Life in Colonial America — Transcript

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1. 0:01hi guys we've got a short video here
2. 0:03today about various aspects of life in
3. 0:06colonial America and these are just kind
4. 0:10of random tidbits about what it was
5. 0:12actually like to live in the colonies to
6. 0:14give you more of a flavor of what was
7. 0:15going on on the eve of revolution in the
8. 0:18British
9. 0:22colonies so the most obvious thing about
10. 0:25life in the American colonies was that
11. 0:29population on on the east coast of
12. 0:30America was booming and this happened
13. 0:32for a couple of different
14. 0:35reasons first uh immigration from
15. 0:38various European countries was going on
16. 0:41at an ever increasing rate and so this
17. 0:44included both people from England uh
18. 0:47like had been going on since the
19. 0:49beginning but also people from Scotland
20. 0:52Germany and
21. 0:53Switzerland these people were fleeing
22. 0:56various problems in Europe and seeking
23. 0:58to start a new life on the the east
24. 1:00coast of North
25. 1:02America the spread of SL slavery also
26. 1:05helped to uh increase the population of
27. 1:09the British colonies and by 1775 there
28. 1:12were almost half a million slaves Living
29. 1:15in America mostly in the southern
30. 1:20colonies and last of all uh the
31. 1:23availability of land and cheap food
32. 1:26resulted in a high level of natural
33. 1:29population growth that is the colonists
34. 1:32there were having more children and
35. 1:34those children were surviving and all of
36. 1:36this resulted in a
37. 1:39spectacular growth of population in the
38. 1:44area uh it also resulted in the most
39. 1:48diverse Society on the planet if you
40. 1:50think about any of the countries where
41. 1:51these people are coming from it's mostly
42. 1:53people that have one ethnic background
43. 1:57and that speak one or two languages but
44. 2:00in the British colonies you seeing
45. 2:02people from five or six European
46. 2:03countries from many different African
47. 2:06tribes all coming together and
48. 2:09contributing their own experiences and
49. 2:11cultural ideas
50. 2:13to uh the colonial culture and here's a
51. 2:17quick graph of just how much the
52. 2:20American population grew in 1700 the
53. 2:23population was
54. 2:25250,000 and in 1775 it was 2.5 million
55. 2:31so it increased uh 10 times in only 75
56. 2:35years which is really an incredible boom
57. 2:38in
58. 2:39population one of the reasons that so
59. 2:41many people came from Europe to America
60. 2:44was this idea of the American
61. 2:48dream and basically what this meant was
62. 2:51that in America you had the opportunity
63. 2:54for Upward Mobility that is you could
64. 2:56start out Life as a poor farmer and end
65. 2:59end up being a wealthy uh land owner or
66. 3:04Merchant or something like that and this
67. 3:06was basically impossible in Europe
68. 3:09because if you started out as a peasant
69. 3:11you were basically doomed to die as a
70. 3:13peasant but in America land was cheap
71. 3:16you could increase the amount of land
72. 3:18you owned and slowly over the course of
73. 3:21your lifetime become wealthy this was
74. 3:24harder in the south of course because
75. 3:25most of the land was already owned by
76. 3:28huge plantation owners but it was still
77. 3:30possible for hardworking free farmers of
78. 3:34course upward Mobility was basically
79. 3:36impossible for slaves in the South but
80. 3:40for free African-Americans it was
81. 3:43possible just in the same way that it
82. 3:45was for German and swiss and Scottish
83. 3:51immigrants for most free Americans life
84. 3:53was hard in the colonies but it was
85. 3:55better than back in Europe for a number
86. 3:57of reasons I already mentioned that land
87. 3:59and food were both very cheap as
88. 4:01compared to Europe but also taxes were
89. 4:04lower and there were fewer social
90. 4:06restrictions in Europe even if you did
91. 4:08become rich all the old money people
92. 4:10would look down their noses at you and
93. 4:12wouldn't really accept you into society
94. 4:14but in America basically if you made
95. 4:17your way and you established yourself
96. 4:20you would be accepted by the higher
97. 4:22ranking people
98. 4:25in uh colonial
99. 4:28society
100. 4:32another interesting thing that made life
101. 4:34in the colonies uh different and unique
102. 4:37was Transportation was extremely
103. 4:40difficult uh the roads in colonial
104. 4:43America were terrible people had not
105. 4:46been living there very long uh highways
106. 4:48and stuff had not really been developed
107. 4:50and most of the roads that did exist
108. 4:52were infrequently used muddy Dusty bumpy
109. 4:56slow and did not really connect up with
