When I think of the USA, I picture New York’s skyscrapers, Hollywood movies, and Silicon Valley technology companies. I think of the world’s largest economy, and the most powerful country, with a population of more the 340 million people.
But what was the USA like when it was first founded? This year, the US is celebrating the 250th anniversary since it declared independence from the British Empire.
I thought it would be interesting to spend this episode considering what the USA was like two hundred and fifty years ago. Back when it was thirteen separate colonies, that were not united at all, and before there was a concept of being an “American” or being a citizen of the USA.
I’m going to talk about the original colonies, the declaration of independence, the revolutionary war, and how the USA developed. At the same time, we will be practicing our English listening comprehension and learning some new vocabulary!
Listen Here!
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTubeInteractive Transcript!
You Can Now Read and Listen at the Same Time With an Interactive Transcript!
Vocabulary
- colonist (n): a person who lives in a colony, especially one that is controlled by another country
- Many colonists in North America considered themselves British before the American Revolution.
- independence (n): the state of being free from the control or rule of another country, government, or authority
- The United States declared its independence from Britain in 1776.
- subject (n): a person who lives under the rule of a king, queen, or other monarch and owes loyalty to them
- Before the Revolution, most people living in the colonies were British subjects of King George III.
- revolution (n): a major and often sudden change in a country’s political system, usually involving the removal of an existing government
- The American Revolution led to the creation of an independent United States.
- representative (n): a person who is chosen to speak, act, or make decisions on behalf of a group of people
- The colonists argued that they should have representatives in the British Parliament.
- delegate (n): a person chosen to represent a group, organisation, or region at an official meeting or conference
- Delegates from the thirteen colonies met in Philadelphia to discuss independence.
- liberty (n): the freedom to think, act, and live as you choose without unnecessary restrictions from authority.
- Many revolutionaries believed they were fighting to protect their liberty and rights.
Thirteen Colonies
Before 1776, the United States did not exist. Technically, there were no states to be united.
Instead, there were thirteen separate British colonies spread along the Atlantic Coast of North America. A colony is a territory controlled and governed by another country. In this case, the colonies were [00:04:00] under the authority, under the rule, of Britain and the British Crown.
Most of these colonies had been established during the 1600s, maybe the early 1700s. Some had been founded by companies hoping to make money. Some others were created by religious groups seeking freedom from persecution.
The first permanent English colony was Jamestown, Virginia, founded in 1607. The initial settlers really struggled with disease, food shortages, and they were often in conflict with the local indigenous people. But over time, Virginia became prosperous. It became successful, especially through the production of tobacco.
A few years later in 1620, another famous group of settlers arrived aboard a boat called the Mayflower. They established Plymouth Colony in present-day [00:05:00] Massachusetts. These settlers are often called the Pilgrims. They were a strict type of Protestant Christian, and they were seeking the freedom to practice their religion according to their own beliefs.
Over the following century, more colonies appeared along the coast. By the mid-1700s, Britain possessed thirteen colonies down the coast of the modern USA. There were actually more colonies up in modern-day Canada and in the Caribbean as well. These colonies were not united. They were separate.
Colonial Regions
Usually, they are grouped into three different categories.
The Northern Colonies, often known as New England, included New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. They developed around fishing and shipping and trade. The towns there were relatively dense, and the education levels, the literacy [00:06:00] rates, were a bit higher than other parts of British North America.
The Middle Colonies included New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. This was the most diverse part of British North America. People from England, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and many other places settled there.
In fact, New York and I think parts of New Jersey used to be under Dutch control, and famously, the island of Manhattan used to be called New Amsterdam.
The Southern Colonies included Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The South developed a very different economy. They had large plantations which produced crops such as tobacco, rice, and indigo. These were very valuable things. These plantations relied heavily on African slaves.
What this means, the fact that there were different colonies, is that the people there lived [00:07:00] completely different lives. There was not really much connecting a merchant in Boston with a plantation owner in Georgia. Actually, the thing that connected these people would be Britain.
They probably didn’t see themselves as Americans, like people in the USA do today anyway. They would’ve seen themselves as British subjects. They spoke English, they traded with Britain, and they lived under British laws. It was probably more common for someone from Massachusetts to visit Britain than it was to visit the south of the British colonies.
Taxes and Tensions
But as the colonies grew wealthier, questions started to appear around who should govern them, and what rights British subjects possessed abroad.
One of the most important things to understand about the American Revolution is that the conflict did not necessarily begin because [00:08:00] people from British North America saw themselves as a separate people who wanted their own country.
Many of the colonists actually considered themselves to be British. A lot of them were born in Britain, and they argued that they deserved the same rights as people living in Britain.
Let me give you some more background information.
