7. The Regions of the British Colonies

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we take a look back over all the British colonies. The British colonies in North America functioned differently from their European neighbours. The settler nature of the British colonies often led to more conflict with the natives than the French or Spanish who often had to work with the natives due to their low populations. Distance and Britain’s initially lax attention led to the colonies creating self-governing institutions that were unusually democratic for the era. The New England Colonies based power in participatory town meetings, which in turn elected members to their colonial legislatures; in the southern colonies, elite planters exercised local authority and also dominated the elected assemblies.

Course

In this course, Professor Alan Taylor (University of Virginia) explores the regions of the British colonies in North America. This course will explain how and why environmental and other factors shaped the development and expansion of various British colonies that developed and expanded from 1607 to 1754. The first two modules will examine the other major European colonies in North America and how these developed in the 17th and 18th centuries. We will then turn to look at the British colonies, looking at reach region individually. These regions were: (i) the West Indian and Southern Colonies; (ii) the Chesapeake Colonies; (iii) the Middle Colonies; (iv) the New England Colonies; and (v) the Northern Colonies. Finally we shall take a look at how ideas of freedom and slavery developed differently within the British colonies than in their Spanish and French equivalents.

Lecturer

Alan Taylor is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He is a specialist in the early history of the United States and has written extensively about the colonial history of the United States, the American Revolution and the early American Republic. Taylor has received two Pulitzer Prizes and the Bancroft Prize, and was also a finalist for the National Book Award for non-fiction.