POPULATION GROWTH AND IMMIGRATION

Numbers  English colonial population  1701 – 250,000 (Black – 28,000)  1775 – 2,500,000 (Black – 500,000)  Two Factors  Immigration = 1,000,000  High Birthrate

European Immigration  Motives  Religion  Economic opportunity  Location  Middle Colonies  Western frontier of Southern colonies  Why not New England?

European Immigration Cont’d  English  Relatively small numbers  Fewer problems at home  Germans  Mostly in Pennsylvania  Maintained language, customs, and religion  6% by 1775

European Immigration Cont’d  Scotch-Irish  Little respect for British government  Settled on western frontier  7% by 1775

African “Immigration”  20% by 1775  90% of those in the Southern colonies in slavery  Majorities in South Carolina and Georgia  Regardless of status, every colony had laws that discriminated

White Family Units  90% lived on farms  Higher standard of living than Europe  Large families  Men  Most men worked  Could own land, if so, could vote  Could beat wife (not permanent injury or death)  Women  On average 8 kids  Household work  Rare to divorce or have legal and political rights

Women  Private property leads to oppression  Not true in Iroquios, Anasazi, Plains Indians  Early in colonial history, mail-order wives were common  Sexual abuse common among servants and slaves

Women, Cont’d  “Bastardy” a crime  1750: 90% of white males literate, only 40% of women

Women, Cont’d  Best-selling book Advice to a Daughter:  “There is Inequality in Sexes, and that for the better Oeconomy of the World, the Men, who were to be the Law-givers, had the larger share of Reason bestow’d upon them; by which means your Sex is the better prepar’d for Compliance. Your Sex wanteth our Reason for your Conduct, and our Strength for your Protection: ours wanteth your Gentleness to soften, and to entertain us.”

Women, Cont’d  Double oppression for black women  Of the voyage: “I saw pregnant women give birth to babies while chained to corpses”  On the Plantation: “My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing... He would compel me to submit to him. If I knelt by my mother’s grave, his dark shadow fell on me even there.”