1. COLONIAL SOCIETY: Family, Social Order, and Religion

2. Sources of Stability: New England Colonies of the Seventeenth Century
New Englanders replicated traditional English social order
Contrasted with experience in other English colonies
Explanation lies in development of Puritan families 2

3. Immigrant Families and New Social Order
Puritans believed God ordained the family to prevent temptation outside the family
Reproduce patriarchal English family structure in New England
Greater longevity in New England results in “invention” of grandparents
Multigenerational families strengthen social stability 3

4. Commonwealth of Families
Most New Englanders married neighbors of whom parents approved; chose “godly” partners
Education provided by the family
Towns of families, not of individuals
New England families did not need indentured servants 4

5. Women’s Lives in Puritan New England
Women not legally equal with men
Marriages based on mutual love
Most Women contributed to society as
wives and mothers
church members
small-scale farmers
Women accommodated themselves to roles they believed God ordained 5

6. Women’s Roles
Women cooked, washed, made clothes, milked the cows, and gardened day in and day out
“deputy husbands” – there was both dependency and independence

7. Social Hierarchy in New England
Absence of very rich necessitates creation of new social order (neither rich nor poor)
New England social order becomes
-leader not based on wealth but other criteria
- much greater social mobility than in England 6

8. The Challenge of the Chesapeake Environment
Imbalanced sex ratio among immigrants
High death rate
Scattered population 7

9. Family Life at Risk Normal family life impossible in Virginia
mostly young male indentured servants
most immigrants soon died
in marriages, one spouse often died within a decade
Serial marriages, extended families common
Orphaned children raised by strangers 8

10. Women in Chesapeake Society
Scarcity gives some women bargaining power in marriage market
Women without family protection vulnerable to sexual exploitation
Childbearing extremely dangerous
Chesapeake women died 20 years earlier than women in New England 9

11. The Structure of Planter Society: The Gentry
Tobacco the basis of Chesapeake wealth
Early gentry become stable ruling elite by 1700 10

12. The Structure of Planter Society: The Freemen
The largest class in Chesapeake society
Most freed at the end of indenture
Live on the edge of poverty

13. The Structure of Planter Society: Indentured Servants
Servitude a temporary status
Conditions harsh
Servants regard their bondage as slavery

14. The Structure of Planter Society: Post-1680s Stability
Gentry ranks open to people with capital before 1680, no matter reputation or social standing
Demographic shift (life expectancy increased)after 1680 creates creole(born in America) elite
Shift adds stability/legitimacy to colony
Ownership of slaves consolidates planter wealth and position
Freemen find advancement more difficult

15. The Structure of Planter Society: A Dispersed Population
Large-scale tobacco cultivation requires
great landholdings
ready access to water-borne commerce
Result: population dispersed along great tidal rivers
Virginia a rural society devoid of towns
Dispersion results in lack of institutions, like schools 11

16. Rise of a Commercial Empire
English leaders ignore colonies until 1650s
(Salutary Neglect)
Navigation Acts passed to regulate, protect, glean revenue from commerce 17

17. Regulating Colonial Trade: The Navigation Act of 1660
Most important law passed by the Crown prior to the American Revolution
Ships engage in English colonial trade
must be made in England (or America)
must carry a crew at least 75% English
Enumerated goods only to English ports
1660 list included tobacco, sugar, cotton, indigo, dyes, ginger
Pay tariff at port, England makes money, colonists lose money (initially) 18

18. Regulating Colonial Trade: The Navigation Act of 1663
Goods shipped to English colonies must pass through England
Increased price paid by colonial consumers because colonists had to pay the duties added on in the English port. 19

19. Results of 1663 Act Encouraged domestic shipbuilding
Prohibited European rivals from getting these enumerated goods anywhere else but England

20. Regulating Colonial Trade: Implementing the Acts
New England merchants skirt laws
English revisions tighten loopholes – governors now responsible to keep other countries out of ports
1696--Board of Trade created(to enforce)
Navigation Acts eventually benefit colonial merchants because 25% of all England’s needs come from American Colonies. 20

21. Civil War in Virginia: Bacon's Rebellion
Nathaniel Bacon leads rebellion, 1676
Rebellion allows small farmers, blacks and women to join, demand reforms
Governor William Berkeley regains control
Rebellion collapses after Bacon’s death
Gentry recovers positions, unite over next decades to oppose royal governors 22

22. COMMON EXPERIENCES, SEPARATE CULTURES29

23. Growth and Diversity
– colonial population rises from 250,000 to over two million
Much growth through natural increase
Large influx of non-English Europeans, especially African, Scotch-Irish, and Germans