Volume 1, Chapter 65, The Colonies in the First Decade of the Eighteenth Century
We have seen that the colonies in the first decade of the eighteenth century were again
embroiled in projects for invasions of New France. Indeed, England had only four years
of respite from war with France after the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. In 1701, England
and the other powers of Europe became involved in the War of the Spanish Succession, largely
against the ambitions of Louis XIV. The war was marked by a series of expensive but futile
attempts to invade Canada. Early expeditions failed to conquer Acadia, but a large expedition
in 1709, having failed to mount an attack on Quebec, consoled itself by seizing Port
in Port Royal and the Rest of Acadia. Another huge expedition was mounted against Quebec
in 1711, but the invasion was so badly bungled that some ships were wrecked in a storm and
the rest hastily returned. Peace between England and France came in 1713 with the Peace of
of Utrecht. Essentially beaten in the European War, France agreed to turn over Acadia, now
Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Hudson's Bay permanently to the English and to recognize
the Iroquois, among whom French Jesuits had made considerable headway, as being under
English jurisdiction. By the first decade of the 18th century, the previously highly
Disparate Colonies had become far more uniform. The political structures of the colonies in
particular were now more alike. By 1710 the great liberal revolutions of the 1670s and
80s had made their attempt and failed, but their failure at least succeeded in gaining
a few crucial concessions from the ruling power. In each of the colonies by 1710 a royal
A royal or proprietary governor ruled the territory. He appointed the council and the lesser administrative
and judicial bureaucracies, and ruled in alliance with a colonial oligarchy largely
created by English rule, as well as with a bureaucracy of royal officialdom. The oligarchy
received all manner of subsidies and privileges by virtue of its share in the control of the
Apparatus. Conspicuous among these privileges were arbitrary large land grants to favored
individuals and groups. In each of the colonies an elected assembly had emerged as the representative
of the popular liberal forces in continuing battle against the power of the royal officials
and their appointed upper house. Most of the provinces were now royal colonies and even
Even the proprietors were not the proud independent rulers of yore.
Once feisty and independent Massachusetts had now been brought under the royal heel.
New York, formerly a proprietary colony lacking any elected assembly, was now a royal colony
similar to the others, with an elected assembly possessing the taxing power partially offsetting
the royal appointees.
The proprietary New Jerseys were now a single royal colony.
New Hampshire, too, was finally established as a royal colony.
Of the five proprietary colonies remaining in the first decade of the 18th century, two,
the Carolinas, were soon to be forcibly transformed into royal provinces.
Furthermore, the previously remarkable religious freedom and separation of church and state
in the Carolinas was now replaced by an Anglican establishment serving a small minority, particularly
in North Carolina. In Maryland, Lord Baltimore had been deprived of his proprietary, and though
it was soon to be returned to the Baltimore family, it was returned as an Anglican colony.
Gone was Maryland as a haven for Catholics from religious persecution. In short, the
The former uniqueness of the various proprietary and self-governing colonies had now disappeared,
and there was little to distinguish the royal from the remaining proprietary colonies.
The same was true for originally pacifist and anarchistic Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania and its sister, proprietary Delaware, had been made royal colonies.
William Penn received them back only on the condition that he would mold his colonies into
what had become the standard North American pattern. Of the original self-governing colonies
of New England, only Connecticut and Rhode Island remained as anomalies, still in the
seventeenth century framework. A proprietary always meant that there would be annoying
The Crown, too, tried to impose quit-rents, but they proved, despite continuing efforts by the governors, to be virtually impossible to collect.
The dissolution of the quit-rent threat meant that true feudal tenure could not take hold in America, since the proprietary could not enforce its claims to feudal tribute.
Even less could such plans be put in place.
could not take hold in America, since the proprietary could not enforce its claims to
feudal tribute. Even less could such plans as Maryland's consciously created feudal
hierarchy of land claims persist under American conditions of abundant, cheap land and individual
independence. Of course, such feudalistic institutions as servitude and Negro slavery
greatly increased the privileged ownership of large tracts of land. Fortunately, although
the tobacco country of southern colonies and isolated areas such as near Gansett country
and west New Jersey had large plantations, no permanent land-lord-tenancy relations prevailed,
even where arbitrary and privileged land grants had been extensive. For speculative land monopolists
The first, perhaps wanting nothing better than to be feudal lords over host of servants
and sub-tenants, invariably decided to take their wealth quickly and reap speculative
gains without suffering the risk of land ownership.
The one crucial exception was New York, where receivers of huge land grants, the manors,
Following after the patron ships of the Dutch, decided to continue as landlords exacting
rents from their tenants.
