NOTE-TAKING GUIDE: Of the People: A History of the United States CHAPTER 5 “The Eighteenth Century World, 1700-1775”
COMMON THREADS· What were some of the choices that individual men and women made in the eighteenth century—for example, where to live, how to work, what to purchase, what to believe—and how did those choices affect their society?
· How did such choices make everyday life more democratic? What were the forces that worked against such democratization?
· How were free Americans able to become wealthier even without significant technological innovations?
· How did the consumer revolution affect American society and culture?
· As the colonial population became more diverse and complex, with separate regional cultures and an increasing variety of beliefs and religious practices, were there other experiences that colonial Americans had in common? Is it possible yet, on the eve of the American Revolution, to talk about a common American experience or culture?
OUTLINE
The Population Explosion of the Eighteenth Century
The Dimensions of Population Growth
Bound for America: European Immigrants
Bound for America: African Slaves
American Landscape: The Slave Ship
The Great Increase of Offspring
The Transatlantic Economy: Producing and Consuming
The Nature of Colonial Economic Growth
The Transformation of the Family Economy
Sources of Regional Prosperity
Merchants and Dependent Laborers in the Transatlantic Economy
Consumer Choices and the Creation of Gentility
America and the World: Consumer Tastes in Global Perspective
The Varieties of Colonial Experience
Creating an Urban Public Sphere
The Diversity of Urban Life
The Maturing of Rural Society
The World That Slavery Made
Georgia: From Frontier Outpost to Plantation Society
The Head and the Heart in America: The Enlightenment and Religious Awakening
The Ideas of the Enlightenment
The Enlightenment and the Study of Political Economy
Enlightened Institutions
Origins of the Great Awakening
The Grand Itinerant
Cultural Conflict and Challenges to Authority
What the Awakening Wrought
Conclusion
WHO?
James Oglethorpe
Jonathan Edwards
George Whitefield
Consumer revolution
Industrious revolution
Cottagers
Linked economic development
The Wealth of Nations
The Great Awakening
The Enlightenment / WHAT?
Consumer revolution
Industrious revolution
Cottagers
Linked economic development
The Wealth of Nations
The Great Awakening
The Enlightenment
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. What were the primary reasons for population increase in the eighteenth century? Compare the patterns of population growth of Europeans and Africans in the colonies.
2. What was the “industrious revolution”? How did it shape the development of the colonial economy? What were the other key factors shaping the development of the colonial economy? What effect did this development have on the lives of ordinary men and women?
3. What were the primary changes in urban and rural life in the eighteenth century?
4. Describe the development of the eighteenth-century consumer culture and discuss how it affected everyday life.
5. What were the chief ideas of the Enlightenment? Why did some men and women find them attractive?
6. What were the sources of the Great Awakening? Why were some men and women drawn to it?
NOTES: TO FOLLOW UP / QUESTIONS TO ASK IN CLASS