Many settlers viewed which of as competition

In , one preacher from Connecticut, James Davenport, persuaded his congregation that he had special knowledge from God. To be saved they had to dance naked in circles at night while screaming and laughing. Or they could burn the books he disapproved of. Either way, such extremism demonstrated for many that revivalism had gone wrong.

By the s, the religious revivals had petered out; however, they left a profound impact on America. Leaders like Edwards and Whitefield encouraged individuals to question the world around them. This idea reformed religion in America and created a language of individualism that promised to change everything else. If you challenged the Church, what other authority figures might you question? The Great Awakening provided a language of individualism, reinforced in print culture, which reappeared in the call for independence.

While prerevolutionary America had profoundly oligarchical qualities, the groundwork was laid for a more republican society. However, society did not transform easily overnight. It would take intense, often physical, conflict to change colonial life. Christ Church, Virginia. Of the eighty-seven years between the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution , Britain was at war with France and French-allied Native Americans for thirty-seven of them. These were not wars in which European soldiers fought other European soldiers.

American militiamen fought for the British against French Catholics and their Native American allies in all of these engagements. Warfare took a physical and spiritual toll on British colonists.

British towns located on the border between New England and New France experienced intermittent raiding by French-allied Native Americans. Raiding parties destroyed houses and burned crops, but they also took captives. They brought these captives to French Quebec, where some were ransomed back to their families in New England and others converted to Catholicism and remained in New France. In this sense, Catholicism threatened to capture Protestant lands and souls. France and Britain feuded over the boundaries of their respective North American empires.

The feud turned bloody in when a force of British colonists and Native American allies, led by young George Washington, killed a French diplomat. In North America, the French achieved victory in the early portion of this war. They attacked and burned multiple British outposts, such as Fort William Henry in These victories were often the result of alliances with Native Americans.

As a result of this invasion, a massive coalition of France, Austria, Russia, and Sweden attacked Prussia and the few German states allied with Prussia. The ruler of Austria, Maria Theresa, hoped to conquer the province of Silesia, which had been lost to Prussia in a previous war.

These subsidy payments enabled the smaller German states to fight France and allowed the excellent Prussian army to fight against the large enemy alliance. However, as in North America, the early part of the war went against the British. The latter battle allowed the British to rejoin the war in Europe. With the sea firmly in their control, the British could send additional troops to North America. These newly arrived soldiers allowed the British to launch new offensives.

The large French port and fortress of Louisbourg, in present-day Nova Scotia, fell to the British in In Europe, saw the British defeat the French at the Battle of Minden and destroy large portions of the French fleet. The British referred to as the annus mirabilis or the year of miracles. These victories brought about the fall of French Canada, and war in North America ended in with the British capture of Montreal.

The British continued to fight against the Spanish, who entered the war in In this war, the Spanish successfully defended Nicaragua against British attacks but were unable to prevent the conquest of Cuba and the Philippines. This gave the British a larger empire than they could control, which contributed to tensions that would lead to revolution. In particular, it exposed divisions within the newly expanded empire, including language, national affiliation, and religious views. American colonists rejoiced over the defeat of Catholic France and felt secure that the Catholics in Quebec could no longer threaten them.

Of course, some American colonies had been a haven for religious minorities since the seventeenth century. Catholic Maryland, for example, evidenced early religious pluralism. But practical toleration of Catholics existed alongside virulent anti-Catholicism in public and political arenas.

It was a powerful and enduring rhetorical tool borne out of warfare and competition between Britain and France. In part because of constant conflict with Catholic France, Britons on either side of the Atlantic rallied around Protestantism. British ministers in England called for a coalition to fight French and Catholic empires.

Missionary organizations such as the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel were founded at the turn of the eighteenth century to evangelize Native Americans and limit Jesuit conversions.

The Protestant revivals of the so-called Great Awakening crisscrossed the Atlantic and founded a participatory religious movement during the s and s that united British Protestant churches. Preachers and merchants alike urged greater Atlantic trade to bind the Anglophone Protestant Atlantic through commerce and religion. Relationships between colonists and Native Americans were complex and often violent.

Whence comes it that ye permit the Whites upon your lands. Drive them out, make war upon them. At its height, the uprising included Native peoples from the territory between the Great Lakes, the Appalachians, and the Mississippi River.

Though Pontiac did not command all of those participating in the war, his actions were influential in its development. Pontiac and three hundred warriors sought to take Fort Detroit by surprise in May , but the plan was foiled, resulting in a six-month siege of the British fort. News of the siege quickly spread and inspired more attacks on British forts and settlers. Joseph, and Miami. In June, a coalition of Ottawas and Ojibwes captured Fort Michilimackinac by staging a game of stickball lacrosse outside the fort.

