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Introduction
- Wesleyan University Press
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Introduction This book is about England's American colonies in the latter half of the seventeenth century. It is less a study of colonial policy and navigation acts—although it would seem to begin that way—than about the colonists' responses to both of these, or more generally to the concept of empire which emerged in England after the Restoration in 1660. The focus of the book is upon events and ideas leading up to and climaxing in the colonial rebellions of 1689 which were provoked by both local crises and the Glorious Revolution abroad. It seeks to explain what colonists thought they were doing when they exploited the upheaval in England for their own peculiar purposes as well as to determine the meaning of the English Revolution for them as American colonists. Historians have spent a good deal of effort already in describing the British colonial system in the seventeenth century. This is a side of the story one blinks at his peril if he wishes to make sense out of the colonial period of American history. We know less of what seventeenth -century colonists thought about themselves and their relationXXlll xxiv Introduction ship to England. Such an inquiry is more easily answered for the eighteenth century and particularly for the period just before the American Revolution when colonists were forced by a number of circumstances to argue publicly their conception of empire and explain their connection with Crown and Parliament. In the seventeenth century colonial society was less sophisticated, less mature, less stable, and less reflective about itself and how it regarded its relation to government and people within the realm. Furthermore, communications between colonies and England and between colonists themselves were more primitive. For the most part each colony went along at its own pace, influenced by the nature of its surroundings, conditions, and needs, on the one hand, and by the emerging, yet fitful, colonial policy, on the other. One might conclude from this that colonists thought seriously about themselves and what they were doing only when their assumptions were sharply challenged by specific events as they were in the 1760's and 1770's. One is less likely to think, then, that American colonists in the seventeenth century came to strong conclusions about some of these same problems, since they had had less time to form habits and customs and assumptions about themselves and their connection with the realm. Furthermore, Crown, Parliament, and ministry after the Restoration had only begun to determine how they should implement what few ideas about empire were already current. There were really very few precedents for an English empire. The rapid settling of new colonies after the Restoration, the regulation of trade and commerce by Parliamentary acts, and the attempt to extend royal control over governments and people were new experiences all around. Of course, colonial policy was based generally on concepts of what we now call mercantilism, but these were not precise in the seventeenth century and meant different things to different people. It was generally conceded in England that colonies existed for the benefit of the mother country, which could only mean some kind of subordination. At the same time colonists insisted that they were Englishmen and therefore ought not to be discriminated against because they happened to live outside the realm. Most charters establishing plantations overseas included statements which colonists believed assured them of the rights of Englishmen even though they might be thousands of miles from England itself. No one had worked out the laws of empire in the first half of the seventeenth century. Since there were no hard and fixed rules, formulators of policy after the Restoration made them as they went along, and from these a colonial system emerged. At times the rules [18.234.55.154] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:41 GMT) Introduction xxv handed down by the planners clashed with the colonists' own interests and assumptions—even presumptions—about themselves and how they ought to be treated. New regulations, intensification and centralization of control often created uncertainty in the minds of colonists about what the bases for their settlements were. Besides policy from London, specific demands from proprietors and the Crown often upset local habits and suppositions, which led to further uncertainty. The period between the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution was a time of rapid development in English America, both economic and political, and its effect upon colonists was to force them to seek guarantees and assurances against...