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THEMES
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Framing Questions
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What factors fostered or hindered the growth of the British Atlantic colonies (that later became the United States of America) from 1690 to 1763? |
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How did the European colonists respond to the growing diversity among them—by religion, ethnicity, economic status, and country of origin? |
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How did the colonies’ growth affect Native Americans and enslaved Africans? |
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How were the inhabitants’ concepts of liberty and rights affected by the colonies’ growth? |
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List the power relationships that influenced the colonies in this period, e.g., between the colonies and England, the colonies and the French and Spanish on their borders, the settlers and the Native Americans, the clergy and their congregants, the southern planters and their servants and slaves, etc. How did the totality of these power relationships affect the colonies’ growth and self-perception? |
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Framing Questions
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What varieties of personal experience did the circumstances of life in eighteenth-century British America make available to the people of the colonies—native-born or immigrant; free, bonded, or enslaved? |
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How did they respond to the racial, ethnic, religious, and economic diversity in British America? How did they define tolerance, peers, rights, and opportunity? |
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How did their responses to diversity shape colonial society as a whole? |
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By 1763, what would "American" mean to the diverse peoples of North America? |
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Framing Questions
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What were the local, regional, and global economies of pre-revolutionary America in the 1700s? |
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How did they influence the colonies—their self-determination and sense of the future? |
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How did they shape the lives of individuals—free, bonded, and enslaved? |
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Framing Questions
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What central ideas distinguished the eighteenth- from seventeenth-century American colonies? |
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How were these ideas shaped, and how did they influence the colonists' perception of themselves and their relationships with God, with each other, and with Britain? |
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How did their concepts of liberty, rights, equality, and independence change in this period? |
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To what extent were the shaping ideas "American"? |
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Framing Questions
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How did the political relationship between the colonies and Great Britain change in this period? |
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How did individual colonies and colonists influence and respond to these changes? |
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To what extent were the colonies and colonists "becoming American"? |
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Left image: Joined chest (unidentified creator) made of oak and pine, Hatfield, Massachusetts, 1695-1720. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield, Massachusetts: #1892.13.03. Permission pending.
Right image: Chest of drawers, made of mahogany, white pine, chestnut, and tulip poplar; created by John Townsend, Newport, Rhode Island, 1765. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York: #27.57.1. Permission pending. |
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