The American Experience

The American Experience

Great Awakening

These new ideas had had their origins in Europe, but they acquired special power in the North America colonies, where increasing ideological independence was bolstered by the growing number of people in whom profitable exports and plentiful, inexpensive land bred optimism. By 1720 church attendance had declined in all the American colonies. In responding to a mélange of class, race, gender, regional, and philosophical tensions, the Great Awakening can be described as the first truly unifying event of the British colonies in America. In some ways it was a rehearsal for the unity that would be called upon by white Americans during the Revolution and for the religious themes that would undergird the black communities' struggles for their freedom. In addition, there are some indications that leaders of the resistance movement to Great Britain in the decade before the American Revolution were more likely to be radicals if they were adherents to the new religious beliefs popularized during the Great Awakening.

The American Enlightenment

Immanuel Kant summarized the aims of “enlightenment” in the phrase sapere aude—dare to know for oneself. Traditionally conceived, to be enlightened was to throw off slavish adherence to tradition and insist on one's own critical ability to make judgments about nature, religion, politics, and society. As a result of increasing transatlantic trade, the British American provinces became culturally more sophisticated during the 18th century and, looking to Britain for models, gradually developed similar social institutions for the exchange of ideas and information within the “public sphere.” The colonists appropriated some elements of European Enlightenment culture but rejected others. For example, Benjamin Franklin's leading role in creating the Library Company of Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society, the Pennsylvania Hospital, and other institutions reflected continuity with British traditions of civic-minded improvement and the use of science and technology to achieve practical benefits in areas like agriculture and navigation.

The Coercive Acts

After the Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773), the British government under Frederick, Lord North decided that the colonists needed to be forced to recognize parliamentary sovereignty. To compel colonial compliance with imperial regulation, Parliament passed a series of laws called the Coercive Acts—sometimes referred to as the Intolerable Acts—in the spring of 1774. Instead of quelling incipient rebellion, the acts actually intensified hostilities, uniting the colonies and leading ultimately to American independence.

The Coercive Acts were broad in scope. The Port Act closed Boston's harbor until ...