Editing Thirteen Colonies (section)

==Government==
{{main|Colonial government in the Thirteen Colonies}}

The three forms of colonial government in 1776 were provincial ([[royal colony]]), [[Proprietary colony|proprietary]], and [[Charter colony|charter]]. These governments were all subordinate to the British monarch with no representation in the [[Parliament of Great Britain]]. The administration of all British colonies was overseen by the [[Board of Trade]] in London beginning late in the 17th century.

The provincial colony was governed by commissions created at the pleasure of the king. A governor and his council were appointed by the crown. The governor was invested with general executive powers and authorized to call a locally elected assembly. The governor's council would sit as an upper house when the assembly was in session, in addition to its role in advising the governor. Assemblies were made up of representatives elected by the freeholders and planters (landowners) of the province. The governor had the power of absolute veto and could [[Legislative session|prorogue]] (i.e., delay) and dissolve the assembly. The assembly's role was to make all local laws and ordinances, ensuring that they were not inconsistent with the laws of Britain. In practice, this did not always occur, since many of the provincial assemblies sought to expand their powers and limit those of the governor and crown. Laws could be examined by the British Privy Council or Board of Trade, which also held veto power of legislation. New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were crown colonies. Massachusetts became a crown colony at the end of the 17th century.

Proprietary colonies were governed much as royal colonies, except that lord proprietors appointed the governor rather than the king. They were set up after the [[English Restoration]] of 1660 and typically enjoyed greater civil and religious liberty. Pennsylvania (which included Delaware), New Jersey, and Maryland were proprietary colonies.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Doyle |first=John Andrew |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4wYOAAAAIAAJ |title=English Colonies in America |date=1907 |volume=IV. The Middle Colonies}}</ref>

Charter governments were political corporations created by [[letters patent]], giving the grantees control of the land and the powers of legislative government. The charters provided a fundamental constitution and divided powers among legislative, executive, and judicial functions, with those powers being vested in officials. Massachusetts, Providence Plantation, Rhode Island, Warwick, and Connecticut were charter colonies. The Massachusetts charter was revoked in 1684 and was replaced by a provincial charter that was issued in 1691.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kellogg |first=Louise Phelps |url=https://archive.org/details/americancolonia00kellgoog |title=The American colonial charter |date=1904|publisher=Govt. print. off. }}</ref> [[Providence Plantations]] merged with the settlements at [[Aquidneck Island|Rhode Island]] and [[Warwick, Rhode Island|Warwick]] to form the [[Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations]], which also became a charter colony in 1636.

===British role===
After 1680, the imperial government in London took an increasing interest in the affairs of the colonies, which were growing rapidly in population and wealth. In 1680, only Virginia was a royal colony; by 1720, half were under the control of royal governors. These governors were appointees closely tied to the government in London.

Historians before the 1880s emphasized American nationalism. However, scholarship after that time was heavily influenced by the "Imperial school" led by [[Herbert L. Osgood]], [[George Louis Beer]], [[Charles McLean Andrews]], and [[Lawrence H. Gipson]]. This viewpoint dominated colonial historiography into the 1940s, and they emphasized and often praised the attention that London gave to all the colonies. In this view, there was never a threat (before the 1770s) that any colony would revolt or seek independence.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Savelle |first=Max |year=1949 |title=The Imperial School of American Colonial Historians |url=http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/view/7801/9315 |journal=Indiana Magazine of History |volume=45 |issue=2 |pages=123–134 |jstor=27787750}}</ref>

