TTC Video - Before 1776: Life in the American Colonies

The history of colonial America is a story of extraordinary scope, with Europeans, Africans, and the native peoples of North America interacting in a drama of settlement and conflict that lasted nearly three centuries. In the midst of it, no one would have predicted that the profoundly different English colonies along the East Coast, separated by religion, politics, economics, and many other factors, would eventually join to form the United States of America.

Yet the seeds for this outcome and the future character of the United States were germinating in developments such as these:

* The Mayflower Compact: As the Mayflower lay anchored in Massachusetts Bay in 1620, the Pilgrims drew up an agreement committing themselves to self-government. No other colony in the New World—French, Spanish, or Dutch—asserted such a right.
* The Quaker colony: America's core ideals of democracy, fair trade, religious freedom, and social mobility first came together in the 1680s with the founding of William Penn's Quaker colony of Pennsylvania—"the best poor man's country in the world," praised one early visitor.
* The Great War for Empire: Also called the French and Indian War, this global clash of empires began in North America with an attack led by the young militia captain George Washington. Lasting from 1754 to 1763, it ended with England and her colonies as the preeminent power on the continent.

Indeed, the events that led from the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown in 1607 to the Boston Tea Party in 1773, on the eve of the American Revolution, tell us who we are as citizens of the New World, what ideas and traditions shaped us, what our ancestors experienced, and how the United States came to be.

In addition, they tell a larger story of geopolitical rivalries that spread across the globe, as the major European powers competed to build vast empires based on their voyages of discovery and colonization—a struggle that forged the modern nations of Europe, the idea of empire, and the mercantile system of global trade.

Before 1776: Life in the American Colonies tells this epic story in 36 spellbinding lectures by Professor Robert J. Allison of Suffolk University in Boston. An acclaimed teacher, Professor Allison is also an eminent scholar who has served as an advisor to several prestigious museums and historical societies in Massachusetts, including the Commonwealth Museum at the State Archives in Boston.

Course Lecture Titles
1. The World before Colonial America
2. Spain's New World Empire
3. John Smith, Pocahontas, and Jamestown
4. Virginia and the Chesapeake after Smith
5. The Pilgrims and Plymouth
6. The Iroquois, the French, and the Dutch
7. The Puritans and Massachusetts
8. New England Heretics—Religious and Economic
9. The Connecticut Valley and the Pequot War
10. Sugar and Slaves—The Caribbean
11. Mercantilism and the Growth of Piracy
12. South Carolina—Rice, Cattle, and Artisans
13. New Netherland Becomes New York
14. King Philip's War in New England
15. Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia
16. Santa Fe and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680
17. William Penn's New World Vision
18. The New England Uprising of 1689
19. Witchcraft in New England
20. Captives and Stories of Captivity
21. The Indians' New World
22. Family Life and Labor in Colonial America
23. Smallpox, 1721—The Inoculation Controversy
24. France, Senegal, and Louisiana
25. Georgia—Dreams and Realities
26. The Atlantic Slave Trade and South Carolina
27. The New York Conspiracy of 1741
28. The Great Awakening
29. The Albany Conference of 1754
30. The Great War for Empire
31. Pontiac's Revolt against the British
32. Imperial Reform—The Sugar and Stamp Acts
33. North Carolina Regulators Seek Local Rule
34. Virginia—Patrick Henry and the West
35. Destruction of Tea and Colonial Rebellion
36. Independence and Beyond