History have proven time and again that when looking for the truth about what life was really like for members of a specific culture or society, the best place to start with the observations of an outsider. The image created by those who left behind their life in England to seek a new life in the American Colonies is one of religious piety and freedom borne from their own experiences with being members of an oppressed minority. Combined with hard work and a communal atmosphere, this portrait painted by the leading colonial writers is almost utopian. The truth is that daily life among British expatriates and their offspring whose mission was to tame the savage wilderness around them was far from any utopian ideal.
An insightful perspective offered on this divergence between constructed fiction and unpleasant reality is provided by an outsider on a 1670s visit to the Massachusetts colony made infamous by accusations of witchcraft. His description of life among the Puritans stands in sharp contrast to their image of staid, hardworking men and woman whose judgment toward others was positively impacted by their own extended battle against the judgment of others back home. According to his account, among the Puritan colonists, at least, life was shaped by rigidly observed social hierarchies, deep-seated and openly expressed intolerance of those who refused to assimilate and characterized by income inequality “in which some of their merchants are damnable rich; generally all of their judgment, inexplicably covetous and proud, they receive your gifts but as an homage or tribute due to their transcendency” (Josselyn). While most people would might assume that society today is so markedly different from the Puritan colonial life before the American Revolution, the evidence for this assumption seems shaky.
The way that the colonists went about living from day to day prior to the American Revolution was highly dependent upon the economics of mercantilism. Mercantilism brought to the colonies as economic system which essentially viewed the purpose of the entire enterprise as means of production to create wealth for England through the resources available to the colonists from which products could be made. As the driving interest of the mother country, this economic model basically extended only tenancy rights to those who were actually creating exploiting those resources and creating those products to be traded. This alienation of the person who would otherwise be rightfully viewed as the owner of the land rather than a mere tenant would eventually play a role in fostering resentment which led to revolution (Tignor, 2011).
That movement toward Revolution is typically viewed as an inevitable outcome of majority opinion being swayed against remaining loyal to the crown. Pre-Revolutionary colonial life right up to the outbreak of war actually revealed a widespread and very deep commitment by many to remain loyal British subjects. The foundation of this conservatism—as is usually the case—lay with the wealthier class. These were colonists who had benefited both monetarily and politically from the mercantile system and who could see almost nothing positive about breaking with that tradition merely to ensure a few rights that many of them already enjoyed. These were the elite who opposed revolution less on ideological grounds than on the fear of going “bankrupt if the trade were cut off by war or disrupted by independence” (Berkin, 2012)
By the point at which revolution had become inevitable, life had evolved for British colonists from one that was based almost solely on finding refuge to protect their deeply felt religious beliefs into one ordained by economics. The New Land existed as a beacon of freedom only for the colonists themselves and even at that only for some of them. The British government never viewed the colonies as anything other than a new means for adding gold to their coffers and it was that perspective of colonial life which shaped day to day interactions and activities.