===Political culture ===
Settlers did not come to the American colonies with the intention of creating a democratic system; yet they quickly created a broad electorate. The 13 colonies had no hereditary aristocrats as in Europe. There were no rich gentry who owned all the farmland and rented it out to tenants, as in England and in the Dutch settlements in upstate New York. Instead there was a political system of local control that was governed by men elected in fair elections. The colonies offered a broader base than Britain or indeed any other country. Any property owner could vote for members of the lower house of the legislature. Governors were appointed in London but colonists elected the governor in Connecticut and Rhode Island.<ref name="Robert">{{Cite book |last=Dinkin |first=Robert J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H3uGAAAAMAAJ |title=Voting in Provincial America: A Study of Elections in the Thirteen Colonies, 1689–1776 |date=1977 |publisher=Greenwood Press |isbn=0-8371-9543-8 |location=Westport, CN |page=45 |oclc=3186037}}</ref> Women, children, indentured servants, and slaves were subsumed under the interest of the family head and did not have a vote or a voice. Indians and free blacks were politically outside the system and usually could not vote. Voters were required to hold an "interest" in society; as the South Carolina legislature said in 1716, "it is necessary and reasonable, that none but such persons will have an interest in the Province should be capable to elect members of the Commons House of Assembly".<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Statutes at Large of South Carolina: Acts, 1685–1716 |date=1837 |editor-last=Cooper |editor-first=Thomas |page=688 |editor-last2=McCord |editor-first2=David James}}</ref> The main legal criterion for having an "interest" was ownership of real estate. In Britain, 19 out of 20 men were controlled politically by their landlords. London insisted on this requirement for the colonies, telling governors to exclude from the ballot men who were not freeholders—that is, those who did not own land. However, in most places good farmland was cheap and so widely owned that 50% to 80% of the men were eligible to vote.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Keyssar |first=Alexander |url=https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/keyssar_-_part_1.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221009000000/https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/keyssar_-_part_1.pdf|archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live |title=The Right to Vote |date=2000 |publisher=Basic Books |isbn=0-465-02968-X |location= York |pages=5–8 |access-date=2022-05-03}} [https://archive.org/details/righttovote00alex Alt URL]</ref>

According to historian Donald Radcliffe:<blockquote> The right to vote had always been extraordinarily widespread—at least among adult white males--even before the country gained its independence....Enfranchisement varied greatly by location. There certainly were communities, particularly newly settled communities where land was inexpensive, in which 70 or 80 percent of all white men were enfranchised. Yet there were also locales...where the percentages were far lower, closer to 40 or 50 percent....On the whole, the franchise was far more widespread than it was in England, yet as the revolution approached, the rate of property ownership was falling, and the proportion of adult white males who were eligible to vote was probably less than 60 percent.<ref>Donald Ratcliffe,  "The right to vote and the rise of democracy, 1787—1828." ''Journal of the Early Republic'' 33.2 (2013): 219–254, quoting pp 219–220; [http://jer.pennpress.org/media/26167/sampleArt22.pdf online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230602005114/https://jer.pennpress.org/media/26167/sampleArt22.pdf |date=June 2, 2023 }}</ref> </blockquote>

The colonial political culture emphasized deference, so that local notables were the men who ran and were chosen. But sometimes they competed with each other and had to appeal to the common man for votes. There were no political parties, and would-be legislators formed ad hoc coalitions of their families, friends, and neighbors. Election day brought in all the men from the countryside to the county seat or town center to make merry, politick, shake hands with the grandees, meet old friends, and hear the speeches—all the while toasting, eating, treating, tippling, and gambling. They voted by shouting their choice to the clerk, as supporters cheered or booed. In Virginia candidate George Washington spent £39 for treats for his supporters. The candidates knew that they had to "swill the planters with bumbo" (rum). Elections were carnivals where all men were equal for one day and traditional restraints were relaxed.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tully |first=Alan |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9780470998496 |title=A Companion to Colonial America |date=2003 |publisher=Blackwell |isbn=0-631-21011-3 |editor-last=Vickers |editor-first=Daniel |location=Malden, MA |page=300 |chapter=Colonial Politics |doi=10.1002/9780470998496.ch12 |oclc=50072292 |access-date=2022-05-03}}</ref>

Voting was voluntary and typically about half the men eligible to vote turned out on election day. Turnout was usually higher in Pennsylvania and New York, where long-standing factions based on ethnic and religious groups mobilized supporters at a higher rate. New York and Rhode Island developed long-lasting two-faction systems that held together for years at the colony level, but they did not reach into local affairs. The factions were based on the personalities of a few leaders and an array of family connections, and they had little basis in policy or ideology. Elsewhere the political scene was in a constant whirl, based on personality rather than long-lived factions or serious disputes on issues.<ref name="Robert" />

The colonies were independent of one other before 1774; indeed, all the colonies began as separate and unique settlements or plantations. Further, efforts had failed to form a colonial union through the [[Albany Congress]] of 1754 led by [[Benjamin Franklin]]. The thirteen all had well-established systems of self-government and elections based on the [[Rights of Englishmen]] which they were determined to protect from imperial interference.{{Sfnp|Greene|Pole|2003|page=665}}

