Colonial Ways of Life

Chapter Study Outline

• I. The shape of early America
  • A. Early American settlers
  • B. British folkways brought to New World
  • C. Seaboard ecology
    • 1. Indian modifications
    • 2. European attitudes toward nature
    • 3. Transplanted animals transform the environment
  • D. Population patterns
    • 1. Rapid population growth
    • 2. Earlier marriage age in the colonies
    • 3. Lower death rates in the colonies
    • 4. Family patterns in New England compared with those in the southern colonies
  • E. Role of women in the British colonies
    • 1. Assumptions of female inferiority
    • 2. Eliza Lucas Pinckney’s journey beyond the traditional role
    • 3. Women’s restricted role in churches
    • 4. Farm and town labor
    • 5. Prostitution
    • 6. Women’s slightly higher colonial status
• II. Sectional differences among the colonies
  • A. Southern colonies
    • 1. Religious diversity
    • 2. Advantages of the warm climate
    • 3. Tobacco, rice, and naval stores became chief exports
    • 4. Effects of plentiful land and scarce labor
    • 5. Use of indentured servants to solve some labor problems
    • 6. Development of slavery in the southern colonies
      • a. First arrival of Africans in 1619
      • b. Slavery in the Western Hemisphere
      • c. Racial prejudice
      • d. Characteristics of West African culture
      • e. Enslavement and the Middle Passage
      • f. Geographical distribution of colonial slavery
      • g. New York City slave revolt of 1741
      • h. Emergence of an African American culture
      • i. Varieties of slave labor
      • j. Color prejudice and slavery
  • B. The New England colonies
    • 1. Transformation of the British village into the New England town
    • 2. Puritan houses
    • 3. New England agriculture
    • 4. Success of the fishing industry
    • 5. Shipbuilding a vital part of the economy
    • 6. Rise of triangular trade
    • 7. Solutions to the chronic shortage of hard currency
    • 8. Puritans and worldly pleasures
    • 9. Puritan religion
      • a. Congregational organization of churches
      • b. Covenant theory of government
      • c. Nature of church–state relationship
    • 10. Evidence of strain within the Puritan community in the late seventeenth century
      • a. Development of economic and social strains
      • b. Frequent challenges to authority
      • c. Development of the “Half-Way Covenant“
      • d. Witchcraft hysteria
  • C. The middle colonies
    • 1. Reflection of elements of both southern and New England colonies
    • 2. Products for export
    • 3. Use of land system
    • 4. Ethnic elements in the population
• III. Other social and intellectual features of the colonies
  • A. The rise of cities
  • B. Urban class groupings and stratification
  • C. Urban problems
  • D. Means of transportation
  • E. Drinking and taverns
  • F. Early newspapers and the Zenger trial
  • G. Impact of the Enlightenment
    • 1. Importance of reason and science
    • 2. God as master clockmaker
    • 3. America’s receptivity to the Enlightenment
    • 4. Ben Franklin as prime example of enlightened American
  • H. Developments in education
  • I. Impact of the Great Awakening
    • 1. Causes for the development of the movement
    • 2. Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield
    • 3. Women and the revival movement
    • 4. Impact of the movement on churches and schools
    • 5. Long-range impact of the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment