01:512:205 Lecture 5: Chapter 5
18 May 2018
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Chapter 5: Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution,
1700-1775
1. Conquest by the Cradle
1. The common term thirteen original colonies is misleading as Britain ruled
thirty-two colonies in North America, including the Caribbean Islands by
1775 but only thirteen of them staked a rebellion
2. Among the distinguishing characteristics that the eventually rebellious
settlements shared was lusty population growth; in 1700 they contained
fewer than 300,00 people; by 1775, there were about 2.5 million people
1. Of the 2.5 million people, about half a million were black and white
immigrants made up nearly 400,000 of the increased number, and
black forced immigrants accounted for almost as many again
2. But most of the spurt stemmed from the remarkable natural fertility of
all Americans, white and black; to the amazement and dismay of
Europeans, the colonists were doubling every twenty-five years
3. The population boom had political consequences; in 1700 there were
twenty English subjects for each American colonist but by 1775 the
English advantage in numbers had fallen to three to one—setting the
stage for a momentous shift in the balance of power
4. The bulk of the population was up east of the Alleghenies, although by
1775 groups of pioneers were in the clearings of Tennessee and
Kentucky (the most populous colonies in 1775 were Virginia,
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Maryland
3. Only four communities could properly be called cities: Philadelphia
(34,000 residents), trailed by New York, Boston, and Charleston; still, 90
percent of the people lived in rural areas in the country
2. A Mingling of the Races
1. Colonial America was a melting pot and had been from the outset; the
population was picturesquely mottled with numerous foreign groups
1. Germans constituted about 6 percent of the total population, or
150,000, by 1775; fleeing religious persecution, economic oppression,
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and war, they had flocked to America in early 1700s and settled
chiefly in Pennsylvania (carious Protestant sects)
2. Known popularly but erroneously as the Pennsylvania Dutch, they
total about one-third of the Pennsylvania’s population
3. These German newcomers moved into the backcountry of
Pennsylvania, had no deep-rooted loyalty to the British crown, and
clung tenaciously to their German language and customs
4.
2. The Scots-Irish who in 1775 numbered about 175,000 or 7 % of the
population, were an important non-English group (Scots Lowlanders)
1. Over many years, they had been transplanted to Northern Ireland,
where they had not prospered; the Irish Catholics already there,
hating Scottish Presbyterianism, resented the intruders
2. The economic life of the Scots-Irish was severely hampered,
especially when the English government placed burdensome
restrictions on their production of linens and woolens
3. Early in the 1700s, tens of thousands of embittered Scots-Irish finally
abandoned Ireland and came to America, chiefly to tolerant and deep
soiled Pennsylvania—finding the best acres already taken, they
pushed out onto the frontier (many of them illegally)
4. When the westward-flowing Scots-Irish tide lapped up against the
Allegheny barrier, it was deflected southward into the backcountry of
Maryland, down Virginia and into the western Carolinas
5. Already experience colonizers and agitators in Ireland, the Scots-Irish
proved to be superb frontiersmen, though their readiness to visit
violence on the Indians repeatedly inflamed western districts
3. By the mid-eighteenth century, a chain of Scots-Irish settlements lay
scattered along the great wagon road, which hugged the eastern
Appalachian foothills form Pennsylvania to Georgia
1. It was said that the Scots-Irish kept the Sabbath—and all else they
could lay their hands on; pugnacious, lawless, and individualistic, they
brought with them the Scottish secrets of whiskey distilling
2. They cherished no love for the British government that had uprooted
them and still lorded over them (or any government)
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3. They led the armed march of the Paxton Boys on Philadelphia in
1764, protesting the oligarchy’s lenient policy toward the Indians and
years later, headed the Regulator movement in North Carolina, an
insurrection against eastern domination of the colony’s affairs
4. Many of these hotheads including the young Andrew Jackson
eventually joined the embattled American revolutionists and about a
dozen future presidents were of Scots-Irish descent
4. Approximately 5 percent of the multicolored colonial population consisted
of other European groups; these embraced French Huguenots, Welsh,
Dutch, Swedes, Jews, Irish, Swiss, and Scots Highlanders
5. By far the largest single non-English group was African, accounting for
nearly 20 percent of the colonial population in 1775 (mostly South)
6. The population of the thirteen colonies, though mainly Anglo-Saxon, was
perhaps the most mixed to be found anywhere in the world
1. The South, holding about 90 percent of the slaves, already displayed
its historic black-and-white racial composition
2. New England, mostly staked out by the original Puritan migrants,
showed the least ethnic diversity but the middle colonies, especially
Pennsylvania, received the bulk of later white immigrants and boasted
an astonishing variety of peoples; outside of New England about one-
half the population was non-English in 1775
7. As these various immigrant groups mingled and intermarried, they laid the
foundations for a new multicultural American national identity
1. Nor were white colonists alone in creating new societies out of diverse
ethnic groups; the African slave trade long had mixed peoples from
many different tribal backgrounds
2. These people gave birth to an African-American community far more
variegated in its cultural origins than anything to be found
3. Similarly, in the New England praying towns where Indians were
gathered to be Christianized, and in Great Lakes villages, polyglot
Native American communities emerged (blurring differences)
3. The Structure of Colonial Society
1. In contrast with contemporary Europe, eighteenth century America was a
shining land of equality and opportunity—exception of slavery
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