How did patterns of class and gender roles change in eighteenth-century America?
SOCIAL CLASSES IN THE BRITISH COLONIES
The Colonial Elite
Most free Americans benefited from economic growth, but as colonial society matured an elite emerged that, while neither as powerful nor as wealthy as the aristocracy of England, increasingly dominated politics and society. In New England and the Middle Colonies, expanding trade made possible the emergence of a powerful upper class of merchants, often linked by family or commercial ties to great trading firms in London. By 1750, the Chesapeake and Lower South were dominated by slave plantations producing staple crops, especially tobacco and rice, for the world market. Here great planters accumulated enormous wealth from the forced labor of enslaved women and men. The colonial elite also included the rulers of proprietary colonies like Pennsylvania and Maryland.
More information
A portrait of Jane Beekman, a wealthy young girl, holding a book. The girl is pale with rosy cheeks, neatly pulled back brown hair, and dark eyes. She wears a gold dress with white lace and a rose pinned to the neckline. She has her left arm wrapped around her waist while the right is holding up a book - a collection, in Latin, of the works of Renaissance scholar Erasmus. She stands facing the viewer, with her face slighlty turned to her left. She stares directly at the viewer. The background is dark but a table with more books stacked on top is visible.
This portrait of Jane Beekman—daughter of James Beekman, one of the wealthiest colonists—was painted by the artist John Durand in 1767. It is unusual in depicting a young girl with a book (a collection, in Latin, of the works of the Renaissance scholar Erasmus), rather than simply emphasizing fashionable attire. The Beekman family was of Dutch and French Huguenot heritage, and both cultures emphasized the importance of education, including for women.
America had no titled aristocracy as in Britain. But throughout British America, men of prominence controlled colonial government. In Virginia, the upper class was so tightly knit and intermarried so often that the colony was said to be governed by a “cousinocracy.” Nearly every Virginian of note achieved prominence through family connections. Thomas Jefferson’s grandfather was a justice of the peace (an important local official), militia captain, and sheriff, and his father a member of the House of Burgesses. George Washington’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had been justices of the peace. The Virginia gentry used its control of provincial government to gain possession of large tracts of land as the colony pushed west onto Native land.
The richest group of mainland colonists were South Carolina planters. Like their Virginia counterparts, South Carolina grandees lived a lavish lifestyle amid imported furniture, fine wines, silk clothing, and other items from England. Their wealth enabled them to spend much of their time enjoying the social life of Charleston, the only real urban center south of Philadelphia and the richest city in British North America.
New World Cultures
Before the American Revolution, there was no real “American” identity. In the seventeenth century, the term “Americans” tended to be used to describe Indians rather than colonists. Europeans often depicted the colonies pictorially with an image of a Native American. Many European immigrants maintained traditions, including the use of languages other than English, from their home countries. Some cultures mixed more than others: intermarriage with other groups was more common among Huguenots (French Protestants) than among Jews, for example. Those from the British Isles sought to create a dominant “English” identity in the New World. This involved convincing Britons that the colonists were like themselves.
Many in Great Britain, however, saw the colonists as a collection of convicts, religious dissidents, and impoverished servants. This, in turn, inspired many colonists to assert a claim to Britishness more strongly. They insisted that British identity meant allegiance to certain values, among them free commerce and English liberty. Yet many colonists saw some people, including American Indians, Africans, and all women, as unable to wield the responsibilities of liberty due to their place of birth, culture, or inborn traits. They must be ruled over, not take part in governance.
More information
A portrait of Robert “King” Carter of Virginia, painted around 1720. He is a pale man with a large gray wig and red cheeks. He wears a long gray jacket with silver buttons and a white shirt underneath. He wears an off-white glove on his right hand and holds a cane. His left hand is glove-less and he holds a sword. Under his left arm he hold a triangular black hat. In the background, a landscape is visible.
Robert “King” Carter of Virginia, painted by an unknown artist around 1720. Carter was one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the colonies, with a fortune built from plantation slavery. At his death he owned 300,000 acres of land and over 700 slaves. He served twice as Speaker of the House of Burgesses and once as governor. He is dressed in the attire of an English gentleman.
British identity in the colonies was defined, in part, in opposition to others, including Spanish and French Catholics, Africans, and Native Americans. As early as the late sixteenth century, in his writings on colonization, Richard Hakluyt wrote that there was “no greater glory” than “to conquer the barbarian, to recall the savage and the pagan to civility, to draw the ignorant within the orbit of reason, and to fill with reverence for divinity the godless and the ungodly.” But the colonists did not include Indians and Africans in a collective colonial identity. As noted in Chapter 1, intermarriage and culture exchange between settlers and Indians were far more common in the Spanish and French empires. But in all colonies, men of primarily or exclusively European descent held most of the wealth and power.