From 1756 to 1773, Britain fought in the Seven Years’ War. This war was fought across Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. Numerous different countries were involved, but at its simplest, it was basically Britain and Prussia fighting against France and Austria.
Some historians describe this as the first true world war.
Britain won the war. They gained a lot of new territories from winning, and they became an even stronger global [00:09:00] empire. But the war was really expensive.
Britain was now in a lot of debt. They’d had to borrow money to fund their war effort. British politicians believed it was reasonable for the American colonies to pay more taxes to fund things like defense.
In 1765, Britain introduced the Stamp Act, which required some printed materials, like newspapers or legal documents, to be taxed. And then over the next few years, they kept introducing more taxes in North America.
This angered the colonists. They argued that they were being taxed by a parliament, the parliament in London, in which they had no elected representatives. There was no Member of Parliament for North America.
You’ve probably heard the famous slogan, ‘No taxation without representation‘.
This is [00:10:00] the story that’s often told when talking about the American Revolution.
One of the most famous incidents happened in 1773. A group of colonists boarded a British ship in Boston Harbor and dumped hundreds of chests of tea into the water. They did this to protest a tax on tea. The event became known as the Boston Tea Party.
This was also one of the moments when the thirteen colonies started to work together and cooperate for the first time.
Enlightenment Ideas
The colonists were also debating some really big political questions.
Who should hold power? Where does government get its authority from? Do people have rights that governments cannot take away?
These were questions that were being discussed across Europe during a period known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement that [00:11:00] encouraged people to use reason and evidence to understand the world.
Enlightenment thinkers argued that societies should be organized according to principles, rational principles, not just accepting traditions.
One of the most influential thinkers for the American colonists was John Locke. Locke argued that people possess natural rights. They have rights just for being human. These rights include life, liberty, and property.
According to Locke, the government exists to protect people’s rights. Governments get their power from the people in order to protect the people’s rights. Locke also argued that citizens have the right to resist a government or replace their government if they were no longer protecting people’s rights, or if they were violating [00:12:00] people’s rights.
This was quite different from the European conception of government. For centuries, a lot of Europe had been ruled by monarchs, kings, queens, emperors, princes, other kinds of royalty. They claimed power due to their birth or due to tradition.
They did not claim power because they were going to protect people’s rights. They did not get power from the people. They got it from tradition. Kings ruled because they were kings. Why is that person king? Because his dad was king.
Another important influence in the Americas at this time was the French philosopher Montesquieu. Montesquieu argued that political power should be divided among different institutions.
By separating power, societies could reduce tyranny, or the risk of tyranny. These ideas would go on to later influence the American Constitution.
Declaration of Independence
By [00:13:00] the summer of 1776, the conflict between Britain and the colonies had already started. It had already actually become violent. Fighting had started a year earlier in Massachusetts.
In early 1776, a pamphlet called Common Sense was written by Thomas Paine. The pamphlet argued that independence was necessary and logical for the American colonies. It questioned why an island, Britain, thousands of miles away, should govern an entire continent. Why should Britain have the rights to govern North America?
Then, in June 1776, delegates from the thirteen colonies met in Philadelphia to debate their future relationship with Britain. After weeks of discussion, they approved a document that is now one of the most famous political texts [00:14:00] in history. On July 4th, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted.
The Declaration explained why the colonies believed separation from Britain was justified. It listed numerous grievances, like complaints, against King George III, and it argued that he had violated the rights of the colonists.
It formally announced that the colonies were no longer British colonies. They were now free and independent states.
The delegates who signed this document were effectively committing treason against the British Crown. They were betraying Britain because they were British subjects, right? They weren’t Americans yet. They were British.
If the revolution failed, they were going to be sent to prison or, more likely, executed, killed.
The declaration also introduced some [00:15:00] really important ideas. It argued that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed. Legitimate governments rule because people agreed to be governed.
That is an idea that was present in the Declaration of Independence.
Winning the War
But declaring independence and actually becoming independent are very different things. The new United States of America would need to go to war and defeat Britain to become independent.
In 1776, Britain was probably the most powerful nation on Earth, and the newly declared United States was weak and divided. The Continental Army, which is the army of the United States, didn’t really have much food or clothes or weapons or money. Their military units were part-time volunteers. They weren’t professional soldiers.
So how did these American [00:16:00] revolutionaries win?
Well, Britain was going to have to fight a war across the Atlantic Ocean. It was slow, expensive, and difficult to move things between North America and Britain, and also to move things across thirteen different colonies.
The colonies were also quite big, a lot of them massive, so controlling every single town and village was going to be impossible.
Another reason, perhaps the biggest reason, was determination. The war was much more important for the people of the United States than it was for Britain.
