1. [Introduction: Olaudah Equiano]
Slavery and Empire
Atlantic Trade
A series of trade routes crisscrossed the Atlantic.
Colonial merchants profited from the slave trade.
Slavery became connected with the color black, and liberty with the color white.
Africa and the Slave Trade
With the exception of the king of Benin, most African rulers took part in the slave trade.
The slave trade was concentrated in western Africa, greatly disrupting its society and economy.
The Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was the voyage across the Atlantic for slaves.
Slaves were crammed aboard ships for maximum profit.
Slave traders took the vast majority of slaves to Brazil and to the West Indies, where death rates were high.
Less than 5 percent of African slaves went to what became the United States, but the slave population there increased steadily through natural reproduction.
Chesapeake Slavery
Three distinct slave systems were well entrenched in Britain's mainland colonies:
Tobacco-based plantation slavery in the Chesapeake
Rice-based plantation slavery in South Carolina and Georgia
Nonplantation societies of New England and the Middle Colonies
Slavery transformed Chesapeake society into an elaborate hierarchy of degrees of freedom:
Large planters
Yeomen farmers
Indentured servants and tenant farmers
Slaves
With the consolidation of a slave society, planters enacted laws to protect their power over the slaves.
The Rice Kingdom
South Carolinian and Georgian slavery rested on rice.
Rice and indigo required large-scale cultivation (which was done by slaves).
Under the task system, individual slaves did daily jobs, the completion of which allowed time for leisure or cultivation of their own crops.
By 1770, the number of South Carolina slaves had reached 100,000-well over half the colony's population.
The Georgia Experiment
Georgia was established by a group of philanthropists led by James Oglethorpe in 1733.
Oglethorpe had banned liquor and slaves, but the settlers demanded their right of self-government and repealed the bans by the early 1750s.
Slavery in the North
Since the economics of New England and the Middle Colonies were based on small farms, slavery was far less important.
Given that slaves were few and posed no threat to the white majority, laws were less harsh than in the South.
Slaves did represent a sizable percentage of urban laborers, particularly in New York and in Philadelphia.

2. Slave Cultures and Slave Resistance
Becoming African-American
The common link among Africans in America was not kinship, language, or even "race," but slavery itself.
For most of the eighteenth century, the majority of American slaves were African by birth.
African-American Cultures
In the Chesapeake, slaves learned English, participated in the Great Awakening, and were exposed to white culture.
In South Carolina and Georgia, two very different black societies emerged:
Communities on rice plantations retained significant African cultural elements (e.g., housing styles, child naming practices, language).
Slaves in the cities of Charleston and Savannah assimilated more quickly into Euro-American culture.
In the northern colonies, a distinctive African-American culture developed more slowly, and African-Americans enjoyed more access to the mainstream of life.
Resistance to Slavery
A common thread among African-Americans was the desire for freedom.
Many plantation slaves in South Carolina and Georgia ran away to Florida or to cities.
The first eighteenth-century slave uprising occurred in New York City in 1712.
The Stono Rebellion of 1739 in South Carolina led to the tightening of the slave code.
A panic in 1741 swept New York City after a series of fires broke out that were rumored to have been part of a slave conspiracy to attack whites.

3. An Empire of Freedom
British Patriotism
Despite the centrality of slavery to its empire, eighteenth-century Great Britain prided itself on being the world's most advanced and freest nation.
Most Britons shared a common law, a common language, a common devotion to Protestantism, and a common enemy in France.
Britons believed that wealth, religion, and freedom went together.
The British Constitution
Central to this sense of British identity was the concept of liberty.
Britons believed that no man was above the law, not even the king.
The idea of liberty became increasingly identified with a general right to resist arbitrary government.
Republican Liberty
Republicanism celebrated active participation in public life by economically independent citizens.
Republicanism held virtue-meaning a willingness to subordinate self-interest to the public good-to be crucial in public life.
Republicanism in Britain was associated with the Country Party, which criticized Britain's loss of virtue.
Liberal Freedom
Liberalism was strongly influenced by the philosopher John Locke.
Lockean ideas included individual rights, the consent of the governed, and the right of rebellion against unjust or oppressive government.
Locke's ideas excluded many from freedom's full benefits in the eighteenth century, but they opened the door for many to challenge the limitations on their own freedom later.
Republicanism and liberalism eventually reinforced each other.