Anglicization
For much of the eighteenth century, the British colonies had more regular trade and communications with Britain than among themselves. Rather than thinking of themselves as distinctively American, they became more and more English—a process historians call “Anglicization.”
Wealthy colonists tried to model their lives on British etiquette and behavior. Somewhat resentful at living in provincial isolation—“at the end of the world,” as one Virginia aristocrat put it—they sought to demonstrate their status and legitimacy by importing the latest London fashions and literature, sending their sons to Britain for education, and building homes equipped with fashionable furnishings modeled on the country estates and town houses of the English gentry.
More information
A portrait of a fashionably dressed twelve year old boy. The boy is pale and has rosy cheeks. He has blonde hair, cut short, and wears a blue coat with silver buttons and a red inside lining, a blue shirt, and a white collared shirt uderneath. He wears blue pants and white stockings, as well as black buckled shoes. He holds a black triuangular hat with silver trim under his left arm. The boy stands in 3/4 pose, facing the right side of the painting. His left foot steps slightly forward and his right arm extends from his side, pointing forwards. He looks out of the painting, at the viewer. In the background are trees, bushes, and a cloudy sky.
Fashionably dressed twelve-year-old Ralph Izard, painted in 1754 by Jeremiah Theus, just before Izard’s departure to receive an education in England. The boy had recently inherited a large plantation in South Carolina, upon the death of his parents.
Throughout the colonies, elite men emulated what they saw as England’s balanced, stable social order. Liberty, in their eyes, meant, in part, the power to rule—the right of those blessed with wealth and prominence to dominate others. They viewed society as a hierarchical structure in which some men were endowed with greater talents than others and were destined to govern. Each place in the hierarchy carried with it different responsibilities, and one’s status was revealed in dress, manners, and the splendor of one’s home. On both sides of the Atlantic, elites viewed work as something reserved for common folk and slaves. Freedom from labor was the mark of gentlemen and ladies.
Poverty in the Colonies
At the other end of the social scale, poverty emerged as a visible feature of eighteenth-century colonial life. Although not considered by most colonists part of their society, the growing number of slaves lived in impoverished conditions. Among free Americans, poverty was hardly as widespread as in Britain, where in the early part of the century between one-quarter and one-half of the people regularly required public assistance. But as the colonial population expanded, access to land diminished rapidly, especially in long-settled areas, forcing many propertyless males to seek work in their region’s cities or in other colonies. In colonial cities, the number of propertyless wage earners subsisting at the poverty line steadily increased. Taking the colonies as a whole, half of the wealth at mid-century was concentrated in the hands of the richest 10 percent of the population.
Attitudes and policies toward poverty in colonial America mirrored British precedents. The better-off colonists generally viewed the poor as lazy, shiftless, and responsible for their own plight. To minimize the burden on taxpayers, poor persons were frequently set to labor in workhouses, where they produced goods that reimbursed authorities for part of their upkeep.
The Middle Ranks
The large majority of free Americans lived between the extremes of wealth and poverty. Along with racial and ethnic diversity, what distinguished the mainland colonies from Europe was the wide distribution of land and the economic autonomy of most ordinary free families. Altogether, perhaps two-thirds of the free male population were farmers who owned their own land.
This portrait of the Cheney family by an unknown late-eighteenth-century artist illustrates the high birthrate in colonial America and suggests how many years of a woman’s life were spent bearing and raising children.
By the eighteenth century, colonial farm families viewed landowner-ship almost as a right, the social precondition of freedom. They strongly resented efforts, whether by Native Americans, great landlords, or colonial governments, to limit their access to land. A dislike of personal dependence and an understanding of freedom as not relying on others for a livelihood sank deep roots in British North America.
Women and the Household Economy
In the eighteenth-century British mainland colonies the family was the center of economic life. The independence of the small farmer depended in considerable measure on the labor of dependent women and children. “He that hath an industrious family shall soon be rich,” declared one colonial saying, and the high birthrate in part reflected the need for as many hands as possible on colonial farms.
As the population grew and the death rate declined, family life stabilized and more marriages became lifetime commitments. Free women were expected to devote their lives to being good wives and mothers. As colonial society became more structured, coverture was more strictly enforced. In Connecticut, for example, the courts were informal and unorganized in the seventeenth century, and women often represented themselves. In the eighteenth century, it became necessary to hire a lawyer as one’s spokesman in court. Women, barred from practicing as attorneys, disappeared from judicial proceedings. Because of the desperate need for labor in the seventeenth century, men and women both did various kinds of work. In the eighteenth century, the division of labor along gender lines solidified. Women’s work was clearly defined, including cooking, cleaning, sewing, making butter, and assisting with agricultural chores. Even as the consumer revolution reduced the demands on many women by making available store-bought goods previously produced at home, women’s work seemed to increase. Lower infant mortality meant more time spent in child care and domestic chores.
