Dominion of New England in AP US History

Before 1686: sixty years of town meetings and loose enforcement

New Englanders had governed themselves almost from the start. Massachusetts Bay ran on its charter and an elected General Court. Voting was originally limited to male church members, though eligibility broadened somewhat in the 1660s. Local business was handled in town meetings, and the rules for who could take part varied from town to town. Connecticut and Rhode Island had their own charters and elected their own governors.

London saw a different picture. Massachusetts merchants ignored the Navigation Acts, which restricted colonial trade to English or colonial ships and required certain goods to pass through English ports. In 1684 an English court revoked the Massachusetts charter. That set up the Dominion, and it fits Unit 2: Colonial Society, 1607-1754, Topic 2.7 (Colonial Society and Culture). The course asks you to explain how the goals of European leaders and the goals of colonists split apart and bred growing mistrust on both sides of the Atlantic.

1686-1689: what Andros took away, one grievance at a time

Andros arrived in Boston in December 1686 and governed with an appointed council instead of an elected legislature. Each of his policies hit a habit colonists considered theirs:

• Self-rule: colonial assemblies were dissolved, and towns were limited to one meeting a year.
• Land: titles granted under the old charters were questioned, and owners were pushed to get new royal patents that came with quitrents.
• Taxes: Andros and his council levied taxes with no assembly's consent. When the town of Ipswich protested, its leaders, including the minister John Wise, were arrested and fined.
• Trade: customs enforcement under the Navigation Acts cut into smuggling profits.
• Religion: Andros pushed Anglican Church services into Puritan Boston, including in a Congregational meetinghouse.

These grievances line up with the course's emphasis on colonial resistance to imperial control. A multiple-choice set might give you a source listing them (town meetings, land titles, taxes) and ask what the resistance reveals. The strongest answer is that colonists' local experience of self-government made them see imperial control as a violation of their rights as English subjects. Answers about Enlightenment ideas or the Great Awakening sound appealing but come too late. The Dominion was in the 1680s, before either one reached the colonies in any significant way.

April 1689: Boston borrows the Glorious Revolution

In England, William of Orange landed in 1688, and James II fled. In 1689, Parliament declared the throne vacant and offered it to William and Mary. When news of William's landing reached Boston in April 1689, a crowd of militia and townspeople jailed Andros, and the Dominion fell apart. The colonists described their revolt as loyal to the new monarchs. In their view, they were removing James's agent while staying faithful to the Crown.

Colonists celebrated the return of their "ancient liberties," meaning the rights they believed came with being English. That's the conviction to name if a question asks what the revolt shows. Colonists saw themselves as English subjects whose charters and assemblies were rights, and they didn't think the king could take them back at will. A tempting wrong answer says colonists wanted independence. They didn't, and they wouldn't for nearly another century.

After the collapse: Massachusetts gets a new charter and a royal governor

Connecticut and Rhode Island went back to their old charters. Massachusetts didn't fully get its old system back. Its 1691 charter absorbed Plymouth, gave the king power to appoint the governor, and based voting on property instead of church membership. It did, however, restore an elected assembly. The result was a mix of imperial control and colonial self-rule that defined the decades of looser enforcement that followed.

On the long essay question, the Dominion gives you a pre-1754 example of colonial resistance. Use it to argue continuity: the defense of assemblies and consent to taxation was already in place before the Stamp Act. The document-based question covers 1754-1980, so the Dominion falls before that range. It can still be useful background, for example as contextualization in an essay about the causes of the Revolution. In short-answer questions, it works as specific evidence when a source or prompt asks about tensions between colonists and Britain before 1754.

Don't confuse it with the New England Confederation of 1643. That was a voluntary defensive alliance the colonies formed on their own. The Dominion was imposed from London. If a stem mentions James II, Andros, or revoked charters, it's the Dominion.