AMSCO 2.7 Colonial Society and Culture Notes

Overview

AMSCO Topic 2.7, "Colonial Society and Culture" (AMSCO pages 63-74), explains how the British colonies grew from struggling villages in 1607 into a society of 2.5 million people with a culture distinct from anything in Europe by 1775. The chapter covers population growth and immigration, regional economies, the Great Awakening, the Enlightenment, education, the press, and the colonial governments that trained Americans in self-rule. It closes Period 2 (1607-1754) by setting up the big question of Unit 3: why did colonists who saw themselves as English start to mistrust Britain?

Timeline of Key Events in 1607-1754. Image Courtesy of Samhitha

Population Growth and the People of the Colonies

The colonial population exploded from about 250,000 in 1701 to 2,500,000 by 1775, driven by nearly a million immigrants plus a high birthrate fed by abundant land and food. The African American population grew even faster, from roughly 28,000 to 500,000 in the same period.

European Immigrants

Most newcomers were Protestants from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and German-speaking states, fleeing religious persecution and war or chasing economic opportunity. They settled mainly in the middle colonies and on the southern frontier. Few chose New England, where land was scarce and Puritans dominated.

• Germans (6% of the population by 1775) farmed west of Philadelphia in "Pennsylvania Dutch" country, keeping their language and Lutheran, Amish, Brethren, or Mennonite faiths while staying out of English politics.
• Scotch-Irish (7%) were English-speaking Protestants from northern Ireland who resented the British for pressuring them out of Ireland. They settled the frontier in western Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia.
• Huguenots (French Protestants), Dutch, and Swedes together made up about 5%.

Enslaved Africans

The largest single group entering the colonies came against their will. Africans were captured, forced onto ships, and sold into slavery, most often as plantation field laborers, though some worked as bricklayers or blacksmiths. By 1775, African Americans were 20% of the colonial population, concentrated in the South, and enslaved people were the majority in South Carolina and Georgia. A few gained freedom through emancipation or self-purchase, but every colony passed discriminatory laws against African Americans. For the full story of how slavery developed, see the AMSCO 2.6 Slavery in the British Colonies notes.

American Indians

Population growth meant conflict over land. Some tribes formed defensive alliances like the Powhatan Confederation in Virginia and the Iroquois Confederation near the Great Lakes; others allied with settlers against rival tribes. Pennsylvania had the most peaceful relations because William Penn usually obtained land by treaty rather than violence.

Colonial Social Structure: Liberty, Opportunity, and the Family

Colonial society offered ordinary people more self-determination than Europe did, though that freedom was mostly limited to White residents.

• Religious toleration existed everywhere, but unevenly. Massachusetts was the most restrictive (Protestants only, no Catholics or non-Christians). Rhode Island and Pennsylvania were the most open; Pennsylvania accepted anyone who believed in God, including Jews, though only Christians could hold office.
• No hereditary aristocracy. The European extremes of titled nobility and starving masses were missing. A narrower, economics-based class system put wealthy landowners on top, with craft workers and small farmers as the majority.
• Social mobility was real for White colonists. Hard work and cheap land let families improve their status in ways nearly impossible in Europe.

The Family

The family was the center of colonial life, and more than 90% of people lived on farms. Colonists married younger and had more children than Europeans, and most enjoyed a higher standard of living. Men owned property, voted, and held nearly unlimited legal power at home. A colonial woman bore an average of eight children, ran the household, made clothes, provided medical care, and often worked alongside her husband. Women had limited legal and political rights, but shared labor gave most wives an active role in family decisions.

The Colonial Economy by Region

By the 1750s, half of Britain's world trade was with the American colonies, and British mercantilist policy kept those colonies focused on agriculture, forestry, and fishing while limiting manufacturing. The quickest route to wealth was land, but geography shaped what each region could do (a pattern introduced in the AMSCO 2.3 Regions of the British Colonies notes).

• New England: rocky soil and long winters meant subsistence farming on small farms under 100 acres. Profits came from logging, shipbuilding, fishing, trading, and rum-distilling.
• Middle colonies: rich soil produced wheat and corn for export to Europe and the West Indies on farms up to 200 acres, often worked with indentured servants. Iron-making and trade fueled cities. Philadelphia was the largest colonial city in 1750, with about 25,000 people.
• Southern colonies: most people lived on small subsistence farms without slaves, but a few large plantations of 2,000+ acres relied on slave labor. Crops varied by area: tobacco in the Chesapeake and North Carolina, timber and naval stores in the Carolinas, rice and indigo in South Carolina and Georgia. Plantations sat on rivers to ship exports to Europe.

Britain also controlled the colonial economy through money. Colonies had to spend their scarce gold and silver on British imports, so many printed paper money for domestic trade, often too much of it, causing inflation. Water transport beat the poor roads, so trading centers like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston grew up around good harbors. Taverns doubled as social and political hubs, and a colonial postal system ran by mid-century.

