Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future

The Atlantic March 19, 2025

That the Atlantic Ocean was a barrier between the Old World and the New was attested to by the thousands of years the Americas lay in splendid isolation.  Sporadic contact by the Norse, Irish fisherman and the stray mariner blown off course did nothing to end the nearly insurmountable barrier.  Then as the technological expertise of the Europeans advanced, as their navigation skills developed a crack was made in the wall by Columbus.  He was soon followed by larger and larger Spanish expeditions in the middle latitudes and Portuguese in the south.  Soon their empires rivaled Rome and shifted the balance of power in Europe in favor of the Iberians.

The emerging powers of England, France and the Netherlands soon began to prey upon the rich Spanish, then to explore and settle on their own further north.  The initial trickle of explorers, adventurers and traders soon became a flood and then a torrent as the wealth and opportunity of the Americas beckoned.  

 English built their colonies along the Eastern seaboard of North America wedged between the Spanish in Florida and the French in Canada.  One after another the colonies sprang to life, Virginia, New England, the Carolinas, and the Middle Colonies all became consumers of English manufacturers and shippers of raw materials and produce.  The Atlantic trade grew from a one-way supply line for precarious adventures on the edge of a wilderness into a well-oiled machine moving cargo in both directions and fueling a booming English economy.  It also provided the impetus and the means to build the largest merchant fleet and the most powerful navy in the world.  In less than 150 years the Atlantic Ocean went from being a barrier to being a conduit, from being an impediment to being a facilitator and England grew from a poor kingdom on the edge of Europe into a world-shaking empire.

Diversity:

An interesting demographic shift took place in the English colonies that was not paralleled in the colonies of its rivals.  This was a development that would have dramatic impact on the later development of the British colonies as well as upon the subsequent growth of the United States.  The growth of the colonies began to have a beneficial effect on the homeland.  The rise in exports and in the shipping, trade led to a boom in the British economy which in turn led to a drop in the number of people who wanted to immigrate to the colonies.  This conundrum could have led to a self-defeating spiral however the British came up with a novel idea; they sought to entice people of other nationalities to immigrate to their colonies.

The other European colonial powers, France, Spain and the Netherlands followed a policy of exclusion and consequently the populations of their colonies remained small and in the New World small eventually meant vulnerable.  Eventually this became an instance where size really does matter because the British colonies with their much larger populations were able to absorb both the Dutch and the French colonies in North America in many ways because of their denser population.

In a Europe divided by nationality, language and custom how did the British crown manage to entice multiple tens of thousands of non-English to settle in their lands and become productive and supportive citizens?  First, they turned to their newly absorbed neighbor Scotland.  The two countries had been united ever since James VI of Scotland became James I of England.  However, they had remained separate kingdoms with one king each with their own parliament, military, treasury, etc.   In 1707 the two nations permanently united to form Great Britain.  Enticing the Scots with a similar but better climate and more economic opportunity they soon replaced the English as the number one source of colonists for North America. 

But this was not enough to keep the boom going so the British turned to the people of Germany.  Germany at the time was divided up into many small independent kingdoms, principalities and other types of realms.  In theory and on paper the majority of them were united into the Holy Roam Empire with Austria as the usually dominant Hapsburg leader.   This was the political reality but the functional reality as experienced by the people was that of a fractured and divided Germany where economic growth was curtailed by local jealousies and international weakness.  This unsettled life fostered discontent and a desire for more opportunity.  These desires were exploited by the British and soon a torrent of German colonists headed across the Atlantic to swell the population of the British North American venture.  The Germans had another benefit; they were by heritage enemies of the French and therefore could be counted on to side with their new government against their ancient enemy.

One major incentive that the British provided was the opportunity to become citizens of the Empire.  All an immigrant had to do was live in the colonies for seven years, swear allegiance to the king, take communion in a Protestant church and pay a small fee and they became a citizen with the same rights and privileges any natural born Englishman.  This process built a loyal population that within a generation became British in culture, custom and loyalty which combined with the increasing birthrate a larger population automatically provides soon led to the exponential growth of British North America.  This growth in turn led to such a difference in size that by the time the final show down with France arrived the ultimate victory was almost a foregone conclusion based upon demographics alone.  

The Atlantic as a Conduit for Information:

No longer a barrier the Atlantic became a well-travelled and well-known conduit for trade, immigration and information.  Initially the colonies had been further away in time from Britain than the International Space Station is from Houston.  Once the colonists arrived in the New World they were effectively cut off from European news and information dependent upon the occasional ship and if they were in the back country perhaps an itinerant merchant with news that was perhaps months if not years out of date.

As the colonies grew and as the Atlantic passage became a well-traveled road these conditions changed.  Newspapers began to proliferate, and people began to expect some form of regular contact between the New and the Old World.  This brought the colonists into much deeper affinity with the Empire.  They no longer felt abandoned at the edge of a howling wilderness, they instead began to see themselves as citizens of a powerful and expanding power.   While the largest newspapers were all found in coastal cities there were also several in the interior.  All of these helped to integrate the colonies as they were shared and read by one person after another.  These multiple news sources didn’t dwell on local news instead they sought to have broader appeal hoping for the hand-to-hand currency that would garner a broad support and a growing reputation.  Therefore, they used their locations either on the coast or at some other hub of communication to re-print news from Europe in general and England in particular.  What this accomplished was a diminishing of the natural impact of sectionalism or localism and an enhancement of the British character and Imperial outlook of the population.