===Economic policy===
{{Main|Economic history of the United States#Political environment}}
The British Empire at the time was operated under the [[Mercantilism|mercantile system]], where all trade was concentrated inside the Empire, and trade with other empires was forbidden. The goal was to enrich Britain—its merchants and its government. Whether the policy was good for the colonists was not an issue in London, but Americans became increasingly restive with mercantilist policies.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Savelle |first=Max |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hIgl_HNozQsC&pg=PA204 |title=Seeds of Liberty: The Genesis of the American Mind |date=2005 |publisher=Kessinger Publishing Legacy Reprint |isbn=9781419107078 |location=Whitefish, Montana |pages=204–211 |oclc=309336967 |orig-date=1948}}</ref>

Mercantilism meant that the government and the merchants became partners with the goal of increasing political power and private wealth, to the exclusion of other empires. The government protected its merchants—and kept others out—by trade barriers, regulations, and subsidies to domestic industries in order to maximize exports from and minimize imports to the realm. The government had to fight smuggling—which became a favorite American technique in the 18th century to circumvent the restrictions on trading with the French, Spanish or Dutch.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Trevelyan |first=George Otto |url=https://archive.org/details/americanrevolut14trevgoog/page/n13 |title=The American Revolution |date=1899 |volume=1 |page=128 |quote=smuggling american revolution}}</ref> The tactic used by mercantilism was to run trade surpluses, so that gold and silver would pour into London. The government took its share through duties and taxes, with the remainder going to merchants in Britain. The government spent much of its revenue on a superb [[History of the Royal Navy#Expansion of the fighting force, 1642–1689|Royal Navy]], which not only protected the British colonies but threatened the colonies of the other empires, and sometimes seized them. Thus the British Navy captured [[New Amsterdam]] (New York) in 1664. The colonies were captive markets for British industry, and the goal was to enrich the mother country.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Nester |first=William R. |title=The Great Frontier War: Britain, France, and the Imperial Struggle for North America, 1607–1755 |date=2000 |publisher=Praeger |page=54}}</ref> Colonial commodities were shipped on British ships to the mother country where Britain sold them to Europe reaping the benefits of the export trade. Finished goods were manufactured in Britain and sold in the colonies, or imported by Britain for retail to the colonies, profiting the mother country. Like other New World colonial empires, the British empire's commodity production was dependent on slave labor; as observed in 1720s Britain, "all this great increase in our treasure proceeds chiefly from the labour of negroes" in Britain's colonies.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gillis |first=John R. |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8928527 |title=The development of European society, 1770–1870 |publisher=University Press of America |year=1983 |isbn=0-8191-2898-8 |location=Washington, D.C. |page=14 |oclc=8928527}}</ref>

Britain implemented mercantilism by trying to block American trade with the French, Spanish, or Dutch empires using the [[Navigation Acts]], which Americans avoided as often as they could. The royal officials responded to smuggling with open-ended search warrants ([[Writ of assistance|Writs of Assistance]]). In 1761, Boston lawyer [[James Otis, Jr.|James Otis]] argued that the writs violated the [[Constitution of the United Kingdom|constitutional rights]] of the colonists. He lost the case, but John Adams later wrote, "Then and there the child Independence was born."<ref name="Stephens2006">{{Cite book |last=Stephens |title=Unreasonable Searches and Seizures |date=2006 |page=306}}</ref>

However, the colonists took pains to argue that they did not oppose British regulation of their external trade; they only opposed legislation that affected them internally.

==== Transportation ====
Transportation was primarily done by water; although a road network did exist in the colonies. As transportation was often done by water, a sizable shipbuilding industry developed; especially in New England. Rivers were utilized for transportation purposes.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=United States National Park Servie |url=https://npshistory.com/publications/nhl/theme-studies/travel-communication.pdf |title=The National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings: Theme XVIII - Travel and Communication |year=1963 |chapter=Travel and Communication in the Colonial Era (1600-1783)}}</ref>

Most roads existed along the Atlantic Coast and connected other cities to each other. Some individual colonies built their own road networks. By 1764 a stagecoach route existed between Philadelphia and New York City; and by 1773 the stagecoach network extended to Providence and Boston.<ref name=":0" />