SOCIAL CLASSES IN THE BRITISH COLONIES
The Colonial Elite
Most free Americans benefited from economic growth, but as colonial society matured an elite emerged that, while neither as powerful nor as wealthy as the aristocracy of England, increasingly dominated politics and society. In New England and the Middle Colonies, expanding trade made possible the emergence of a powerful upper class of merchants, often linked by family or commercial ties to great trading firms in London. By 1750, the Chesapeake and Lower South were dominated by slave plantations producing staple crops, especially tobacco and rice, for the world market. Here great planters accumulated enormous wealth from the forced labor of enslaved women and men. The colonial elite also included the rulers of proprietary colonies like Pennsylvania and Maryland.
More information
A portrait of Jane Beekman, a wealthy young girl, holding a book. The girl is pale with rosy cheeks, neatly pulled back brown hair, and dark eyes. She wears a gold dress with white lace and a rose pinned to the neckline. She has her left arm wrapped around her waist while the right is holding up a book - a collection, in Latin, of the works of Renaissance scholar Erasmus. She stands facing the viewer, with her face slighlty turned to her left. She stares directly at the viewer. The background is dark but a table with more books stacked on top is visible.
This portrait of Jane Beekman—daughter of James Beekman, one of the wealthiest colonists—was painted by the artist John Durand in 1767. It is unusual in depicting a young girl with a book (a collection, in Latin, of the works of the Renaissance scholar Erasmus), rather than simply emphasizing fashionable attire. The Beekman family was of Dutch and French Huguenot heritage, and both cultures emphasized the importance of education, including for women.
America had no titled aristocracy as in Britain. But throughout British America, men of prominence controlled colonial government. In Virginia, the upper class was so tightly knit and intermarried so often that the colony was said to be governed by a “cousinocracy.” Nearly every Virginian of note achieved prominence through family connections. Thomas Jefferson’s grandfather was a justice of the peace (an important local official), militia captain, and sheriff, and his father a member of the House of Burgesses. George Washington’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had been justices of the peace. The Virginia gentry used its control of provincial government to gain possession of large tracts of land as the colony pushed west onto Native land.
The richest group of mainland colonists were South Carolina planters. Like their Virginia counterparts, South Carolina grandees lived a lavish lifestyle amid imported furniture, fine wines, silk clothing, and other items from England. Their wealth enabled them to spend much of their time enjoying the social life of Charleston, the only real urban center south of Philadelphia and the richest city in British North America.
New World Cultures
Before the American Revolution, there was no real “American” identity. In the seventeenth century, the term “Americans” tended to be used to describe Indians rather than colonists. Europeans often depicted the colonies pictorially with an image of a Native American. Many European immigrants maintained traditions, including the use of languages other than English, from their home countries. Some cultures mixed more than others: intermarriage with other groups was more common among Huguenots (French Protestants) than among Jews, for example. Those from the British Isles sought to create a dominant “English” identity in the New World. This involved convincing Britons that the colonists were like themselves.
Many in Great Britain, however, saw the colonists as a collection of convicts, religious dissidents, and impoverished servants. This, in turn, inspired many colonists to assert a claim to Britishness more strongly. They insisted that British identity meant allegiance to certain values, among them free commerce and English liberty. Yet many colonists saw some people, including American Indians, Africans, and all women, as unable to wield the responsibilities of liberty due to their place of birth, culture, or inborn traits. They must be ruled over, not take part in governance.
More information
A portrait of Robert “King” Carter of Virginia, painted around 1720. He is a pale man with a large gray wig and red cheeks. He wears a long gray jacket with silver buttons and a white shirt underneath. He wears an off-white glove on his right hand and holds a cane. His left hand is glove-less and he holds a sword. Under his left arm he hold a triangular black hat. In the background, a landscape is visible.
Robert “King” Carter of Virginia, painted by an unknown artist around 1720. Carter was one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the colonies, with a fortune built from plantation slavery. At his death he owned 300,000 acres of land and over 700 slaves. He served twice as Speaker of the House of Burgesses and once as governor. He is dressed in the attire of an English gentleman.
British identity in the colonies was defined, in part, in opposition to others, including Spanish and French Catholics, Africans, and Native Americans. As early as the late sixteenth century, in his writings on colonization, Richard Hakluyt wrote that there was “no greater glory” than “to conquer the barbarian, to recall the savage and the pagan to civility, to draw the ignorant within the orbit of reason, and to fill with reverence for divinity the godless and the ungodly.” But the colonists did not include Indians and Africans in a collective colonial identity. As noted in Chapter 1, intermarriage and culture exchange between settlers and Indians were far more common in the Spanish and French empires. But in all colonies, men of primarily or exclusively European descent held most of the wealth and power.