110. 4:59one another in a satisfactory way that
111. 5:01meant that traveling by land was slow
112. 5:04and dangerous and
113. 5:06unpredictable thus people tended to use
114. 5:10water transport whenever possible and
115. 5:12this meant that cities would cluster up
116. 5:15mostly around oceans and navigable
117. 5:22Rivers what this meant more or less was
118. 5:25that uh it was very hard to communicate
119. 5:28back and forth between cities or even
120. 5:30for Neighbors to communicate with one
121. 5:32another there was a lot of land and not
122. 5:34that many people living in America and
123. 5:37this led to distinct Colonial cultures
124. 5:39even though the states were pretty or
125. 5:41the colonies were pretty close to one
126. 5:42another uh distance was a much bigger
127. 5:45deal back then than it is now this also
128. 5:47led to a mindset that many people
129. 5:51considered to be typical uh for
130. 5:54Americans and that is rugged
131. 5:56individualism it's the idea that you are
132. 5:59going to to get along by yourself
133. 6:01without the help of the community or
134. 6:02your neighbors and this was something
135. 6:05that was more or less necessary back in
136. 6:08the day in colonial America because you
137. 6:12more often than not couldn't even talk
138. 6:13to your neighbors much less ask for them
139. 6:15for help just because they were far away
140. 6:18to demonstrate exactly how big of a
141. 6:21problem distance was back then it took
142. 6:24Benjamin Franklin as he reported it nine
143. 6:26days to travel from Boston to
144. 6:28Philadelphia uh nowadays this trip would
145. 6:31take four and a half or 5 hours in a
146. 6:34car so distance was a much bigger deal
147. 6:37back
148. 6:39then another interesting aspect of
149. 6:42American Colonial Life was education and
150. 6:46literacy so uh schooling in America
151. 6:50varied a lot from place to place in New
152. 6:53England Public Schools were established
153. 6:55and it was actually the first public
154. 6:57school system in the world and this was
155. 6:59because New England was Den densely
156. 7:01populated and most people lived in towns
157. 7:04so it was pretty easy to send the kids
158. 7:05to a local public school in the rural
159. 7:09South it was much harder uh most of the
160. 7:12children had to work on farms and nobody
161. 7:15lived in towns really so it was really
162. 7:17difficult to gather enough children into
163. 7:19a certain area to make education make
164. 7:22sense thus most of the people who
165. 7:24received any kind of education in the
166. 7:26South were taught by private tutors this
167. 7:28was expensive and it meant that only the
168. 7:30rich people really got any kind of
169. 7:32education in the
170. 7:35South something else that was important
171. 7:37regarding literacy was the spread of
172. 7:39newspapers newspapers were the primary
173. 7:42way of getting information around in the
174. 7:45colonies and this was because they were
175. 7:47cheap and easy to make all you needed
176. 7:48was some paper and a printing press and
177. 7:50some ink and you could create thousands
178. 7:52of copies of a particular newspaper and
179. 7:55spread it as far as you wanted to and
180. 7:58this was how most people people in
181. 7:59America figured out what was going on in
182. 8:01the wider
183. 8:03world uh it was also an important source
184. 8:05for political ideas and eventually for
185. 8:08criticism of British policy and the
186. 8:12thing that established the newspapers as
187. 8:15an important source of
188. 8:17criticism uh was the zanger trial which
189. 8:20happened in New York during the colonial
190. 8:22period and the zanger trial involved a
191. 8:25journalist whose name was zanger who
192. 8:28published something
193. 8:30not nice about the British king and in
194. 8:33response to this the British governor of
195. 8:36New York tried to sue zanger for
196. 8:39sedition that is for writing mean things
197. 8:41about the government but there was a
198. 8:43trial and zanger was actually acquitted
199. 8:47and it was therefore legal from then on
200. 8:50to write critical things of the British
201. 8:54government so long as it was actually
202. 8:56true and this set a powerful precedent
203. 8:58for fre freedom of the press that would
204. 9:01remain an important idea in American
205. 9:03government from then
206. 9:07on so that's just a couple uh
207. 9:10interesting things about how life
208. 9:11actually was in the colonies it's kind
209. 9:13of wrapping up our section on colonial
210. 9:16America and showing the connections and
211. 9:18key differences between regions in the
212. 9:20American colonies there are a couple key
213. 9:22terms I'd like you to remember and we'll
214. 9:25talk more about this stuff in class
215. 9:28tomorrow