Image Gateway –Join or Die
Join, or Die by Benjamin Franklin, 1754
Eighteenth-century American culture moved in competing directions. Yawp, chapter 4
Discussion Questions
- How was a culture of individualism both on the rise and yet also in decline in colonial America, especially by the middle of the eighteenth century?
- What was the impact of the French & Indian (or Seven Years’ War) on the political push for greater American colonial unity?
18th-Century Individualism
“What then is the American, this new man?”
–Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (1782)
- Consumerism
- Currency & credit
- Trade
- Imperial politics
- Religious Awakening
- Slavery
African Slave Trade
Olaudah Equiano
“…The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave-ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror, which I am yet at a loss to describe, nor the then feelings of my mind. When I was carried on board I was immediately handled, and tossed up, to see if I were sound, by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I was got into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke, which was very different from any I had ever heard, united to confirm me in this belief. Indeed, such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that, if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country. When I looked round the ship too, and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate, and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. When I recovered a little, I found some black people about me, who I believed were some of those who brought me on board, and had been receiving their pay; they talked to me in order to cheer me, but all in vain. I asked them if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces, and long hair?”
- Equiano, Interesting Narrative, Knowledge for Freedom seminar (Dickinson)
- Voyages: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 1514-1866 (David Eltis / Emory)
- Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade (1788)
Colonial Unity: Becoming American
- How many British colonies in North America? (Clue = not 13)
- Importance of Organization (Provincial or Royal, Proprietary and Charter)
- Impact of Slavery
- Print culture (Benjamin Franklin)
- French & Indian War (1754-63)
- Pontiac’s War (1763-66)
Handouts