Deciding to rent out and not to sell, the New York landlords thereby made the fateful
decision to freeze land monopoly in existing huge tracts.
Except for the master-slave relation, all major aspects of feudalism in the colonies
disappeared rather quickly upon their introduction. New York of course accepted. Here essentially
feudal land-holding continued for at least a century. As a result, New York's growth
compared with that of the other colonies was retarded. Negro slaves were becoming an increasingly
large part of the coerced labor force. They were used everywhere in the colonies, but
The following tabulation is the estimated population of the American colonies in 1710 and 1680,
the figures in parentheses being the estimated number of Negroes overwhelmingly slave.
In Population, 1710 and 1680, in thousands Colony, New Hampshire, 1710, 6,000, 0,000
1680, 17,000, Rhode Island, 1710, 8, 0, 1680, 3, New York, 1710, 22, 3, 1680, 10, New Jersey,
1710, 20, 1, 1680, 3, Pennsylvania, 1710, 24, 2, 1680, 1, Delaware, 1710, 4, 0.5, 1680,
1. Maryland 1710 43 8 1680 18 Virginia 1710 78,000 23,000 slaves 1680 44 North Carolina
South Carolina, 1710, 15, 1, 1680, 5. South Carolina, 1710, 11, 4, 1680, 1. Total for
For the Colonies, in 1710, 332,000 population, slave population, 44,500, 1680, 151,000.
The table reveals the comparatively slow growth of New York, the phenomenal growth of Pennsylvania
and the High Proportion of Negro Slaves in Virginia and South Carolina.
The religious structure of the colonies was also becoming uniform, in a sense, by 1710.
Whereas in the 17th century religious persecution in behalf of the dominant sect had been the
norm except in such maverick colonies as Rhode Island and North Carolina, by the 18th century
Religious freedom generally prevailed, but only partially since many colonies had their
established church, for example the Puritan in Massachusetts, the Presbyterian in Connecticut
and the Anglican in the southern colonies. The noted historian Carl Becker once raised
the question about the extent to which the American Revolution was a battle for home
Home Rule of the Colonies vis-à-vis England as opposed to a battle about who should rule
at home within the colonies. In short, to what degree was the revolution internal and
to what degree external? We are now able to frame a judgment about this issue for the
earlier revolutions of the late seventeenth century and for their aftermath. We have seen
Imagine how revolution in the 1670s and especially after 1688 swept almost every colony in America.
From Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, to Leisler's in New York, to the continuing state of revolution
in the two New Jerseys, all of these revolutions may be classified as liberal and popular,
In short, as essentially mass movements in behalf of libertarian objectives and in opposition
to the tyranny, high taxes, monopolies and restrictions imposed by the various governments.
Separating the strands of home rule and rule at home is an artificial and misleading way
of treating the problem, for the revolutionaries were battling against the oppressions of the
state apparatus.
This apparatus was certainly dominated by the external element, that is, the colonial
governors appointed by the royal or proprietary rulers.
But these governors created and then allied themselves with a domestic oligarchy.
Through subsidies, taxes, privileges, monopolies, land grants and so forth, the royal or proprietary
The governor and his council formed an allied oligarchy against which the people and their
representatives in the lower house rebelled. The colonies, especially New England, had
been almost totally independent during most of the 17th century and deeply resented later
English interference. But when these colonies rebelled, they did so not against England,
and the fact that the sudden weakening of English authority during the Glorious Revolution touched off these revolts in no sense negates this conclusion.
The liberal revolutions of the 1680s and 90s failed largely because the domestic oligarchs were propped up and reimposed by the English power.
of Power, the Berkleys and their successors, the Dudleys, the Androses, and the Hamiltons
remained. But the revolutions were not a complete failure by any means. The populace was left
with lower houses, assemblies, willing to fight continually against oligarchic oppression,
and they had a great tradition of revolution to look back upon and from which to gain inspiration.
By the turn of the 18th century, the English state had come to play a much greater and
more direct role in the overall sum of governmental burdens on the American colonist. For by 1696,
the structure of the Navigation Acts restricting colonial trade was complete, and a royal bureaucracy
replete with customs collectors and vice admiralty courts began to impose itself on the colonies.
The increasing weight of English imperial rule began to draw the brunt of popular, liberal
opposition. Hence, by the turn of the eighteenth century, the revolutions of the late seventeenth
century behind, the increasingly uniform American colonies had settled down to a period of uneasy
balance. It was a balance filled with inner tension and conflict, but for most of the
In the coming century, this conflict would no longer erupt into open confrontation or result in radical change.
But when the eruption eventually occurred, it was to be an explosion that would change the face of the globe.