Advanced Placement Advanced Placement Chapter 4:Chapter 4:

Growth in the 1700sGrowth in the 1700sBy Neil Hammond

Millbrook High School

ChangeChange• The colonies changed in the 1700s

• The fundamental change was one of population. The population increased from 400,000 in 1720 to almost 2 million by 1765…why?– 1) natural increase– 2) immigration (primarily Scots, Scotch-

Irish, German)– 3) slavery

ChangeChange• This change transformed all regions of the

colonies

• New England (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire)– New England towns became overcrowded

• Middle (Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware)– Antagonistic ethnic and religious communities

jostled uneasily with each other

• South (Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia)– Scotch-Irish immigration changed the culture of

the Southern backcountry

ChangeChange• Two things affected EVERY region:

– 1) the enlightenment– 2) Pietism

• Also, Westward settlement sparked wars with Native peoples and with France and Spain

New EnglandNew England• In the 1630s, Puritans left a country

where a handful of wealthy nobles owned 75% of the land. They wanted to create a yeoman society, where families owned land and farms. They succeeded. By 1750 most of the best farmland in NE had been settled, which threatened the puritan ideal

New England: Woman and the New England: Woman and the Rural Household EconomyRural Household Economy

• Women played a subordinate role to men– Legally– Dutiful “helpmate”…home producers– Bearing and rearing children important

(Puritans had big families)– More women were full members of the

church than men– As the size of family farms shrank, Puritan

women had fewer kids– But they still retained a subordinate role

Farm Property: InheritanceFarm Property: Inheritance• Gaining land was the main draw of the

colonies

• Successful farmers left land to their children…less successful farmers placed their kids as indentured servants– Parents chose marriage partners based

carefully based on family prosperity– Women relinquished control of land and

property to their husbands

• Fathers had a cultural duty to provide land…whole communities of independent farmers were created

The Crisis in NE SocietyThe Crisis in NE Society• Every generation in NE the population doubled

(mostly natural increase)

• Because they had less land to give their children, they had less control over their kids’ lives (e.g. records show rising instances of premarital sex)

• How did Puritans solve this?– Primitive birth control methods– Families petitioned governments for more land

grants (hacked out new farms west in Forest)– Land was used more productively…wheat and

barely replaced with high-yielding corn and potatoes

– Livestock became increasingly important– Community exchange preserved the freehold ideal

The Middle Atlantic:The Middle Atlantic:Toward a New Society 1720-Toward a New Society 1720-

17651765• The Middle Colonies were home to multiple religious and ethnic groups

• Religious:– Quakers in PA– Huguenots and Jew in NY– Presbyterians in NJ

• Ethnic– Dutch in NY / NJ– Germans in PA– Scotch-Irish (strung out along

Appalachians)

The Middle Atlantic:The Middle Atlantic:Toward a New Society 1720-Toward a New Society 1720-

17651765• Ample fertile land and a longer growing season than New England attracted migrants to the Middle Atlantic colonies, and grain exports to Europe and the West Indies financed their rapid settlement. Between 1720 and 1770, growing demand doubled the price of wheat. By increasing their exports of wheat, corn, flour, and bread, Middle Atlantic farmers brought prosperity to the region, which, in turn, attracted more settlers. The population of the area surged from 120,000 in 1720 to 450,000 in 1765

• Wheat prices doubled in Philadelphia between 1720 and 1770 as demand in the West Indies and Europe swelled. Exports of grain and flour paid for English manufactures, which the colonists imported in large quantities after 1750.

The Middle Atlantic:The Middle Atlantic:Tenancy in New YorkTenancy in New York

• Despite the demand for land, many migrants refused to settle in New York's fertile Hudson River Valley. There, the Van Rensselaers and other Dutch landlords presided over manors created by the Dutch West India Company; and wealthy British families, such as the Clarkes and the Livingstons, dominated vast tracts granted by English governors (Map 4.1). Like the Chesapeake planters, the New York landlords aspired to live as European gentry, but few migrants wanted to labor as poor, dependent peasants. To attract tenants, the manorial lords had to grant them long leases and the right to sell their improvements— their houses and barns, for example—to the next tenant. The number of tenant families on the vast Van Rensselaer estate rose slowly at first, from 82 to 345 between 1714 and 1752, but then jumped to 700 by 1765.

• Dutch and English manorial lords owned much of the fertile eastern shore of the Hudson River, where they leased farms, on perpetual contracts, to German tenants and refused to sell land to freehold-seeking migrants from overcrowded New England. This powerful landed elite produced Patriot leaders, such as Gouverneur Morris and Robert Livingston, and prominent American families, such as the Roosevelts.

The Middle Atlantic:The Middle Atlantic:Tenancy in New YorkTenancy in New York

• Most tenant farmers hoped to one day gain land, but the technology of the time made it hard to produce enough grain to really make money for the small-scale farmers

The Middle Atlantic:The Middle Atlantic:Quaker PAQuaker PA

• In rural PA and NJ, wealth was more evenly distributed (at least initially)

• In time, however, the expanding trade in wheat and an influx of poor settlers led to social divisions. – Growth of large scale farmers– Rural landlords– Merchants

• On the flip side about half of the whites in the middle colonies owned no land and little or no property

The Middle Atlantic:The Middle Atlantic:Quaker PAQuaker PA

• Merchants and artisans took advantage of the ample supply of labor to organize an outwork system. They bought wool or flax from farmers and paid propertyless workers and land-poor farm families to spin it into yarn or weave it into cloth.

• In the 1760s, an English traveler reported that hundreds of Pennsylvanians had turned “to manufacture, and live upon a small farm, as in many parts of England.”

• Indeed, many communities had become as crowded and as socially divided as communities in rural England, and many smallholders feared a return to the lowly status of the European peasant.

• After 1720, European migration to British America increased dramatically, peaking between 1740 and 1780, when more than 264,000 settlers arrived in the mainland colonies. Immigration from Germany was at its highest in the mid-1750s, while that from Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales continued to increase during the 1760s and early 1770s. Most migrants, including those from Southern Ireland, were Protestants. source: Adapted from Aaron Fogelman, “Migrations to the Thirteen British North American Colonies, 1700–1775: New Estimates,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 22 (1992).

DebatesDebates• The 1700s saw huge changes…

• 1) But did they see the creation of something new? Was there a unique culture in the 13 colonies, or did that come later?

• 2) By the early 1700s the religious passion of the early settlers in places like MA had waned. Calvin’s ideas about predestination were being questioned…fewer Puritans were becoming members of their churches…In the 1730s and 40s an intense series of religious revivals took place in the 13 colonies…were they linked to the American Revolution?