However, British general Jeffrey Amherst discouraged this practice and regulated the trade or sale of firearms and ammunition to Indigenous people. Most Native Americans, including Pontiac, saw this not as frugal imperial policy but preparation for war. Native American warriors attacked British forts and frontier settlements, killing as many as four hundred soldiers and two thousand settlers. The war made British officials recognize that peace in the West would require royal protection of Native American lands and heavy-handed regulation of Anglo-American trade activity in territory controlled by Native Americans.

During the war, the British Crown issued the Royal Proclamation of , which created the proclamation line marking the Appalachian Mountains as the boundary between the British colonies and land held controlled by Native Americans. The war proved that coercion was not an effective strategy for imperial control, though the British government would continue to employ this strategy to consolidate their power in North America, most notably through the various acts imposed on their colonies.

Additionally, the prohibition of Anglo-American settlement in Native American territory, especially the Ohio River Valley, sparked discontent. It was an answer many wanted to hear and fit with self-conceptions of the new nation, albeit one that imagined itself as white, male, and generally Protestant.

In , at the Albany Congress, Benjamin Franklin suggested a plan of union to coordinate defenses across the continent. Tens of thousands of colonials fought during the war. At the French surrender in , 11, British soldiers joined 6, militia members drawn from every colony north of Pennsylvania. American colonists rejoiced in their collective victory as a moment of newfound peace and prosperity. After nearly seven decades of warfare they looked to the newly acquired lands west of the Appalachian Mountains as their reward.

Benjamin Franklin, Join or Die, May 9, Britain wanted to recoup some of its expenses and looked to the colonies to share the costs of their own security. To do this, Parliament started legislating over all the colonies in a way rarely done before.

As a result, the colonies began seeing themselves as a collective group, rather than just distinct entities. Different taxation schemes implemented across the colonies between and placed duties on items like tea, paper, molasses, and stamps for almost every kind of document. Consumption and trade, an important bond between Britain and the colonies, was being threatened.

To enforce these unpopular measures, Britain implemented increasingly restrictive policies that eroded civil liberties like protection from unlawful searches and jury trials. The rise of an antislavery movement made many colonists worry that slavery would soon be attacked. By , Americans had never been more united. They fought and they celebrated together.

But they also recognized that they were not considered full British citizens, that they were considered something else. Americans across the colonies viewed imperial reforms as threats to the British liberties they saw as their birthright.

The Stamp Act Congress of brought colonial leaders together in an unprecedented show of cooperation against taxes imposed by Parliament, and popular boycotts of British goods created a common narrative of sacrifice, resistance, and shared political identity.

A rebellion loomed. Boston trader Sarah Knight on her travels in Connecticut, Sarah Knight traveled from her home in Massachusetts to trade goods. Through her diary, we can get a sense of life during the consumer revolution, as well as some of the prejudices and inequalities that shaped life in eighteenth-century New England.

Eliza Lucas letters, Eliza Lucas was born into a moderately wealthy family in South Carolina. These two letters from an unusually intelligent financial manager offer a glimpse into the commercial revolution and social worlds of the early eighteenth century.

Jonathan Edwards revives Enfield, Connecticut, Jonathan Edwards catalyzed the revivals known as the Great Awakening. Samson Occom describes his conversion and ministry, Samson Occom was raised with the traditional spirituality of his Mohegan parents but converted to Christianity during the Great Awakening. He then studied for the ministry and became a missionary, minister, and teacher on Long Island, New York. Despite his successful ministry, Occom struggled to receive the same level of support as white missionaries.

Gibson Clough enlisted in the militia during the Seven Years War. His diary shows the experience of soldiers in the conflict, but also reveals the brutal discipline of the British regular army.

Soldiers like Clough ended their term of service with pride in their role defending the glory of Britain but also suspicion of the rigid British military. Pontiac calls for war, Pontiac, an Ottawa war chief, drew on the teachings of the prophet Neolin to rally resistance to European powers. Alibamo Mingo, Choctaw leader, reflects on the British and French, With the French removed from North America, their former Native American allies were forced to adapt quickly.

In this document, a Choctaw leader expresses his concern over the new political reality. Blueprint and photograph of Christ Church. Religion played an important role in each of the British colonies — for different reasons. In Virginia, the Anglican church was the official religion of the colonial government and colonists had to attend or be fined, so churches like Christ Church became important sites for political, economic, and social activity that reinforced the dominance of the planter elite.

The Carter tombs belong to Robert Carter and his first and second wives. However, as time went by and more European settlers arrived, the relationship between the two peoples became much more challenging. European map-makers drew unexplored landscapes as blank spaces.

