CHAPTER 3 Creating Anglo-America, 1660–1750
Opening with the crisis of King Philip’s War, this chapter concentrates on the reasons behind colonial crises as well as the unifying
experience of a uniquely Anglo-American understanding of liberty. The chapter begins with a description of the growth of the English
commercial empire in North America through mercantilism, slavery, and the establishment of colonies in New York, Carolina, and
William Penn’s Pennsylvania, whose “holy experiment” offered many liberties for its residents. However, the inhabitants of these new
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction
A. In 1675, King Philip and his forces attacked nearly forty–five New England towns.
B. The settlers counterattacked in 1676, breaking the Indians’ power once and for all.
II. Global Competition and the Expansion of England’s Empire
A. The Mercantilist System
1. England attempted to regulate its economy to ensure wealth and national power.
2. The Navigation Acts required colonial products to be transported in English ships and sold at English ports.
a. These acts stimulated New England’s shipbuilding industry.
B. The Conquest of New Netherland
2. In 1664, during an Anglo-Dutch war, New Netherland was surrendered by the Dutch without a fight in order to retain
their holdings in Africa, Asia, and South America.
C. New York and the Rights of Englishmen and Englishwomen
D. New York and the Indians
1. The English briefly maintained an alliance with the Five Nations known as the Covenant Chain, but by the end of the
century the Five Nations had adopted a policy of neutrality.
E. The Charter of Liberties
F. The Founding of Carolina
1. Carolina was established as a barrier to Spanish expansion north of Florida.
3. Early settlers sought Carolina-area Indians as allies and encouraged them to attack and capture Florida Indians as slaves.
5. The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina envisioned a feudal society, but the colony was not established as such. The
colonial government did allow for religious toleration, an elected assembly, and a generous headright system.
6. The economy grew slowly until planters discovered rice, which would make them the wealthiest elite in English North
America.
G. The Holy Experiment
2. A Quaker, Penn envisioned a colony of peaceful harmony between colonists and Indians and a haven for spiritual
freedom.
H. Quaker Liberty
1. Quakers believed that liberty was a universal entitlement.
2. Religious freedom was a fundamental principle.
I. Land in Pennsylvania
2. He owned all of the colony’s land and sold it to settlers at low prices rather than granting it outright.
4. As Pennsylvania grew, the benevolent Indian policy would start to change.
III. Origins of American Slavery
A. Englishmen and Africans
1. The spread of tobacco led settlers to turn to slavery, which offered many advantages over the use of indentured servants.
3. Africans were seen as alien in their color, religion, and social practices.
B. Slavery in History
2. Slavery developed slowly in the New World because slaves were expensive and their death rate was high in the
seventeenth century.
C. Slavery in the West Indies
1. By 1600, huge sugar plantations worked by slaves from Africa were well established in Brazil and the West Indies.
2. Prior to 1600, Indians and white indentured servants had done the labor; by the first few decades of the sixteenth century,
4. In contrast to Brazil and the West Indies, slavery developed slowly in North America.
D. Slavery and the Law
1. On paper, slaves in Spain’s American empire had more legal rights than slaves in the English American empire.
2. The line between slavery and freedom was more permeable in the seventeenth century than it would become later.
a. Some free blacks were allowed to sue and testify in court.
E. The Rise of Chesapeake Slavery
2. A Virginia law of 1662 provided that in the case of a child born to one free parent and one slave parent, the status of the
offspring followed that of the mother.
F. Bacon’s Rebellion: Land and Labor in Virginia
1. Virginia’s shift from white indentured servants to African slaves as the main plantation labor force was accelerated by
Bacon’s Rebellion.
3. Good, free land was scarce for freed indentured servants, and taxes on tobacco were rising as the prices were falling.
