4 Growth, Diversity, and Conflict

1720–1763

“Plenty of good land, and liberty to manage their own affairs their own way, seem to be the two great causes of the prosperity of all new colonies,” argued Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. In the middle decades of the eighteenth century, the American colonies enjoyed just these favorable conditions. Parliament took a laissez-faire approach to colonial government, and the colonies grew in size, population, and demographic complexity. As settlers pushed in from the coast to establish new farms, the growing standard of living enticed Europeans to try their luck, increasing immigration and adding to the ethnic and cultural mix.

As the colonial population grew, trade between the colonies and England soared. Raw materials crossed the Atlantic in ships that returned full of the finished goods pumping out of British factories. The colonial gentry displayed their refinement through consumption, but of course not everyone had the means to do so. In areas like the impoverished region of the colonial backcountry that Anglican minister Charles Woodmason encountered, religious revivalism spread widely. The Great Awakening induced religious enthusiasm and challenged conventional sources of spiritual and social authority. Political authority, too, became contested as the French and Indian War reminded colonists that they were still a dependent part of the British Empire.