Instead of interpreting these blank spaces as areas yet to be mapped, they saw them as empty land waiting to be settled. For the settlers, the land was theirs to colonize. As time went on, more and more settlers took over the traditional territories of Indigenous Peoples. The land, landmarks, bodies of water and mountain ranges already had names, given to them by Indigenous Peoples.

Settlers did not learn these names and made their own names for landmarks, mountains, bodies of water and regions instead. This was one of the ways in history was rewritten to excluded Indigenous Peoples contributions and presence.

Initially, the relationship was mutually beneficial for settlers and Indigenous Peoples, but this relationship did not last. Each group had their competing priorities based on fundamentally different values such as:. Colonizers used their numbers, laws, policies, and powers to gain control of Indigenous Peoples, thus leading Indigenous Peoples to be dependent on colonizers.

The British and French were fighting for control of North America, which they viewed as a rich source of raw materials. In their worldview, the natural environment was a resource that could be exploited for individual gain. In contrast, Indigenous Peoples value the group or the collective more than the individual.

Each person has their role, and each contributed to the success of the group. Other European countries quickly followed suit and began to explore and invade the New World. Jacques Cartier undertook a voyage to present-day Canada for the French government, where they began the settlement of New France, developing the fur industry and fostering a more respectful relationship with many of the inhabitants.

The Spanish conquistadors invaded areas of Central and South America looking for riches, ultimately destroying the powerful Aztec and Inca cultures.

Colonial expansion under the Spanish Empire was initiated by the Spanish conquistadors and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Christian faith through indigenous conversions.

He became the first governor of Puerto Rico in Instead, the governors were replaced with successors from Spain. Leon found a peninsula on the coast of North America and called the new land Florida, chartering a colonizing expedition. His presence there was brief, however, as he was attacked by American Indian forces and subsequently died in nearby Cuba.

By , Spanish forces looked to expand their influence and Catholic religion in the New World by attacking the French settlement of Fort Caroline. Spain formed the settlement of St. Augustine as an outpost to ensure that French Huguenots were no longer welcome in the area. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European-established city in North America.

From the middle of the 16th century forward, France tried to establish several colonies throughout North America that failed due to weather, disease, or conflict with other European powers. A major French settlement lay on the island of Hispaniola, where France established the colony of Saint-Domingue on the western third of the island in France also briefly ruled the eastern portion of the island, which is now the Dominican Republic.

French habitants, or farmer-settlers, eked out an existence along the St. Lawrence River. French fur traders and missionaries, however, ranged far into the interior of North America, exploring the Great Lakes region and the Mississippi River. These pioneers gave France somewhat inflated imperial claims to lands that nonetheless remained firmly under the dominion of indigenous peoples. New France and New Netherland remained small commercial operations focused on the fur trade and did not attract an influx of migrants.

Dutch trade goods circulated widely among the native peoples in these areas and also traveled well into the interior of the continent along pre-existing native trade routes.

Cabot explored the North American continent, correctly deducing that the spherical shape of the earth made the north—where the longitudes are much shorter—a quicker route to the New World than a trip to the South Islands where Columbus was exploring. Encouraged, he asked the English monarchy for a more substantial expedition to further explore and settle the lands.

He was successful in obtaining the expedition and the ships departed, never to be seen again. In the north, the Hudson Bay Company actively traded for fur with the indigenous peoples, bringing them into competition with French, Aboriginal, and Metis fur traders. At the start of the 17th century, the English had not established a permanent settlement in the Americas.

Over the next century, however, they outpaced their rivals. The English encouraged emigration far more than the Spanish, French, or Dutch. They established nearly a dozen colonies, sending swarms of immigrants to populate the land.

England had experienced a dramatic rise in population in the 16th century, and the colonies appeared a welcoming place for those who faced overcrowding and grinding poverty at home. Thousands of English migrants arrived in the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Virginia and Maryland to work in the tobacco fields.

Another stream, this one of pious Puritan families, sought to live as they believed scripture demanded and established the Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, New Haven, Connecticut, and Rhode Island colonies of New England. European exploration and invasion of the Americas brought with them many foreign diseases, causing widespread depopulation among indigenous cultures. Different European colonial settlements in the New World exposed indigenous populations to Christianity, forced labor, expulsion from their lands, and foreign diseases.

Rampant epidemic disease, to which the natives had no prior exposure or resistance, was one of the main causes of the massive population decline of the indigenous populations of the Americas. As Europeans and African slaves began to arrive in the New World, they brought with them the infectious diseases of Europe and Africa.

Soon after, observers noted that immense numbers of indigenous Americans began to die from these diseases. This death toll was initially overlooked or downplayed because once introduced, the diseases raced ahead of European invasion in many areas.