COLONY & EMPIRE: Northern Life and Global Exchange Flashcards
Family Farms
In 1770 colonial America, 93% of colonists live in rural settings. Whereas life in the south was built on slavery, in the North life was primarily based around Family Farms.
Women on family farms were expected to marry young and produce children. Women also cooked, cleaned, made clothes, cut firewood, killed lifestock, and overall, worked several more hours than men.
Men were expected to grow up working for the patriarch.
Slavery was present, but very rare in the rural North.
Urban Elite
Life in the urban centers of colonial America (7% of population) are centered around trade, shipping, and manufacturing; the men who owned significant portions of these industries and their wealth are the urban elite.
By 1770, urban elites controlled 55% of the wealth in the city; meanwhile average workers were struggling. Urban elite were able to make their wealth due to their position in the Triangular Trade system.
Slaves were more present than the rural north, but not as high as the south.
Triangular Trade
- Europe
- Africa
- The Americas
- Vast amount of goods were transported across the Atlantic between these points; Slaves were sent to the Americas, raw materials (rice, tobacco, sugar, furs, wheat, lumber) from the Americas heading to Europe, then manufactured goods go from Europe to Africa - SIMPLIFIED VERSION
DETAILED VERSION
- Each country had their own closed triangular trade system; on the ground in the colonies, the laws of these closes systems were regularly broken
- England’s trade system for example, can’t be represented by a simple triangle; complex system of trade underpinned by violence (devastation of Natives in the New World and West Africans) - created winners + losers
- Disproportionately favored the wealthy; owners of plantations, owners of northern industry, urban elites… also brought wealth to all free people in the colonies and Europe
- Led Europeans to shift their thinking towards optimism; theory of progress and optimism needed lead to Enlightenment
The Enlightenment
- Growing out of optimism in Europe (generated from the Triangular Trade)
- Self-referentially given name for an intellectual movement; far more universities and observatories being built
- Built on optimism, the Enlightenment held the radical idea that everything in known universe is knowable
- Scientific thought
- Begins to invalidate “God” as an explanatory mechanism for the world
- Established religion saw the Enlightenment as a threat - Political thought
- Thinkers proposed that natural rights existed to every living person
- Natural rights that belonged to all people
- Expression of these natural rights, as described by John Locke, is Life, Liberty, Property
- Given from nature / God; not given by states, governments
- These supersede the rights given to you by the state
- Introduces the idea of the “social contract” - contract between government & state
- People give power to the gov’t, gov’t in-turn must protect their natural rights
- If the gov’t abuses the people’s rights, they have the right to overthrow the gov’t
- For various reasons, the established gov’t and religions saw the Enlightenment as a threat
The Great Awakening (1730-1760)
- Felt to devout Christians that their society was being eroded by the Enlightenment
- Religious backlash against the Enlightenment; it was its peak in the 1730’s - 60’s
- Serious religious revivals that spread through all 13 American colonies; had two general aims:
1. Inspire anxiety / fear
2. Conviction
Traveling ministers were Baptist or Methodist and led to a rise in membership. Claimed that all souls mattered to God; followed through on this promise more than the Anglican Church.
Primary effects:
1. Enslaved were converted whereas natives declined
2. Encouraged people to challenge hierarchy; in this case, the Anglican Church
3. More religious diversity; still almost entirely Christian
4. Led to religious freedom
Happened as a ripple effect over time…