5. In some ways, Bacon’s Rebellion was a clash between two different elite groups.
G. The End of the Rebellion, and Its Consequences
2. The rebellion’s aftermath left Virginia’s planter elite to consolidate their power and improve their image.
H. A Slave Society
2. By the early eighteenth century, Virginia had transformed from a society with slaves to a slave society.
1. A Maryland Act Concerning Negroes and Other Slaves (1664)
a. A law from the 1660s that arose from the expansion of slavery within the colonies
2. Letter by a Female Indentured Servant (1756)
2. Settlers were well aware that the desire for freedom could ignite the slaves to rebel.
IV. Colonies in Crisis
A. The Glorious Revolution
1. The Glorious Revolution in 1688 established parliamentary supremacy and secured the Protestant succession to the
throne.
3. The overthrow of James II entrenched the notion that liberty was the birthright of all Englishmen.
a. Parliament issued a Bill of Rights (1689) guaranteeing individual rights such as trial by jury.
B. The Glorious Revolution in America
1. In 1675, England established the Lords of Trade to oversee colonial affairs, but the colonies were not interested in
obeying London.
2. To create wealth, between 1686 and 1685 James II created a “super–colony,” the Dominion of New England.
C. The Maryland Uprising
2. Lord Baltimore was overthrown in Maryland.
D. Leisler’s Rebellion
2. New York was divided along ethnic and economic lines.
E. Changes in New England
1. In New England, Plymouth was absorbed into Massachusetts, and the political structure of Massachusetts was
transformed.
F. The Prosecution of Witches
G. The Salem Witch Trials
1. In 1691, several girls suffered fits and nightmares, which were attributed to witchcraft.
3. Accusations snowballed; ultimately, fourteen women and six men were executed before the governor halted all
prosecutions.
V. The Growth of Colonial America
A. A Diverse Population
2. As England’s economy improved, large-scale migration was draining labor from the mother country.
B. Attracting Settlers
1. London believed colonial development bolstered the nation’s power and wealth.
a. Fifty thousand convicts were sent to the Chesapeake to work in the tobacco fields.
C. The German Migration
1. Germans, 110,000 in all, formed the largest group of newcomers from the European continent.
3. Their migration greatly enhanced the ethnic and religious diversity of Britain’s colonies.
D. Religious Diversity
1. Eighteenth-century British America was not a “melting pot”; ethnic groups lived and worshipped in homogeneous
communities.
2. Eighteenth-century British America was very diverse, a host to many religions.
3. Most colonies did not adhere to separation of church and state.
4. Other liberties also attracted settlers:
a. Availability of land
b. Lack of a military draft
c. Absence of restraints on economic opportunity
E. Who Is an American? (Primary Source document feature)
1. Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind (1751)
a. A letter from Benjamin Franklin that emphasizes the ethnic and religious diversity of American colonists
F. Indian Life in Transition
2. Traders, British officials, and farmers all viewed Indians differently.
3. The Walking Purchase of 1737 used deceit to gain more land from the Pennsylvania Indians.
F. Regional Diversity
1. The backcountry was the most rapidly growing region in North America.
2. Farmers in the older portions of the Middle Colonies enjoyed a standard of living unimaginable in Europe.
G. The Consumer Revolution
1. Great Britain eclipsed the Netherlands in the eighteenth century as a leader in trade.
2. Eighteenth-century colonial society enjoyed a multitude of consumer goods from England and Asia.
H. Colonial Cities
1. Spanish colonial cities such as Mexico City were much more populated than British North American cities.
3. Cities served mainly as gathering places for agricultural goods and for imported items to be distributed to the countryside.
I. Colonial Artisans
1. The city was home to a large population of artisans.
2. Despite the influx of British goods, American craftsmen benefited from the expanding consumer market.
J. An Atlantic World
1. Trade unified the British empire and connected it to other parts of the world.
2. Membership in the empire had many advantages for the colonists.
a. Colonists did not complain about British regulations of trade.
