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Chapter 4 |
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Between 1680 and 1750, a virtual population explosion occurred in the English colonies, swelling the number of settlers from 150,000 settlers in 1680 to more than 1 million at midcentury. Such growth staggered English policymakers, who uneasily watched the population gap between England and its American colonies closing rapidly. A high marriage rate, large families, lower mortality than in Europe, and heavy immigration accounted for much of the population boom. This chapter's first, second, and fourth sections explain how population growth and economic development gradually transformed eighteenth-century British America. Three variations of colonial society emerged: the farming society of the North, the plantation society of the South, and the urban society of the seaboard commercial towns. Although they shared some important characteristics-growing class differences and a deepening involvement with slavery except on the frontier-each region had distinctive features. Even within regions, diversity increased as incoming streams of immigrants, mostly from Germany, Ireland, and France, and especially from Africa, added new pieces to the shifting American mosaic. Until the late seventeenth century, the Spanish, French, and English settlements in North America were largely isolated from one another. But when a long period of war erupted in Europe among these colonizing nations, North America and the Caribbean became important theaters of international conflict-a development that would reach a climax in the second half of the eighteenth century.
This chapter also explores the commercial orientation that spread from north to south, especially in the towns and their immediate hinterlands, as local economies matured and forged sturdier links within the Atlantic basin trade network. We will also see how colonists experienced a deep-running religious awakening that established evangelical religion as a hallmark of American society. Connected to this democratization of religion was the changing exercise of political power. From increasingly powerful legislative assemblies and local instruments of governance emerged seasoned leaders, a tradition of local autonomy, and a widespread belief in a political ideology stressing the liberties that freeborn Englishmen should enjoy. In these ways, raw frontier settlements developed into mature provincial societies.
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