The Atlantic as a Conduit for Commerce:

What had once been an exclusively one-way trade, Homeland to colonies developed into a vigorous two-way trade and then into a multi-national trade that constantly grew as the export of raw materials increased the colonials prospered and they began to desire much more than the bare necessities.  The richer they became the more luxury items they demanded.  The traders in Europe were only too glad to extend credit and although the volume of merchandise heading from America to Europe constantly grew it could not keep pace with the desire for the finer things in life.   Consequently, the upper echelons of Colonial society found themselves in a debt spiral that for many kept them only one bad harvest away from ruin.

The increased economic activity highlighted one important thing, the average person in America was better off economically than the average person in Britain.  They not only had a much greater opportunity to own property they also had a greater opportunity to rise in the social scale.  In Britain society was highly stratified and the majority people remained in the class in which they were born.  Indeed, the hereditary nobility had a vested interest in maintaining such a tightly knit system of social control.  

In the American colonies many of the richest planters rose from nothing often from being an indentured servant.  Another contributing factor was that the colonies were virtually exempt from Imperial taxes.  The tax burden in Britain was often crushing to pay for wars and the constant need to maintain a military establishment to protect and expand the empire.  However, this colonial prosperity and social mobility was not universal.  Especially in the cities there was inequality and often crushing poverty.  In the winter when ice would close the Northern harbors, and almost all trade would cease there were particularly hard times from the urban poor.  Of course, poverty is always a relative term.  The poor of the colonies were usually better off than the street dwellers and beggars of European cities.  Even the tenant farmers who toiled from sun to sun for someone else and who often found themselves so hopelessly in debt to their patrons that it became a life-long sentence were better off than most of the peasants of Europe.

And there was also the frontier.  Always off in the distance was the frontier, the ragged expansion horizon that constantly moved west.  Here was a place where people could get a new start often with as little investment as an axe and some hard work a man and his family could carve a farm out of the forest and build a self-sufficient if not prosperous life.  However, this was no panacea and no guaranteed pathway to success.  Many people were unsuited to frontier life.  Others shipwrecked on the shoals of resistance from those who got there first or from the indigenous people who stubbornly thought that their land was still their land.

The Export Trade

As the Eighteenth Century matured the growing export sector became more and more important.  The race for subsistence had been won in most places and the rich lands were being exploited in more productive ways.  Tobacco, rice, indigo and timber products led the way.  Many grew rich from the trade, and they then sought ways to enjoy that wealth.  Following the lead of European elites the rich in Americas worked to build bigger and better houses furnished with fine China and staffed with liveried servants.  Even on the frontier the successful wanted to display and enjoy their material success.

The relationship between the Homeland and the colonies was just as it was designed to be under the mercantilism which was their driving economic policy.  The colonies furnished the Homeland with raw materials and then using the funds generated by the exportation of the raw materials purchased manufactured goods from the budding industrialists of the Homeland.  It was a circular trade that kept all the funds within the Empire and contributed to the strength of Great Britain at every turn.

The prosperity of the great planters and the large farmers developed into a desire to live what they termed a genteel life, refined far beyond anything earlier generations of colonists could have imagined.  The increased information provided by the colonial newspapers and the increased travel inspired and facilitated by the improving system of roads tended to homogenize and unite the upper echelons of society throughout the colonies and even with those of the Homeland.  A sense of caste and class was born that was alien to the egalitarian milieu of the frontier.   

One aspect of the large percentage of non-English immigrants that the Eighteenth Century brought to America was the development of a pluralistic society.  All of the European societies that sought to colonize America were either to a lesser or greater extent xenophobic.  They all saw themselves as the standard for development and society.  None of them was especially partial to the culture of others and all of them lived in a world of them and us.  If you weren’t one of us, you must be one of them.   The mixing of the English, the Scots, the Irish and the Germans combined with the leveling experience of the frontier produced a new type of society wherein people related to those with similar experiences instead of those with the same ancestry.  

The Slave Culture

The majority of those who came to America in the Eighteenth century were not immigrants from Europe seeking freedom and opportunity.  They were instead enslaved Africans kidnapped in West Africa by other Africans and sold into perpetual bondage.  Over a million slaves were imported mainly by the British.  This vast enterprise in human trafficking greatly enriched the British Empire, allowing them to surpass their rivals in the production of sugar and tobacco.  There was an outlandish death rate that kept the African slaves from becoming an overwhelming majority even though in many areas they did become a majority.  While millions were brought in hundreds of thousands died from overwork and disease.  The horror and violence necessitated by a slave culture degraded both the slave and the master.

There was quite a difference between the culture of slavery as practiced in the northern colonies and the southern.  In the north there were no great plantations and no crops such as rice or tobacco which lent themselves well to slave gangs.  Therefore, from the beginning the number of slaves in the north was much smaller than the number in the South.  Whereas the slave holders of the South encouraged the slaves to wed and have children looking to grow their own crop of servants as opposed to buying them. The slave owners of the North discouraged this practice and in fact kept a much larger proportion of male slaves to female thus precluding any massive number of marriages among their slaves.

The African people in America in many subtle ways attempted to maintain their diverse cultural heritages but as time and contact with whites and other Africans from divergent cultures progressed the African American culture was born as a blend of all these influences.  In the face of unspeakable and unconscionable brutality they survived and eventually thrived despite all they had to endure.

From the Book America: Volume One Colonial History