• Describe the various sources of population growth in the American colonies that prompted Benjamin Franklin to write Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind (1754).

• Discuss the economic and social factors that led to the development of slavery in America, contrasting the experiences of the Chesapeake colonies, South Carolina, and the northern colonies.

• Chart the impact of increasing prosperity and refinement on homes, families, work, and cities in the American colonies during the eighteenth century.

• Assess the contributions of American scientists to the emerging body of natural history and the physical sciences before the American Revolution.

• Explain how innovations in both politics and religion in the colonies encouraged the development of a distinctive American identity.

• Describe how European warfare, especially the Seven Years’ War, caught the colonists up in an imperial struggle that led to the expulsion of France from North America and the consolidation of English rule.

1619 First African slaves arrive in Virginia.

1660s Virginia enacts its first laws governing slavery.

1732 Founding of Georgia, the last of England’s thirteen colonies.

1751 Revocation of Georgia’s charter and reversion to the Crown.

Benjamin Franklin publishes Experiments and Observations on Electricity.

1754 Thomas Chippendale publishes Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Directory.

1739 Stono Rebellion in South Carolina.

1754 Benjamin Franklin publishes Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind.

Colonists reject the Albany Union.

Major George Washington constructs Fort Necessity in the Ohio Valley.

1755 Braddock’s defeat at Fort Necessity.

1756 England and American colonists begin war against France (French and Indian War, or Seven Years’ War).

1758 English and Americans capture Fort Duquesne and Louisbourg.

1759 English and Americans capture Quebec.

1760 English and Americans capture Montreal.

1763 The Peace of Paris ends the French and Indian War and expels Canada from North America.