Religion and the Great Awakening

Most colonists were Protestants, but each region had its own mix: Congregationalists (Puritans) and Presbyterians in New England, Dutch Reformed and Anglicans in New York, Lutherans, Mennonites, and Quakers in Pennsylvania, Anglicans dominant in the South, plus Catholics and some Jews in Maryland. Jews, Catholics, and Quakers all faced intense discrimination. In the 17th century most colonies taxed everyone to support an established church, but growing diversity gradually eroded that support (some New England church taxes lasted until the 1830s).

The Great Awakening (1730s-1740s)

The Great Awakening was a wave of fervent, emotional religion that swept the colonies after decades of calmer preaching.

• Jonathan Edwards, a Massachusetts Congregational minister, preached "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," using vivid Old Testament language to portray a God angry at human sinfulness. Repent and be saved; ignore God's commandments and face eternal damnation.
• George Whitefield, starting in 1739, carried the revival across the colonies, drawing crowds of 10,000 in barns, tents, and fields. He taught that ordinary people could understand the gospels without ministers leading them.

The impact was huge. Emotionalism split denominations into "New Lights" (supporters) and "Old Lights" (opponents). Ministers lost authority as people read the Bible at home. Evangelical sects like the Baptists and Methodists boomed, and calls grew for stricter separation of church and state. Politically, the Awakening was one of the first experiences colonists shared as Americans, and it had a democratizing effect: if people could make religious decisions without a "higher" authority, maybe they could make political decisions without deferring to a king. That idea would surface 30 years later.

Cultural Life: Arts, Education, the Press, and the Enlightenment

By the early 1700s the colonies were prosperous enough for the arts to flourish, at least among wealthy planters and merchants.

Arts and Sciences

The Georgian style of London shaped brick and stucco buildings along the seaboard, while the one-room log cabin ruled the frontier. Itinerant painters traveled in search of portrait commissions; Benjamin West and John Copley later won fame in England. Literature focused on religion (Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards) and politics (John Adams, James Otis, John Dickinson, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson). Benjamin Franklin was the most popular writer, revising Poor Richard's Almanack annually from 1732 to 1757, and he won scientific fame for his electricity work, bifocals, and the Franklin stove. Phillis Wheatley, enslaved in Boston, published a collection of poems in 1773 and was freed soon after. The botanist John Bartram, like most colonial scientists, was self-taught.

Education and the Professions

Formal education was for boys; girls were trained for household work. New England's Puritans created the first tax-supported schools (a 1647 Massachusetts law required towns to open primary schools for boys). Middle-colony schools were church-sponsored or private; southern children relied on parents or plantation tutors. The first colleges were sectarian: Harvard (Puritans, 1636), William and Mary (Anglicans, 1694), and Yale (Congregationalists, 1701). The College of Philadelphia (1765), co-founded by Franklin, was the only nonsectarian college and housed the first medical school. Ministers were often the only well-educated people in town. Doctors trained as apprentices. Lawyers gained respect in the 1760s-1770s arguing for colonial rights; John Adams, James Otis, and Patrick Henry would supply the intellectual underpinnings of the Revolution.

The Press and the Zenger Case

By 1776 more than 40 weekly newspapers carried month-old European news, ads, and advice essays. In 1735, New York publisher John Peter Zenger was tried for libel after criticizing the royal governor. Under English common law, criticizing the governor was a crime whether true or not. Zenger's lawyer Andrew Hamilton argued he had printed the truth, and the jury ignored the law and acquitted him. The case did not guarantee freedom of the press, but it emboldened newspapers to criticize the government.

The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment held that human reason, not tradition or divine intervention, could solve humanity's problems. John Locke's Two Treatises of Government argued that government must follow "natural laws" based on rights people have simply because they are human, that sovereignty ultimately resides with the people, and that citizens have the right to revolt against a government that fails to protect their rights. Locke's natural-rights thinking would provide the rationale for the American Revolution and the principles of the Constitution.

Politics, Government, and the Colonial Relationship with Britain

The colonies were becoming more English (self-governing communities on English models, commercial and religious ties, English language and print culture) while simultaneously developing an American identity. Colonists exercised free speech and a free press, elected representatives, and tolerated multiple religions. But interests diverged: colonists wanted to push west while Britain wanted frontier peace, colonists liked salutary neglect while Britain tried to enforce trade rules, and colonists prized self-government while Britain claimed sovereignty. These tensions would intensify after 1763.

By 1750 every colony had a governor and a two-house legislature. The elected lower house (assembly) controlled taxes, so colonists got used to paying taxes only with their representatives' approval. Upper houses were elected in the two self-governing colonies and appointed elsewhere. Governors were crown-appointed, proprietor-appointed (Pennsylvania and Maryland), or elected (Rhode Island and Connecticut). New England ran direct-democracy town meetings; the spread-out South governed through county sheriffs and officials. Voting was limited to White male property owners, though religious restrictions on voting were declining in the 18th century.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Pair these notes with the Topic 2.7 Colonial Society and Culture study guide for the College Board's framing of the same content, then move on to the AMSCO 2.8 Comparison in Period 2 notes to wrap up the unit. The full set of APUSH AMSCO notes covers every chapter. To check yourself, run through guided practice questions on Period 2 or drill vocab with the APUSH key terms glossary.