1. Theme 7 Part 1
American Colonies: Prelude to
Revolutions
Kendra Lacasella
History of the Americas Online

2. Chapter 13: Union 1685-1730
• 1690s: Scots merchants and • In 1705, the English
politicians had sought their wanted to resolve the
own commercial empire. Scot problem and
• The Darien scheme threatened to close
represented a new their border to trade
assertion of sovereignty by unless they negotiated
the Scottish Parliament. a more complete
• Their colonial company Union.
collapsed ruining the • They agreed and later
investors and compounding the Scots received a
a trade depression in few seats in both the
Scotland. House of Commons
and the House of Lords
in the English
Parliament.

3. Chapter 13: Pirates 1685-1730
• During the 16th and 17th • Pirate crew operated as
century, England had found democracies, majority vote
piracy useful for attacking the decided who
more powerful Spanish commanded, where to
empire. sail, and what to attack.
• Pirates developed a distinctive • Parliament prosecuted any
counterculture that expressed colonial merchants and
heir alienation from social governor that harbored or
conventions. supplied pirates.
• Their power accumulated at
the top of the social pyramid.
• Pirates maintained a
distinctive egalitarianism.

4. Chapter 14: Trade
• During the 18th • The improved flow of
century, trade within the information and more
empire became increasingly complex patters of
complex. commerce boosted
• Navigation Acts locked the economic growth in the
Chesapeake and the West colonies.
Indies into shipping their • The growth was impressive
tobacco and sugar directly for a preindustrial economy.
to England.
• The Southern European
trade and the growing
importance of wheat
exports shifted prosperity
within the colonies.

5. Chapter 14: Goods
• 1770- British and Asian • Women were seen as the
goods had increased in leading consumers.
value. – Buying goods instead of
• British competitors started making them reduced the
amount of chores that they
making credit bigger to had to do, and in the long run
colonists which increased this gave women many new
the buying of power. skills.
• 90% of the economic
production remained within
a colony for home
consumption or trade. But
then only 10% was
exported.

6. Chapter 15: Growth and Limits
• In 1750, the mainland colonies • The Rationalists rejected the
sustained approximately 1,500 supernatural mysteries and overt
local congregations, averaging emotionalism of evangelical
about ninety families attending. worship.
• This showed that two thirds of • The Calvinist notion of an
the colonies peoples were arbitrary and punishing God, the
churched rationalists worshiped a
• Church services filled a hunger for benign, predictable, forgiving, an
social gatherings an for d consistent deity.
information form the wider
world.
• By 1740, in most Congregational
churches, the female full
members exceeded men. By
more than two or more.

7. Chapter 15: Revivals
• Revivals were based on the • Some listeners did not
emotional process of advance to the state of
conversation that divine grace and later
transformed sinners into committed suicide because
saints. of this.
• Evangelical preachers • Because of the suicides, the
delivered fearful sermons revivals started to disappear
that were mainly dedicated and then later just stop
to soul-searching and altogether.
showing or helping people
imagine what heaven will
be like.