The shape of early America

1. Early American settlers
2. British folkways brought to New World
3. Seaboard ecology
1. Indian modifications
2. European attitudes toward nature
3. Transplanted animals transform the environment
4. Population patterns
1. Rapid population growth
2. Earlier marriage age in the colonies
3. Lower death rates in the colonies
4. Family patterns in New England compared with those in the southern colonies
5. Role of women in the British colonies
1. Assumptions of female inferiority
2. Eliza Lucas went beyond the traditional role
3. Women's restricted role in churches
4. Farm and town labor
5. Prostitution
6. Women's slightly higher colonial status

Sectional differences among the colonies

1. Southern colonies
1. Advantages of the warm climate
2. Tobacco, rice, and naval stores became chief exports
3. Effects of plentiful land and scarce labor
4. Indentured servants solved some labor problems
5. Slavery developed in the southern colonies
1. First arrival of Africans in 1619
2. Slavery in the Western Hemisphere
3. Characteristics of West African culture
4. Enslavement and the Middle Passage
5. Geographical distribution of colonial slavery
6. New York City slave revolt of 1741
7. Emergence of an African American culture
8. Varieties of slave labor
9. Color prejudice and slavery
6. The gentry
7. Religion
1. Anglican dominance of the Chesapeake region
2. Anglican religious style different from elsewhere in the colonies
2. The New England colonies
1. Transformation of the British village into the New England town
2. Puritan houses
3. New England agriculture
4. Success of the fishing industry
5. Shipbuilding a vital part of the economy
6. Rise of triangular trade
7. Solutions to the chronic shortage of hard currency
8. Puritans and worldly pleasures
9. Puritan religion
1. Congregational organization of churches
2. Covenant theory of government
3. Nature of church-state relationship
10. Evidence of strain within the Puritan community in the late seventeenth century
1. Economic and social strains developed
2. Frequent challenges to authority
3. Development of the Half-Way Covenant
4. Witchcraft hysteria
3. The Middle colonies
1. Reflect elements of both the southern and New England colonies
2. Products for export
3. Land system used
4. Ethnic elements represented in the population

Other social and intellectual features of the colonies

1. The rise of cities
2. Urban class groupings and stratification
3. Urban problems
4. Means of transportation
5. Taverns
6. Postal service
7. Early newspapers and the Zenger trial
8. Impact of the Enlightenment
1. Importance of reason and science
2. God as master clockmaker
3. America's receptivity to the Enlightenment
4. Ben Franklin as prime example of Enlightened American
9. Developments in education
10. Impact of the Great Awakening
1. Causes for the development of the movement
2. Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield
3. Women and the revival movement
4. Impact of the movement on churches and schools
5. Long-range impact of the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment

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