Growth and Crisis in Colonial Society1720-1765

Chapter 4

Key Questions/Ideas

• What

• How How

• What

Colonial Society• ______ m people in colonies

– 0.5m slaves• Most populous colonies in 1775

– – – – –

• About _____% of people lived in rural areas and farmed

A Melting Pot?

1775• of colonists were of English

descent

• Scots-Irish were _____%– They were experienced colonists and anti-British– Chain of settlements lay scattered along the "great wagon

road" • The eastern Appalachian foothills from PA to GA

– Led the armed march of the in Philadelphia in 1764

• protesting the Quaker oligarchy's lenient policy toward the Indians– Led the in NC

• An insurrection against eastern domination of the colony's affairs

A Melting Pot?

Scots-Irish attacking Indians, Lancaster, PA

• About %– Other European groups- French Huguenots,

Welsh, Dutch, Swedes, Jews, Irish, Swiss, and Scots Highlanders

• Colonial America was a melting pot?

A Melting Pot?

Ethnic Groups in Eighteenth-Century British North America

The Ancestry of the British Colonial

Population

The Structure of Colonial Society• By mid 1700s, the richest % of Bostonians and

Philadelphians owned of the taxable wealth in their cities

• In all the colonies the ranks of the lower classes were further swelled by the continuing stream of immigrants– Indentured servants

• Black slaves were the lowest in society

The Structure of Colonial Society

Distribution of Assessed Taxable Wealth in Eighteenth-Century Chester County

Professions

• Most honored profession was the – Most physicians were poorly trained and not

highly esteemed• Bleeding was common cure• The first medical school came in 1765

– Epidemics were a constant nightmare• Powdered dried toad was a favorite prescription for

smallpox which affected 1 in 5• A crude form of inoculation was introduced in 1721

Workaday America• Agriculture was the leading industry, involving about 90% of the people

– New England farming– Middle Colonies “ ” = grain– South

• Fishing was not nearly as prevalent as agriculture, but it was rewarding– All colonies, but especially in New England

• Trade was popular in New England, NY, and PA

• Manufacturing in the colonies was of only secondary importance  – Lumbering was most important manufacturing activity

• By 1730s, Americans demanded more and more British products Britain had reached for American imports– This trade imbalance prompted the Americans to look for foreign

markets to get money to pay for British products• Particularly the West Indies

• 1733 – Passed by Parliament to limit trade with French West Indies

• Colonists got around this by smuggling act of Parliament

Workaday America

Horsepower and Sailpower

• Roads in the colonies were terrible• Ben Franklin 9 days to get from Boston to Philadelphia• 29 days for Declaration of Independence news to reach

Charleston from Philadelphia

• Towns clustered around navigable water sources

• (An intercolonial postal system was established by the mid-1700s)