How Colonists Learned to Govern Inside an Empire

PART II — U.S. HISTORY, 1491 TO THE PRESENT · CHAPTER 7

British colonists spent generations governing many local affairs before the imperial crisis of the 1760s. Elected assemblies, town governments, colonial courts, churches, and property rules varied from place to place, but the larger habit was important: colonists were used to making decisions close to home while still living inside the British Empire.

That experience did not make independence inevitable. Most colonists in the early eighteenth century were not preparing to leave Britain. They traded inside an imperial system, fought alongside British forces, and benefited from British naval power. The tension came later, when Britain tried to tighten control after an expensive imperial war.

Religious and intellectual change also widened the language colonists could use when they argued about authority. The Great Awakening challenged established religious hierarchies. Enlightenment writers supplied arguments about reason, natural rights, and government. Neither development caused the Revolution by itself. Both changed the intellectual environment in which later conflicts were understood.

Colonists Learned to Govern Locally

By the eighteenth century, Britain’s mainland colonies generally had elected representative assemblies, though their powers, franchises, and relationships with governors varied. In New England, town meetings gave many free male property holders a direct role in local decisions. Colonial courts, county governments, and vestries also handled disputes, land claims, taxation, and public order without constant instruction from London.

Distance made this self-governance practical rather than radical. A message could take two months to cross the Atlantic, so colonial officials routinely made decisions on their own and reported back later. Distance from London, elected colonial assemblies, and uneven imperial enforcement gave many colonies broad day-to-day control over taxation, local law, and administration. Britain also had representative and local institutions, so the important difference was the breadth of colonial self-government inside an empire, not the absence of self-government in Britain.

Native Nations Remained Essential to Imperial Politics

Native nations were not bystanders in this imperial system. Confederacies such as the Haudenosaunee played rival European powers against one another, trading diplomatic support and military alliance for guns, goods, and recognition of their own territorial claims. British colonial governments negotiated directly with Native nations over land, trade, and military cooperation, particularly along contested frontiers.

This balance of power meant Native nations shaped imperial policy as much as they were shaped by it. British officials had strong incentives to maintain alliances rather than provoke unified Native resistance, especially with France competing for the same alliances from Canada and the Mississippi Valley.

Conflict Could Reshape a Region

Diplomacy did not prevent major wars. King Philip’s War in New England from 1675 to 1676 grew from expanding English settlement, disputes over sovereignty, and deteriorating relations between colonists and Native communities. The war was devastating on both sides and sharply reduced Native political power in much of southern New England.

In the Spanish Southwest, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 drove Spanish colonists out of New Mexico for more than a decade. Pueblo communities resisted forced labor, missionary pressure, and attacks on religious practices. Spain eventually returned, but the revolt forced changes in how Spanish authorities dealt with Pueblo communities.

These examples should not be merged into one generic Native-resistance story. They occurred in different empires, regions, and political settings. Their common value is showing that Native nations could organize military resistance and alter colonial policy.

The Great Awakening Challenges Religious Authority

Beginning in the 1730s, traveling preachers such as George Whitefield drew enormous crowds with emotional sermons that emphasized personal conversion over inherited church authority. The Great Awakening challenged established clergy and encouraged many worshippers to judge religious authority more directly. Some historians connect that experience to a wider colonial willingness to question inherited authority, but the revival did not directly cause the American Revolution.

The movement did not attack political authority directly, but it modeled something colonists would later apply more broadly: the idea that ordinary people could judge established authority and find it wanting. That habit of mind spread well beyond religion.

Enlightenment Ideas Change Political Language

European Enlightenment writers, including John Locke, argued that legitimate government rested on the consent of the governed and existed to protect natural rights such as life, liberty, and property. Educated colonists read these arguments and began applying them to their own political situation, developing a vocabulary of rights and consent that earlier generations had not used in the same way.

Like the Great Awakening, Enlightenment thought did not cause a break with Britain by itself. It supplied language and reasoning that colonists would draw on heavily once a real political conflict with Britain arrived.

Britain Still Had an Empire

None of this changing religious and intellectual life translated into disloyalty before the 1760s. Colonists identified as British subjects, benefited from British naval protection of Atlantic trade, and often supported British military campaigns against France and its Native allies. Colonial elites imported British goods, followed British fashions, and modeled colonial institutions on English precedents.

Historians sometimes call the early to mid-eighteenth century a period of salutary neglect: Britain loosely enforced trade regulations and largely let colonial assemblies govern day-to-day affairs, which let colonial self-government grow without triggering a crisis. That loose relationship worked well for both sides as long as neither party tested it.

How Colonists Learned to Challenge Authority Before 1763

THE SOURCES

Source A: The Mayflower Compact of 1620 states that the signers would form a civil political body and make laws for the general good of the colony.

Source B: Jonathan Edwards’s Great Awakening preaching in the 1740s urged listeners to confront their individual spiritual condition directly rather than rely only on established religious routine.

Source C: A colonial assembly such as Virginia’s House of Burgesses claimed authority over local taxation and legislation while still recognizing the colony’s place inside the British Empire.

QUESTIONS

1. Which source most directly supports a claim about political self-government?

2. Which source best supports a claim that religious authority was being challenged or reoriented?

3. How can Sources A and C help explain why tighter imperial control after 1763 produced conflict even though colonists had long considered themselves British subjects?

Source A or Source C can work for the first question. A establishes a compact for local lawmaking, and C shows a representative assembly exercising local legislative power. Source B answers the second question: revival preaching emphasized personal conversion and weakened the monopoly of established clergy over religious authority. For the third question, colonists had developed long habits of local political decision-making inside the empire. When Britain later tried to tighten taxation and governance, many colonists understood the change as an intrusion on established political practice rather than as ordinary imperial administration.

Making the Connection to 1763

Local self-government, Native diplomatic leverage, religious upheaval, and Enlightenment political language were all in place well before 1763. None of them had yet produced a crisis. What changed the equation was an expensive war that reordered power on the North American continent and left Britain looking for new revenue and tighter control, exactly where the next chapter picks up.

Answer without looking back.

CONNECT SELF-GOVERNMENT TO IMPERIAL RULE

1 Describe two ways colonists practiced local self-government before 1763.

2 Explain how Native nations used the rivalry between European powers to their own advantage.

3 What change in religious authority did the Great Awakening introduce, and what habit of mind did it model beyond religion?

CONNECT SELF-GOVERNMENT TO IMPERIAL RULE

4 What political language did Enlightenment writers such as Locke supply, and why did it matter later?

5 What does the phrase salutary neglect describe about the British-colonial relationship before the 1760s?