VI. Social Classes in the Colonies
A. The Colonial Elite
2. In the Chesapeake and Lower South, planters accumulated enormous wealth.
4. By 1770, nearly all upper-class Virginians had inherited their wealth.
B. Anglicization
2. Desperate to follow an aristocratic lifestyle, many planters fell into debt.
C. New World Cultures
2. Many European immigrants maintained traditions from their home countries.
4. British identity was partially defined in opposition to other groups, such as Indians and African slaves.
D. The South Carolina Aristocracy
2. The tie that held the elite together was the belief that freedom from labor was the mark of the gentleman.
E. Poverty in the Colonies
2. Taking the colonies as a whole, half of the wealth at mid–century was concentrated in the hands of the richest 10 percent
of the population.
3. The better-off in society tended to view the poor as lazy and responsible for their own plight.
F. The Middle Ranks
2. By the eighteenth century, colonial farm families viewed land ownership almost as a right: the social precondition of
freedom.
G. Women and the Household Economy
1. The family was the center of economic life, and all members contributed to the family’s livelihood.
3. As the population grew and the death rate declined, family life stabilized and marriages became lifetime commitments.
4. With growing colonial structure, opportunities for women decreased.
a. The division of labor along gender lines solidified.
H. North America at Mid-Century
1. As compared to Europe, colonies were diverse, prosperous, and offered many liberties.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• Dutch and French societies in North America differed in many ways from those established by the English. Using as evidence ma-
terial from Chapters 1–3, discuss some of those differences, particularly regarding labor systems, attitudes toward Indians, trade
relationships, settlement, and notions of freedom.
• In the Chesapeake region during the mid-seventeenth century, how similar was the experience of an indentured servant to that of
an enslaved person? Be as specific as possible in your response.
• Eric Foner writes that “the freedoms Pennsylvania offered to European immigrants contributed to the deterioration of freedom for
others.” What examples can you cite that prove that statement?
• Why did the English government create the Dominion of New England? How did the colonists in the region react, and why? Why
did the dominion fail?
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
A Midwife’s Tale
Robert “King” Carter
Africans in America
Slavery and the Making of America
Bacon’s Rebellion
Indentured Servants
King Philip’s War
After the Mayflower
Salem Witch Trials
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Breen, T. H. “Baubles of Britain: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century.” In Diversity and Unity in Early North Amer-
ica, edited by Philip Morgan. London: Routledge, 1993, 227–256.
Brewer, John. The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Brown, Kathleen. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill, NC: University
of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Harley, David. “Explaining Salem: Calvinist Psychology and the Diagnosis of Possession.” American Historical Review 101, no. 2 (1996): 307–330.
Innes, Stephen. Labor in a New Land: Economy and Society in Seventeenth Century Springfield. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Mandell, Daniel R. King Philip’s War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 2010.
Nash, Gary. “Urban Wealth and Poverty in Pre–Revolutionary America.” In Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development, edited by
2002.
Rice, James D. Tales from a Revolution: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
1980.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Salem Witch Trials
Go to the Salem Witch Trials website by the University of Virginia and investigate the court evidence (warrants and trial transcripts) presented against
A. Group Activity:
Break the class into small groups and have each group review at least two individuals: one executed and one not. Each group will then share the key
pieces of evidence and discuss any common patterns among the individuals and their cases. Why would some confess and others proclaim innocence
right up to their execution?
B. Discussion Activity:
Offer the students various scholarly theories of why the trials and executions occurred on a massive scale in 1692. Then have students discuss
the following theories and determine which seem the most plausible:
1. Superstition
3. Mischievous prank by young girls
5. Illness, especially nervous disorders
2. Group Primary Source Analysis
Bring into class a copy of the primary document letter from Chapter 3 written by an indentured servant girl to her father back in England. Have several
students take turns reading portions of the document. Design several questions regarding the letter and break the class into groups to collectively answer
each question based on the document. Then reconvene the class and ask each group to provide an oral report on their findings. Questions to consider:
• What challenges did indentured servants face in the American colonies?
3. After the Mayflower
After watching the documentary “After the Mayflower” (We Shall Remain series), divide the class in half to represent the Puritan English and the