AMERICAN COLONIES:

PRELUDE TO REVOLUTION

Diego Serrato

History 140

Trade A multilateral trading system that

used bills of exchange drawn on London merchant firms to balance regional credits and debits.

A long-term trend toward increased debt owed by the mainland colonists.

In return for their fish, wheat, and flour, the colonists procured some salt and wine, but primarily bills of exchange drawn on English merchants, who had a trade deficit with southern Europe .

New England had the lowest standard of living and the fewest slave.

Goods A consumer revolution that meant

cheaper and more diverse goods in greater abundance, involving many more common people as consumers.

American colonies consumed about 10 percent of British exports; that figure rose to 37 percent by 1772.

Local elites especially sought a more cosmopolitan standard for demonstrating and testing claims to status in new settings.

Colonist built lighter, finer, larger, and more ornamented houses, increasingly in brick and filled with fine furniture

Scots Scots had greater incentive to

emigrate The Scottish Diaspora flowed

in three streams: Lowland Scots, Highland Scots, and Ulster Scots

The Highlanders responded primarily to the push of their deteriorating circumstances.

The Highland Scots Clustered in frontier valleys especially along the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, the Mohawk River of New York, and the Altamaha River in Georgia

Germans Germans were second only to

the Scots as eighteenth-century immigrants to British America.

The Germans emigrated primarily in fammilies

In 1682, William Penn recruited a few Germans to settle in Pennsylvania, where they prospered.

Word of their material success in a tolerant colony intrigued growing numbers in their old homeland.

Emigrants Until 1663, Canada belonged to

the fur-trading company of new France, rather than the French crown.

The company saw little purpose and no profit in the costly business of transporting people to a colony dedicated to the fur trade.

The French learned that they needed more colonists to defend Quebec, not from the Indians, but from their English rivals

By 1675, seventy seigneuries divided most of the land between Quebec and Montreal in the St. Lawrence Valley

Horses Horses evolved in North America,

before spreading eastward into Asia and Europe about twelve thousand years ago, they had become extinct in this continent by about ten thousand years ago.

Not until the late seventeenth century did the pueblo and Apache acquire horses from the New Mexicans.

A horse could haul loads four times larger than could a dog enabling the Indians to acquire and transport more possession over longer distances.

The horse simply enabled them to extend their seasonal hunts deeper into the plains and to bring more meat and robes back to their village.

Comanche On the Great Plains, the

eighteenth century was a period of violent flux as native peoples competed to exploit the buffalo and to steal horses and women.

The influx of horses and guns flowed unevenly, favoring some native peoples at the expense of others.

On the southern plains, the Comanche were the big winners.

By trading for or stealing Hispanic horses, the Comanche obtained the means to force their way farther south and east

Russians During the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries, as western Europeans headed westward across the Atlantic to colonize North America, Russians expanded eastward across Siberia

By subduing the native peoples and erecting fortified towns, Russian fur traders worked their way east to the Pacific Ocean.

In the 1680’s they began to occupy the Kamchatak Peninsula, which became their base for forays into the North Pacific.

As the French depended upon Indian hunters to harvest beaver, the Russian relied on Siberian tribal peoples to kill sable

Alta California During the 1760s, the Spanish

ambassador at St. Petersburg Belatedly learned about Bering’s expedition, the promyshlenniki operations in the Aleutians, and Russian plans to explore farther south and west.

In 1768 the royal inspector general in New Spain, Jose de Galvez, there is no doubt that in any case we have the English very close to our towns of New Mexico, and not very far from the west coast of this continent

The Spanish crown ordered the colonization of califorina to secure the unguarded northwestern door to precious Mexico.

Missions The subtle ingenuity of the

California Indian cultures did not impress the Hispanics.

The Hispanics insisted that the hallmarks of reason were the Catholic Faith, Castilian language, obedience to the Spanish king, and a Hispanic mode of agricultural labor.

Indeed, most of the California colonists were themselves people of mixed ancestry, mestizos or mulattoes, from northwestern

The Hispanic Californios claimed a relatively higher status than they could have enjoyed had they remained in Mexico