Chapter 3 Creating a British Empire In America

Ch. 3

The politics empire
* The Great Aristocratic land Grab.
* Charles II gave the Carolinas to his aristocratic friends and gave his brother James, the Duke of York, New Jersey and thejust-conquered Dutch colony of New Netherland
* The Proprietors of the new colonies sought to create a traditional social order with a gentry class and an established Church of England.
* Thefundamental Constitutions of Carolina prescribed a manorial system with nobility and serfs that were governed by a small number of powerful nobles.
* Poor families in North Carolina refused to workon large manors and choose to live on modest farms.
* South Carolinians imposed their own design of government and attacked Indian settlements to acquire slaves for trade.
* South Carolinaremained an ill-governed and violence-ridden frontier settlement until the 1720s.
* Pennsylvania, designed as a refuge for Quakers persecuted in England, developed a pacific policy toward the NativeAmericans and became prosperous.
* Quakers believed that God imbued people with an inner light of grace and understanding that opened salvation to everyone.
* Penn’s Frame of Governmentguar-anteed religious freedom for all Christians and allowed all property-owning men to vote and hold office.
* Ethnic diversity, pacifism, and freedom of conscience made Pennsylvania the most open anddemocratic.

From mercantilism to Imperial Dominion
* In the 1650s the English government imposed mercantilism, via the Navigation Acts, which regulated colonial commerce and manufacture.
*The revenue Act of 1673 imposed a “plantation duty” on sugar and tobacco exports and created a staff of customs officials to enforce the mercantilist laws.
* In commercial wars between 1652 and1674, the English ended Dutch supremacy in the West African slave trade. The English also dominated North Atlantic commerce.
* Many Americans resisted the mercantilist laws as burdensome and...