Theme 7: Atlantic Wars and Revolutions

Part 1: American Colonies: Prelude to Revolutions

By Amanda Garibay

History 140

American Colonies 13: Revolutions

Glorious Revolutions In England, King James alarmed the Protestant majority by ruling arbitrarily and

by favoring his fellow Catholics. Williams English supporters, known as the Whigs, called the transfer of power a

“Glorious Revolution,” which they creatively depicted as a spontaneous uprising by a united English people.

Rumors of the Glorious Revolution reached the colonies in the spring of 1689, alarming the colonial appointees of King James.

April 18 1689, rebel leaders suddenly filled the streets of Boston with two thousand militiamen, primarily drawn form the country towns.

In 1689, the Catholic governor, William Joseph, fueled those rumors by refusing to acknowledge the revolution at home.

The West Indian planters did nothing from a dread that upheaval would invite rebellion by the slave majority.

American Colonies 14: The Atlantic

News The increased volume and predictability of shipping improved the flow of

transatlantic information, eroding the colonial sense of isolation. 1690, William Byrd of Virginia had lamented, “We are here at the end of the

World, and Europe may bee turned topsy turvy ere wee can hear a word of it.” Colonists felt better informed about European events at the same time that

those events bore a greater importance to them as they became embroiled in the imperial wars.

Colonials depended on the newspaper. The first enduring colonial newspaper appeared in 1704. The London news afforded a barometer of political stability and foreign relations-

both of great importance as the colonists became more involved in transatlantic commerce and more vulnerable to imperial warfare.

American Colonies 15: Awakenings

Establishments The Puritan colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Connecticut established their

Congregational Church. Establishments varied from colony to colony, so did religious dissent. Between 1660 and 1690, establishments seemed to be waning, reduced by the founding of

New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Carolina and by the English conquest of New York. Congregationalists sustained an especially impressive establishment in New England, except

for Rhode Island.That establishment meant clerical dependence upon selectmen and town meetings that proved both meddlesome and stingy. It also imposed a growing tension between the inclusion and exclusion of parishioners.

As an established church dependent upon taxation, the church needed to be inclusive to justify town support and to provide universal moral instruction and supervision.

As an established church in the world, Congregationalism also accepted and reflected social inequalities, arranging the pews in the meetinghouse to reflect the local hierarchy of family wealth and status.

In the middle colonies, ethnic and religious diversity precluded any church establishment and obliged every denomination which resulted to the middle colonies establishing more than their share.

American Colonies 17: The Great Plains

Texas In 1716 the Spanish built new missions in the hill country of east Texas, where

the Caddo were settled horticulturalists- the people deemed most appropriate for conversion.

Caddo threats obliged the missionaries and their soldiers to retreat to San Antonio, in south-central Texas, where in 1718 the Spanish founded a town, mission, and presidio.

By 1722, Hispanic Texas consisted of the town of San Antonio, ten nearby missions, and 250 soldiers in four scattered presidios.

The Spanish had compounded their exposed frontier by adding a second cluster of weak and unprofitable settlements in Texas.

By 1750 the Franciscans had gathered about a thousand Indian converts, most were Coahuiltecan speakers, nomadic hunting and gathering bands under attack from Apache and Comanche, who were headed toward Texas.

Texas was known for its safety and food based upon its agriculture missions.

American Colonies:18 Imperial Wars and Crisis

Empire of Liberty

Until the American Revolutionary War began in 1775, few colonists aspired to national independence, for they felt great pride in the empire.

The Americans in the Western lands had a vision, which would postpone the dreaded emergence of a property less proletariat of white people. That vision of white liberty depended upon the systematic dispossession of native peoples and, until the Civil War of the 1860’s, upon the perpetuation of black slavery.

Thomas Jefferson aptly described the United States as an “empire of liberty,” by and for the white citizenry.

The new American empire liberated their enterprise as it provided military assistance to subdue Indians and Hispanics across the continent to the Pacific.

American Colonies 19: The Pacific

Conclusion The Spanish lost much ground (and more water) to their many rivals at the

end of the eighteenth century. The British, and the Americans dedicated their governments to promoting

commerce. Trade drew native peoples into imperial webs more smoothly than did

missions. The dominant colonial power on the Pacific rim became the United States,

the hyper commercial nation founded by the Americans who won their independence from the British by revolution and war in the years of 1775-83.

Early nineteenth century, Americans invaded the Pacific and absorbed half of the Pacific raincoast, conquered California, purchased Russian Alaska, and subverted the Hawaiian monarchy.

The Americans proved worthy heirs to the British as the predominant colonizers of North America.