Anglicization
For much of the eighteenth century, the British colonies had more regular trade and communications with Britain than among themselves. Rather than thinking of themselves as distinctively American, they became more and more English—a process historians call “Anglicization.”
Wealthy colonists tried to model their lives on British etiquette and behavior. Somewhat resentful at living in provincial isolation—“at the end of the world,” as one Virginia aristocrat put it—they sought to demonstrate their status and legitimacy by importing the latest London fashions and literature, sending their sons to Britain for education, and building homes equipped with fashionable furnishings modeled on the country estates and town houses of the English gentry.
More information
A portrait of a fashionably dressed twelve year old boy. The boy is pale and has rosy cheeks. He has blonde hair, cut short, and wears a blue coat with silver buttons and a red inside lining, a blue shirt, and a white collared shirt uderneath. He wears blue pants and white stockings, as well as black buckled shoes. He holds a black triuangular hat with silver trim under his left arm. The boy stands in 3/4 pose, facing the right side of the painting. His left foot steps slightly forward and his right arm extends from his side, pointing forwards. He looks out of the painting, at the viewer. In the background are trees, bushes, and a cloudy sky.
Fashionably dressed twelve-year-old Ralph Izard, painted in 1754 by Jeremiah Theus, just before Izard’s departure to receive an education in England. The boy had recently inherited a large plantation in South Carolina, upon the death of his parents.
Throughout the colonies, elite men emulated what they saw as England’s balanced, stable social order. Liberty, in their eyes, meant, in part, the power to rule—the right of those blessed with wealth and prominence to dominate others. They viewed society as a hierarchical structure in which some men were endowed with greater talents than others and were destined to govern. Each place in the hierarchy carried with it different responsibilities, and one’s status was revealed in dress, manners, and the splendor of one’s home. On both sides of the Atlantic, elites viewed work as something reserved for common folk and slaves. Freedom from labor was the mark of gentlemen and ladies.
Poverty in the Colonies
At the other end of the social scale, poverty emerged as a visible feature of eighteenth-century colonial life. Although not considered by most colonists part of their society, the growing number of slaves lived in impoverished conditions. Among free Americans, poverty was hardly as widespread as in Britain, where in the early part of the century between one-quarter and one-half of the people regularly required public assistance. But as the colonial population expanded, access to land diminished rapidly, especially in long-settled areas, forcing many propertyless males to seek work in their region’s cities or in other colonies. In colonial cities, the number of propertyless wage earners subsisting at the poverty line steadily increased. Taking the colonies as a whole, half of the wealth at mid-century was concentrated in the hands of the richest 10 percent of the population.
Attitudes and policies toward poverty in colonial America mirrored British precedents. The better-off colonists generally viewed the poor as lazy, shiftless, and responsible for their own plight. To minimize the burden on taxpayers, poor persons were frequently set to labor in workhouses, where they produced goods that reimbursed authorities for part of their upkeep.
The Middle Ranks
The large majority of free Americans lived between the extremes of wealth and poverty. Along with racial and ethnic diversity, what distinguished the mainland colonies from Europe was the wide distribution of land and the economic autonomy of most ordinary free families. Altogether, perhaps two-thirds of the free male population were farmers who owned their own land.
This portrait of the Cheney family by an unknown late-eighteenth-century artist illustrates the high birthrate in colonial America and suggests how many years of a woman’s life were spent bearing and raising children.
By the eighteenth century, colonial farm families viewed landowner-ship almost as a right, the social precondition of freedom. They strongly resented efforts, whether by Native Americans, great landlords, or colonial governments, to limit their access to land. A dislike of personal dependence and an understanding of freedom as not relying on others for a livelihood sank deep roots in British North America.
Women and the Household Economy
In the eighteenth-century British mainland colonies the family was the center of economic life. The independence of the small farmer depended in considerable measure on the labor of dependent women and children. “He that hath an industrious family shall soon be rich,” declared one colonial saying, and the high birthrate in part reflected the need for as many hands as possible on colonial farms.
As the population grew and the death rate declined, family life stabilized and more marriages became lifetime commitments. Free women were expected to devote their lives to being good wives and mothers. As colonial society became more structured, coverture was more strictly enforced. In Connecticut, for example, the courts were informal and unorganized in the seventeenth century, and women often represented themselves. In the eighteenth century, it became necessary to hire a lawyer as one’s spokesman in court. Women, barred from practicing as attorneys, disappeared from judicial proceedings. Because of the desperate need for labor in the seventeenth century, men and women both did various kinds of work. In the eighteenth century, the division of labor along gender lines solidified. Women’s work was clearly defined, including cooking, cleaning, sewing, making butter, and assisting with agricultural chores. Even as the consumer revolution reduced the demands on many women by making available store-bought goods previously produced at home, women’s work seemed to increase. Lower infant mortality meant more time spent in child care and domestic chores.