Chapter 1

You Say You Want a Revolution

IN THIS CHAPTER

Surveying the 1700s colonial landscape

Engaging in the first true world wars

Relaxing religious rigidity

Fighting the French and the American Indians - again

Alienating the colonists with annoying acts

Taking on the redcoats: The battle for independence begins

Long before it was a nation or even had a name, America was an idea, a dream. It didn't exist as anything but a blank slate waiting to be filled. Eventually it filled with people who came for all sorts of reasons and with myriad ideas on how to assemble a country. Sometimes the ideas and the people clashed. But out of the clashes and struggles grew a country founded on a system of government that made it unique in the world.

As it evolved, America was often lucky to have great leaders in bad times when it most needed them. It had abundant natural resources, generally peaceable neighbors, and plenty of room to grow. And boy, did it grow. But before all this expansion could happen, someone had to transform it from a fantasy to a very real place. This chapter gives you the lowdown on how that transformation came about and directs you to the places in the book that give you the basics in more detail.

Looking at America in 1700

By the beginning of the 18th century, European powers had been alternately exploring the New World and sparring over what they found. Now it was time for the main event: a showdown for control of the American continent. Actually, it was time for a series of main events. This chapter describes how Europe engaged in a succession of wars in which America was not only a pawn but also a battleground. Britain ultimately came out on top, but its relationship with the American colonies had dramatically changed by the time that happened.

By 1700, the English colonies in America had filled in the gaps between the first two settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts and, in fact, had gone beyond them. The colonies now stretched from Maine to South Carolina. But they were a pretty skinny bunch, as colonies go. Few settlers lived more than 75 miles from the Atlantic coast, and vast stretches of land lay unsettled by any nation, although claimed by more than one.

The population had reached 275,000 to 300,000, which included 25,000 African slaves. Most people - as many as 90 percent - lived in small communities or farms. The population of New York City was about 5,000; Charles Towne (now Charleston) was about 2,000. Many of the newcomers weren't English but rather people from other Western European regions, such as Ireland, France, Scotland, and Germany, as well as the Scandinavian countries.

The colonies matured as they grew. Boston and Philadelphia were major publishing centers. Small manufacturing firms turned out goods such as furniture and iron products, which lessened the colonies' dependence on goods from England. Increasing secularism was loosening the hold of religious authority on everyday life. In fact, things were going along okay, except for all that fighting in Europe.

Britain viewed the colonies mainly as economic enterprises, whereas the colonists increasingly disliked being told what to do by a distant government. The differing perspectives clashed until, as described at the end of this chapter, Britain got popped in the snoot.

IMMIGRATION IS INTEGRAL

Sometimes when people think of immigration to the U.S., they jump directly to the 1800s (1840 to 1889, specifically), when populations from Northern or Western Europe, Germany, Ireland, and the U.K. made up what the Pew Research Center (at https://www.pewresearch.org) calls "The first large wave of immigration to the U.S ."

But draw your attention backward for millennia, to the time when (according to students of archaeology, among others) the first human beings to arrive in North American traversed a land bridge from Asia and Siberia to become the first North Americans (and DNA-matched ancestors of Native Americans). These peoples were collectively known as the Clovis people, and their journey occurred approximately 13,000 to 13,500 years ago. See a related article "The First Americans" at the National Endowment for the Humanities website (www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/marchapril/feature/the-first-americans).

Not only did immigrants arrive in North American in prehistoric times, but throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, thousands of people migrated to North America. Most came for greater economic opportunities than they could find in Europe; others came for religious freedom. The British Empire took interest in the American continent in the 16th century. In 1587, the first English settlement was set up at Roanoke Island in North Carolina. It was established by Sir Walter Raleigh and disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

In 1607, the English tried again, and this time established a colony in Jamestown, Virginia. The colony developed for almost a century but had to live under harsh conditions, constantly fighting the native population. Jamestown did leave the country an important legacy. The colonists established a representative assembly to govern their own affairs, a precedent the country later translated into the form of government that the U.S. has today (See Book 6, Chapter 1 for more information about the U.S. government.)

The idea of America as a melting pot - where new arrivals could, and should, blend into the existing culture - was popularized in 1908 by an otherwise forgettable play called, well, The Melting Pot. But the metaphor was challenged in the last part of the 20th century by those who thought a better image was America as a sort of recipe in which the ingredients kept their own identities but still worked together to produce something tasty.

America had plenty of ingredients to choose from. In 1980, about 6 percent of the U.S. population had been born in other countries. In 2023, it was 14.3 percent - about 48 million people. Federal statistics showed that from 2013 to 2022, nearly 8 million people became "naturalized" U.S. citizens.

Fighting the First True World Wars

Eighteenth-century royalty didn't need much of an excuse to start a war - they fought over everything from who should be the next king of Spain to the lopping off of a sea captain's ear. Their willingness to fight was based partly on greed for more territory and the wealth it could bring, and partly on their fear that other countries would beat them to it and become more powerful.

These wars differed from their predecessors by being global in scope and fought all over Europe, India, North and South America, and the Caribbean. The main combatants were the French and English, although the Spanish, Dutch, and Austrians did their share of fighting.

Here's a highly condensed look at the first three true world wars:

• King William's War: A revolution by Protestants in England tossed out James II, a Catholic. Protestant William III and his wife Mary came in from the Netherlands and took the throne in 1689. This situation didn't sit well with the French king, Louis XIV, a Catholic. After William III sided with other countries against France in a territorial dispute, a war was on in Europe that lasted until 1697 and spilled into America, with French-led American Indian raiding parties practicing a kind of warfare that was to become known as guerrilla fighting: ambushes and hit-and-run attacks. The war pretty much ended in a draw.
• Queen Anne's War: After King William's War ended, Europe took all of four years to catch its breath. Then, in 1701, Louis XIV of France tried to put his grandson on the throne of Spain. Queen Anne, who had succeeded William in England, objected, and they were back at it again. This time, the English colonists found themselves fighting the Spanish in the South and the French in the North. As with the previous war, there were few big battles and lots of raids and counter-raids, with both sides employing American Indian allies. When the war finally ended in 1713, Louis XIV's grandson sat on the Spanish throne but England got Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Hudson River Valley.

• King George's War: Most wars have more than one cause, but historians with a whimsical side like to start the story of King George's War with an English smuggler named Robert Jenkins. Spanish revenue agents caught Jenkins in 1731, and in the course of being interrogated, he involuntarily had one of his ears removed. "Take this back to the king, your master," a Spanish official was said to have said, "whom, if he were present, I would serve in the same fashion."

  Jenkins did take his ear back to England, but he took his time about it and didn't actually tell his tale to Parliament until 1738. It didn't matter much, and a new war was on anyway. It eventually merged with a larger war that broke out in Europe. In America, the same kind of fighting that had taken place in the earlier wars was taking place again. The British colonists took a key port called Louisbourg, which commanded the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but they had to give it back as part of the 1748 treaty that settled the war.

The Great Awakening: Stirring Greater Religious...