. Colonists accepted the social contract, the idea that the people create government. This idea is linked to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. In practice elites ran politics, but many colonists believed in equality before the law. It was unclear whether that included African Americans, Indigenous people, or women (pp. 177–178).
Plentiful land let colonists marry younger and have large families. By the late 1700s families began to shrink as wives gained more control over their own bodies (p. 178). Sentimentalism and the spread of novels, especially among women, led many people to see marriage as emotional fulfillment, not just an economic deal. John and Mary Fenno's loving letters show this "companionate ideal" (p. 178).
Marriage stayed unequal, though. Under coverture, white wives lost their political and economic rights to their husbands. Enslaved couples had no legal marriage. Divorce and abandonment rose in the 1790s. Deserted spouses placed "elopement notices" in newspapers, accusing partners of drunkenness, violence, or sexual misconduct (pp. 178–179).
What it was. The Great Awakening was a series of Protestant revivals in the 1730s to 1750s. They stressed a personal relationship with God. Many colonists feared that the grandchildren of the first settlers, raised in comfortable, well-established colonies, had weaker faith than their ancestors. That worry pushed people to look for a renewed religious experience. The revivals leveled differences among Protestants and gave them a shared outlook. They began among New England Congregationalists and then spread to Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists (p. 181).
A common mistake: it was not one movement from the start. It looks unified only when we look back. Revivals arose in the 1730s, spread through the 1740s and 1750s, and differed from place to place in timing and strength. What tied them together was a shared theme: strip away worldly concerns and live more piously (p. 181).
Jonathan Edwards. Edwards, a minister in Northampton, Massachusetts, held the Puritan belief in predestination, the idea that God had long ago decided who would be saved. He worried his congregation was only doing good deeds to prove they were saved. So he urged people to look inward for signs of God's saving grace. His sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" was the best known. In 1734, convulsions spread to about half of his six-hundred-person congregation over six months. He then spread word of the revival in a widely read pamphlet (p. 181).
George Whitefield and itinerant preachers. Traveling preachers made revivals popular. They left the traditional church service for emotional outdoor meetings. Whitefield, a former actor, delivered a simple, dramatic message: only heartfelt faith pleases God, and everyone could be born again. He traveled from New York to South Carolina, and crowds reached thousands, once over twenty thousand in Philadelphia. Even Benjamin Franklin, who meant to give nothing, ended up emptying his pocket into the collection dish (pp. 181–183).
Split and legacy. Some preachers went too far. In 1742, James Davenport told followers to dance naked at night or burn books he disliked. Such extremes led many to doubt revivalism. Colonists divided into New Lights, who backed the revived faith, and Old Lights, who called it delusion. By the 1760s the revivals had faded. But they taught people to question church authority, and that habit of questioning other authority left a language of individualism that later reappeared in calls for independence (p. 183).
The Haudenosaunee. Despite growing colonial populations, Indigenous nations still held most of the power in North America (p. 184). After the Tuscarora and Yamasee Wars of the early 1710s, the Tuscarora moved to New York and joined the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) League. It then had six nations: Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. It was one of the world's oldest participatory democracies. In the 1744 Covenant Chain with the northern British colonies, the British gained recognized sovereignty over colonized areas, while the Haudenosaunee were recognized as holding dominion over peoples between the Hudson and Mississippi Rivers. In 1754 Franklin, who admired their political system, proposed an alliance plan at Albany (p. 184).
The French in Louisiana. The French founded New Orleans in 1718, using purchased enslaved laborers. Disputes over livestock trade, forced Indigenous labor, and diplomacy led the Natchez to expel the French in 1729. The French and their Choctaw allies finally won the Natchez War. Even so, the plantation colony lost money and wars with the Chickasaws and others stayed costly, so France scaled back its plans (pp. 184–185).
The Spanish Southwest. Spain held St. Augustine, San Antonio, Albuquerque, and Santa Fe. It used coercion, gifts, and trade to build ties with Native peoples. Yet in 1778 a friar admitted Spain held no real dominion beyond San Antonio. Apache, Kiowa, Caddo, Karankawa, and Comanche groups set their own terms, and Comanche raids from the 1720s limited Spanish expansion (pp. 185–186).
Early British setbacks. Britain and France fought for 37 of the 87 years between 1688 and 1775. In 1754 a force of colonists and Native allies under young George Washington killed a French diplomat in the Jumonville Affair. That sparked the war, called the French and Indian War in North America. France and its Indigenous allies burned Fort William Henry (1757) and beat Braddock at Fort Duquesne and Abercromby at Ticonderoga (1758). In Europe the war fully began in 1756, when Prussia invaded Saxony (pp. 186–187).
The naval turn. Britain won at sea and in India, for example at Plassey in 1757. Control of the sea let it send more troops to America. Louisbourg fell in 1758. In 1759, Wolfe defeated Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec, a year the British called the year of miracles. Montreal fell in 1760. The 1763 Treaties of Paris and Hubertusburg ended the war and gave Britain much of Canada. But the larger empire was hard to control and exposed divisions in language, nationality, and religion (pp. 187–188).
Anti-Catholicism. Colonists celebrated Quebec's fall with songs attacking Catholics. Yet Catholic Maryland showed early pluralism, so practical toleration coexisted with public hostility to Catholics. Conflict with France helped unite Protestants across the Atlantic through missionary societies and the revivals, while preachers and merchants urged trade to bind them together (pp. 188–189).
Causes and course. The prophet Neolin had a vision from the Master of Life. He urged avoiding alcohol and European influence, uniting Indigenous peoples, and driving out the British. Practical grievances mattered too: General Amherst ended diplomatic gift giving and limited firearms and ammunition. Pontiac, an Ottawa leader, besieged Fort Detroit in May 1763. Allies took other forts, and Fort Michilimackinac fell after a staged stickball game (pp. 189–190).
A misconception: peace meant no effect. The fighting ended in 1766 because of disease and supply shortages, and Pontiac made peace with William Johnson. Still, the war forced Britain to recognize Indigenous lands in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which set the Appalachians as a boundary. It also showed that coercion did not secure control (p. 190).
Effects after 1763. Colonists expected western lands as a prize and resented the Proclamation Line. Native nations lost the leverage of playing France against Britain. Britain stopped giving gifts, cut fur prices, and claimed more land. Amherst even proposed sending smallpox-infected blankets to the Delaware (pp. 190–192).
Crèvecoeur's question. In 1782 Crèvecoeur asked what the American, this new man, was. He pictured a melting pot of self-reliant landholders free of European class systems. That picture imagined Americans as white, male, and generally Protestant, and it helps explain why colonists began to see themselves as Americans rather than Britons (pp. 190–191).
War costs and unity. Britain spent over £140 million and wanted colonists to share the cost of their defense. Parliament began legislating for all the colonies and taxed tea, paper, molasses, and stamps, while eroding rights such as jury trials. Shared experiences, including the Albany Congress, wartime service, the 1765 Stamp Act Congress, and boycotts, built a common identity of resistance (pp. 191–193).
