Download APUSH TKarnes Summary: Chapter 3,The British Empire in America

APUSH
TKarnes
Summary: Chapter 3,The British Empire in America, 1660-1750
As the pace of English settlement of North America increased, Britain instituted
mercantilist policies that gradually resulted in the development of the first British
Empire. Though never totally successful, and based on African slave trade, the
empire enriched Britain and elevated it to a major European power.
The Politics of Empire, 1660–1713
In the 1660s through the 1680s, Charles II, after restoring royal authority in
England, began the process by which a scattered group of colonies across the North
Atlantic, connected by British and European trade, became a trading system, or
empire, based on mercantilist theory.
The Restoration Colonies
In an effort to pay off his debts, King Charles II distributed title to vast lands in the
colonies of New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and North and South
Carolina to a few English aristocrats. The character of life in each colony was
established by the nature of the population and the power of the proprietor to rule.
While small farmers rebelled against proprietary rule in North Carolina, colonists in
South Carolina established a poorly governed slave regime. In contrast, Pennsylvania
and Delaware were established as Quaker colonies in which farmers held land in fee
simple and the people ruled through representative assemblies.
From Mercantilism to Dominion
Recognizing the potential wealth of his colonies, Charles II expanded the concept of
mercantilism to encompass the various routes of trade and areas of production that
were developing across the English colonies. Through wars against the Dutch and a
series of Navigation Acts, Charles banned the Dutch and other foreigners from
English trade and required English colonies to trade the goods they produced through
England. In doing so, he began the process of transforming a disparate group of
colonial economies into an integrated trading system. To administrate this new
system, he created a new Board of Trade and imposed customs and duties. When
American colonists resisted these initiatives, James II followed up his predecessor’s
economic policies by tightening the Crown’s political and administrative control over
the colonies, establishing a vast, centralized colonial administration over the
northern colonies called the Dominion of New England.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688
James II’s similar imposition of arbitrary power on the English people at home
created similar discontent there. When James’s Spanish wife, a Catholic, gave birth
to a son, the prospect of a Catholic heir’s returning to the throne precipitated a
bloodless coup known as the Glorious Revolution. In quick order, colonists in
Maryland and the Dominion of New England rebelled against the governors appointed
by James II. In Maryland and Massachusetts, new royal colonies were ;established,
with appointed governors, colonial assemblies, and the formation of the Anglican
Church, or, at least, the right of Anglicans to worship. In New York, Jacob Leisler,
who replaced James II’s appointed governor, was himself ousted and then executed
by members of a faction supported by the wealthy elite, plunging the colony into
factional political disputes that continued into the 1710s. In general, the
reorganization of royal colonies run by colonial assemblies representing the
mercantile class allowed for the further development of a mercantile-based empire.
Imperial Wars and Native Peoples
England’s recommitment to Protestantism and to expanding its empire drew it into
an on-again, off-again conflict with France and Spain that lasted for most of the
eighteenth century. In North America, the British continually resisted or tried to
thwart French or Spanish efforts to consolidate or expand their colonial empires. In
King William’s War (1689–1697) and Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713), both the
British and the French used Indian alliances to attempt to gain the upper hand. In
the South, war raged along the Spanish border of Florida. In the North, forays
between Canada and New England were hindered by an Indian alliance that
maintained Indian neutrality. While England gained vast Newfoundland and northern
Canada, the Spanish fortified their colonies from Florida to Texas. Though the British
still sought to create a unified colonial administration, they gradually conceded that
ruling haphazardly over a patchwork of rapidly growing and thriving colonies was
sufficient.
The Imperial Slave Economy
The engine of wealth driving the development of the British Empire was the South
Atlantic system. Using slaves transported from Africa to produce crops on land taken
from native Americans, the British produced marketable products that transformed
the economies, societies, and political systems of four continents.
The African Background
The diverse social, economic, political, and cultural systems of different African
peoples were fundamentally changed by the development of the slave trade. Initially,
European trade with Africa had a positive effect on African life, introducing new
plants and animals to Africa that allowed African farmers to increase production, and
stimulating the African economy. But as Europeans entered the slave trade and
expanded it from a localized trade into a vast exportation of human beings from
Africa to the Americas, millions of people were taken from the continent in exchange
for goods of trade. As the slave trade drained Africa of capital, centralized slavetrading states preyed on smaller egalitarian tribes and nations, social hierarchies
became more pronounced, and fundamental social relationships were transformed.
The South Atlantic System
In the West Indies, the use of slaves to produce sugar enriched and empowered a
small, wealthy, absentee aristocracy of planters, many of whom spent their wealth in
England. Likewise, the cost of furnishing and supplying the West Indies with goods,
services, and food enriched manufacturers in Britain as well as merchants and
farmers in the American colonies. In the North American colonies, social elites,
enriched directly or indirectly by the slave trade, rose to power. In the seaports of
the North, a merchant class, many of whom held slaves, rose to social and political
power. Beneath them, a vibrant artisan and laboring class also developed. In the
South, the planter elite further tightened their social and political control by modeling
their behavior on that of the English aristocracy. All this economic development, and
the social changes it set in motion, occurred at the expense of Africa. The
exportation of millions of people diminished the wealth, uprooted economies,
restructured societies, and undermined the cultures of Africa.
