THE COLONIAL POPULATION:THE COLONIAL ECONOMIES PATTERNS OF SOCIETY AWAKENINGS AND ENLIGHTENMENTS
MOST PEOPLE IN ENGLAND and America believed that the English colonies were outposts of the English world. And it is certainly true that as the colonies grew and became more prosperous, they came to closely resemble English society. To be sure, some of the early settlers had come to America to escape what they considered English tyranny. But by the early eighteenth century, many colonists considered themselves British just as much as the men and women in Britain itself did.
However, the colonies were quite different from England and from one other. What dis- tinguished the colonies from England was not simply landscape and climate but also the constant engagement with Indians, experimentation with new systems of local government, attempts to establish religious orthodoxy and the rebellions occasioned with them, and efforts to learn about and raise new crops. African laborers and slaves were stitched into the fabric of colonial life almost from the start. Indeed, the English colonies would eventually become the destination for millions of forcibly transplanted Africans. The area that would become the United States was a magnet for immigrants from many lands other than England: Scotland, Ireland, the European continent, eastern Russia, and the Spanish and French Empires already established in America. Indeed, part of the story of the development of the English colonies is just how distinctive they were becoming from England itself.