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Colonial Culture

The New World settlers developed their own culture, which preserved and resembled the culture of the countries they had come from and at the same time was based on new realia. When people of different origins resided in the same communities, they had to forge new cultural identities for themselves.

In New England communal culture centered on the church and on the rituals in the civic sphere. Colonial governments proclaimed official days of thanksgiving and days of fasting and prayer. Participation in church services and public rituals was very important in New England, and church was the center of community life.

Literacy was highly valued in New England – in the 18^th century, a wide network of primary schools produced the results amazing for the 18^th century – nearly 90 % of New England's adults male population and 40 % of women could read and write well enough to sign the documents. The system of schools was maintained by colonial government – all New England's colonies, except Rhode Island, approved the "ye olde deluder Satan" Act, which required every town with more than 50 families to establish a grammar school.

In the Middle colonies the first school was begun in Pennsylvania in 1683, and very soon every Quaker community tried to provide elementary schools. In Philadelphia a great number of private schools without any religious affiliation appeared, there were also night schools for adults.

In the 18^th century, Pennsylvanian cultural development was affected by two distinguished personalities – James Logan and Benjamin Franklin. Logan was the secretary of the colony, who established and developed the first public library. Franklin formed a debating club that later grew to the American Philosophical Society.

In the Southern colonies public education was less popular – due to the distance between farms and plantations. Wealthy merchants and planters preferred to import private tutors from Ireland or Scotland to teach their children, others sent them to schools in England.

For many colonists education became an accomplishment, a sign of status. Their children could continue education in the newly established colleges, which with years won the world's fame – Harvard (established in 1636), William and Mary (chartered in 1693, but not a functioning entity until 1726), Yale (1701), Princeton (1747), Columbia (1754) and Brown (1765). All these institutions were primarily established to provide religious education, but later the curriculum changed. With the growth of colonies, new students became interested in medicine, law, and business instead of the ministry.

Colonial culture, which primarily was mainly oral, got written shape in the 18^th century – in 1704, the first successful colonial newspaper was launched in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and by 1745, 22 newspapers were published in all the colonies.

In the 18^th century, American colonies saw two important movements, which shaped colonial and future American culture the Enlightment and the Great Awakening. The Enlightment, inspired by the works of European philosophers deeply affected the learnt men, as an effort to determine the laws that govern the universe was made.

The Enlightment philosophers claimed that knowledge could be acquired through reason; they made experiments and discovered general principles behind everyday phenomena.

The Englightment deeply affected educated people in Europe and America – it gave them a common vocabulary and a unified view of the world. American naturalists began to investigate New World plants and animals so they could be included into universal classifications. These intellectual activities had a great effect on the curriculum of colonial colleges, where new courses in mathematics, natural sciences, law and medicine were introduced.

The Enlightment movement in colonies formed a new generation of well-to-do Americans – now they not only had money made on trade or tobacco, but also possessed the world culture and saw themselves as a part of a transatlantic and intercolonial network.

The symbolic representative of a new generation of Americans, born by Enlightment, became Benjamin Franklin, who was a talented, practical man competent in a number of different fields.

In the 1730s, another important movement – the Great Awakening – changed religious patterns of American colonies. It was inspired by George Whitefield, a representative of the Methodist Branch of Anglicanism and Jonathan Edwards, who had before served in the Congregational Church in Massachusetts. But also America's religious soil was ready for the seeds of Awakening – floods of new immigrants, with no religious affiliation could not be satisfied with the Orthodox Calvinist and Puritan doctrines.

George Whitefield, who was an effective orator, became a generating force of Great Awakening. He toured the colonies and preached in the major colonial cities, converting thousands of people into new evangelical sects – Methodists and Baptists. The rise of evangelical denominations became an essential feature of American religion – the sects quickly divided and gained new adherents. This spread of new sects eventually led to an American willingness to tolerate religious diversity, as the sects had found ways of peaceful coexistence.

The great Awakening weakened the status of the established clergy as it provoked people to depend on their own conscience. It also gave rise to the spirit of revivalism, which still plays an important role in the USA and shapes American religion.

Task 3. Fill in the table representing differences between three groups of original colonies.

Task 4. Answer the following questions.

1.Why did English colonial planters refuse the idea of following Span ish model of colonization?

2.How were the first successful colonies financed?

3.When did the Virginia colony form self-government?

4.How did Maryland differ from Virginia in terms of religion?

5.What happened to the Pilgrim settlement in New England?

6.Why did the Mayflower Compact give the legal authority for the colony?

7.How did most New England colonies preserve Puritan values?

8.Why were the Middle colonies diverse societies?

9.Why was founding of the Southern colonies of strategic importance for Britain?

10.Why did General Oglethorpe's attempt to ban slavery in Georgia fail?

11.Why did colonial economy much depend on the mother country?

12.How did the system of self-government develop in New Eng land?

13.Why did the Enlightment movement deeply affect the learned men?

Task 5. Match important notions of colonial vocabulary to their definitions.

Task 6. Vocabulary development. State the meaning of the following derivatives and fill in the gaps.