4. The Public Sphere
The Right to Vote
In Britain, ownership of property was a common qualifier for voting.
Suffrage was much more common in the colonies than in Britain.
Political Cultures
Considerable power was held by those with appointive, not elective, offices.
Property qualifications for officeholding were far higher than for voting.
Deference-the notion among ordinary people that wealth, education, and social prominence carried a right to public office-limited choices in elections.
The Rise of the Assemblies
Elected assemblies became more assertive in colonial politics during the eighteenth century.
The colonial elected assemblies exercised great influence over governors and other appointed officials.
Leaders of the assemblies drew on the writings of the English Country Party.
Politics in Public
The American gentry were very active in the discussion of politics, particularly through clubs.
The Colonial Press
Widespread literacy and the proliferation of newspapers encouraged political discourse.
Circulating libraries contributed to the dissemination of information.
Freedom of Expression and Its Limits
Freedom of speech was a relatively new idea.
Freedom of the press was generally viewed as dangerous.
After 1695, the government could not censor print material, and colonial newspapers defended freedom of the press as a central component of liberty.
The Trial of Zenger
Newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger went on trial in 1735 for seditious libel, for criticizing New York's governor.
He was found not guilty.
The outcome promoted the idea that publishing the truth should always be permitted and demonstrated that free expression was becoming ingrained in the popular imagination.
The American Enlightenment
Americans sought to apply to political and social life the scientific method of careful investigation based on research and experiment.
Belief in Deism (the notion that because God set up natural laws to govern the universe, following the act of creation, God did not intervene in the world) embodied the spirit of the American Enlightenment.

5. The Great Awakening
Religious Revivals
The Great Awakening was a series of local events united by a commitment to a more emotional and personal Christianity than that offered by existing churches.
The Great Awakening was led by flamboyant preachers like Jonathan Edwards, whose Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God stressed the need for humans to seek divine grace.
The Preaching of Whitefield
The English minister George Whitefield is often credited with sparking the Great Awakening.
The Awakening's Impact
The Great Awakening enlarged the boundaries of liberty as Old Lights (traditionalists) and New Lights (revivalists) defended their right to worship.
The Great Awakening inspired criticism of many aspects of colonial society.
A few preachers explicitly condemned slavery.

6. Imperial Rivalries
Spanish North America
A vast territorial empire on paper, Spanish North America actually consisted of a few small and isolated urban clusters.
Despite establishing religious missions and presidios, the Spanish population in Spain's North American empire remained relatively small and sparse.
The Spanish in California
Spain ordered the colonization of California in response to a perceived Russian threat.
Junípero Serra founded the first mission in San Diego in 1769.
California was a mission frontier.
The French Empire
The French empire in the eighteenth century expanded in Canada.
The French tended to view North America as a place of cruel exile for criminals and social outcasts.

7. Battle for the Continent
The Middle Ground
Indians were constantly being pushed from their homes into a "middle ground" between European empires and Indian sovereignty.
The government of Virginia gave an immense land grant in 1749 to the Ohio Company.
The Seven Years' War
The war began in 1754 as the British tried to dislodge the French from western Pennsylvania.
The war went against the British until 1757, when William Pitt became British prime minister and turned the tide of battle.
In 1759, a French army was defeated near Quebec.
A World Transformed
The Peace of Paris in 1763 resulted in the expulsion of France from North America.
The Seven Years' War put future financial strains on all the participants.
Pontiac's Rebellion
With the removal of the French, the balance-of-power diplomacy that had enabled groups like the Iroquois to maintain a significant degree of autonomy was eliminated.
In 1763, Indians in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes launched a revolt against British rule.
Neolin championed a pan-Indian identity.
The Proclamation Line
To avoid further Indian conflicts, London issued the Proclamation of 1763, which banned white settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Proclamation enraged settlers and land speculators hoping to take advantage of the expulsion of the French.
Pennsylvania and the Indians
The war deepened the hostility of western Pennsylvanian farmers toward Indians and witnessed numerous indiscriminate assaults on Indian communities.
After the Paxton Boys marched on Philadelphia, the governor ordered the expulsion of much of the Indian population from Pennsylvania.
Colonial Identities
The colonists emerged from the Seven Years' War with a strengthened pride in being members of the British empire.