2 - North America

Summary

In 1714 the British settlements still adhered to a tiny coastal fringe stretching from Albemarle Sound to the river mouths of Maine, with isolated communities to the south on the Ashley and Cooper rivers and to the north in Nova Scotia; and there were still unsettled patches along the coast. The American communities were still centred on tide-water.

It had taken a century for settlement to reach the fall line of the rivers: but between the end of Queen Anne's War, in 1713, and the outbreak of the French and Indian War, in 1755, the occupied area more than doubled. Behind the fur traders, pursuing beaver and deer beyond the mountains, and the lumberjacks, attacking stands of white pine and oak in Maine, pioneers pushed inland, up the Susquehanna, the Mohawk and the Connecticut, along the high Appalachian valleys, and along the littoral into Maine and the Carolinas, intent on settling the land. This outward pressure of population was the basic determinant of the colonies' growth.

Between 1715 and 1750 the population grew from 400,000 to one and a quarter millions; by 1763 it was about two millions. Part of this was the result of natural increase in a rural society where land was abundant, food supplies assured and children an economic asset. But large families (Franklin speaks of eight children as normal), offset by a high death rate from disease, accidents and Indian war, only accounted for part of the phenomenal growth. More important were the immigrants who settled frontier and back country.