Slavery and Society in the Chesapeake
Though initially Africans who arrived as indentured servants in the Chesapeake
colonies could gain freedom like any servant, in time Virginia planters, seeking to
consolidate social order and responding to the availability of slaves from the
developing South Atlantic system, turned to a labor system of African slavery.
The Expansion of Slavery
A combination of better conditions, a more widely dispersed population, and a
smaller profit margin, allowed planters in North America to employ less force and
violence in disciplining slaves than did planters in the West Indies. Hence slaves in
the Chesapeake colonies lived longer than those in the West Indies, and, as a result,
they began to form a distinctive slave society.
African American Community and Resistance
In contrast to the West Indies, African slaves in North America established families,
developed kin relationships, maintained social and cultural traditions, and, through
interaction with other Africans, created a new ethnic "African American" identity and
culture. Their impoverished, enslaved status placed severe limits on their creative
cultural expression, however. Most slaves resisted oppressive masters in subtle ways
and negotiated the nature and conditions of work with their masters in ways unheard
of in the West Indies. Only one major slave uprising took place in the eighteenth
century, and it was brutally suppressed. For slaves, the cost of resistance was high.
The Northern Maritime Economy
Because sugar production brought such high returns, planters in the West Indies
preferred to buy their produce, livestock, and supplies from others than to produce
them at home. This provided a ready market for grain, livestock, and supplies
produced by farmers or craftsmen in the middle colonies. The need to market these
goods to the West Indies in exchange for bills of credit, which colonial merchants
then exchanged for manufactured goods from England, triggered the development of
several major port towns along the North American coast. At these towns, merchants
exchanged goods and services within the empire; manufacturers turned raw
materials into finished goods and artisans produced fine goods for local merchants;
shipbuilders, suppliers of naval stores, and craftsmen maintained a growing fleet of
ships to carry the trade of empire; and laborers and slaves manned the ships, hauled
the cargo, and performed menial tasks. Likewise, interior market towns, from which
produce from farther inland was shipped to the city, also developed. At all of these
places, society was differentiated by wealth, class, and culture. A genteel elite
established themselves at the top of seaport society. Beneath, the middle level of
society was occupied by a variety of merchants and artisans who had moderate
wealth. Poorer artisans, laborers, workers, and seamen formed a lower class, which,
during economic downturns, fell into dependence, poverty, and hunger.
The New Politics of Empire, 1714–1750
To facilitate the growth of trade, British officials decided that when it came to
colonial administration, less was more. By allowing the colonists a significant degree
of self-government and economic autonomy—in short, by neglecting the need to
establish administrative control—they allowed the colonies to continue to grow and
develop. This policy of "healthy" or "salutary" neglect, however, would only make it
much harder for subsequent ministers to regain control of the system when it was
deemed necessary.
The Rise of the Assembly
As the Whigs gained control in England and implemented their policy of "salutary
neglect," colonial assemblies acquired more power and control over colonial affairs.
Though the assemblies were controlled by members of elite families who sought to
rule without referring to the people’s wishes, urban mobs, artisans, and yeomen
farmers demanded assemblies that were responsive to their needs and independent
of British administration.
Salutary Neglect
Sir Robert Walpole, the leader of the Whig party in the House of Commons from
1720 through 1742, created a strong Court party by using an elaborate patronage
system. He filled numerous colonial posts with mediocre and corrupt officials and
governors who were more interested in self-enrichment than in promoting colonial
policy. As a result, American colonial assemblies, dominated by merchant elites who
routinely evaded British maritime laws and resisted the rule of corrupt governors,
grew accustomed to self-rule and viewed themselves as equals in the empire. Their
belief in the assemblies that responded to popular needs, their lack of respect for
colonial governors, and their fear of high taxes and standing armies, made
Americans, in general, sympathetic to Radical, or Real, Whig criticisms of Walpole’s
government.
Consolidating the Mercantilist System
Safeguarding British planters and merchants was the main focus of British mercantilist
policy during Walpole’s ministry. To create a buffer between Spanish Florida and its
Carolina colonies, Walpole supported the creation of Georgia and, from 1740 to 1748,
fought a sporadic border war with the Spanish to secure it. To channel trade within the
mercantile system, British officials also began to crack down on pervasive American
violations of the Navigation Acts. In a series of new laws, they limited American
manufacturers, prohibited the issuing of currency, and tried to limit the burgeoning trade
between the colonies and the French West Indies. In their efforts to control Americans,
some British officials began to think that a more rigorous colonial administrative system
was needed.