Of course, Britain did not want to lose the North American colonies. Of course it didn’t. But if the war was getting too expensive, they’d give up. The USA was not going to give up if it got expensive.
In 1777, American forces achieved a major victory at the Battle of Saratoga in New York. The victory convinced [00:17:00] France that the American revolutionaries had a chance of winning the war.
So in 1778, France joined in. France joined the side of the US. Spain and the Dutch also became involved in this broader conflict against Britain.
In 1781, the British General Charles Cornwallis was trapped between American and French forces on land, and a French fleet of naval boats at sea as well. He surrendered, and this was basically the point where Britain realized it could not win anymore. Fighting continued, but in 1783, the Treaty of Paris formally recognized the independence of the United States.
The American Revolution had been successful. The United States was now independent. But what kind of country was it going to be?
Before the war, [00:18:00] the thirteen colonies had been separate things. They were not connected like the states of the US are today. They were basically thirteen small countries. They came together, they worked together, to fight against the British. But after the war, what were they going to be? Were they going to unify into one strong country?
The smaller colonies were worried that they would be dominated by the stronger and wealthier and larger colonies. But why would these small colonies give up their independence straight away? And how do you create a government strong enough to function without creating another form of tyranny?
Articles of Confederation
The first solution to this problem was the Articles of Confederation. The Articles were adopted during the Revolutionary War and basically was the first constitution of the United States.
[00:19:00] But the system the Articles introduced was nothing like the system the US has today. For example, there was no president. Most of the political power was in the hands of the individual states.
The Articles did create some kind of national government, but the national government could only conduct foreign affairs and manage a few common issues. Its power was really limited.
This was the kind of government that the founders of the United States wanted. They didn’t want a big, strong country. They wanted thirteen strong states.
Many people in the US believed that strong governments were dangerous. The states wanted to protect their independence and their freedom. People in Georgia did not want to be influenced by people in New York, and people in Massachusetts did not want to be influenced by people in [00:20:00] Virginia.
The Articles created a loose confederation, a partnership of states, rather than a strong nation.
As you can imagine, this causes problems. The national government had no power. It couldn’t collect taxes, for example. But if the US needed to go to war, whether it was a war against Mexico or a war against Canada or a war against Britain again, or conflicts against Native Americans, it needed money.
If it needed money, it had to ask the states for money, because the states had the power. And the states didn’t always help. The states didn’t always give money to the national government.
The government struggled to pay its debts. It struggled to keep a military. There was no way it could regulate trade between states.
It couldn’t really do anything. The United States was acting like thirteen separate countries trying to [00:21:00] cooperate.
Constitution and Washington
In 1787, delegates from twelve of the thirteen states (Rhode Island didn’t attend) went to Philadelphia again, and they met to discuss reforming the system. Their original goal was to try and improve the Articles of Confederation, but instead they ended up making a completely new system of government.
The result was the United States Constitution.
The Constitution tried to balance the need of the United States as a country with the needs of the individual states. For example, all of the delegates discussing the Constitution wanted a stronger government, but they were also really suspicious of power.
The new government needed someone to carry out laws and lead the military and manage the government, so they created a role, the role of president. The president would be powerful but would not be a monarch. The president would be elected. They would [00:22:00] serve for a limited term, and they could be removed from office, and they had to obey a written constitution.
The Constitution also divided power between different institutions. Congress would make the laws. The president would enforce the laws. And the court would interpret the laws. Each branch of government could limit each other.
The Constitution also created a federal system. Some powers belong to the national government, like the military and international relations, and other powers belong to the states.
Eventually, the Constitution was ratified, was approved, and in 1789, the new government began operating. Later that year, George Washington became the first president of the United States.
Final Thought
By 1789, the United States had won its independence from Britain and created a new constitutional system that was different from any other major nation.
But the United States in the late 18th century would seem very unfamiliar to us today. The population was only around 4 million people, which is roughly the size of a city like Los Angeles today.
Most North Americans lived in rural communities, and the United States was also much smaller geographically than it is today. It only occupied a narrow strip of land along the Atlantic coast. Most of the land that is now part of the US was under the control of Native American nations, or Spain, or Britain, or France.
And American society contained a lot of contradictions. Slavery was legal, for example, despite all of that talk in the Constitution and the [00:24:00] Declaration of Independence about liberty and equality. Hundreds of thousands of African slaves lived and worked throughout the country, particularly in the South.
Women also possessed very few political rights, and voting was restricted to a relatively small portion of the population.
But over time, the United States would gradually change. It introduced the Bill of Rights and amendments to its Constitution. It fought wars, including a big civil war, and expanded its territory.
To me, the significance of 1776 and the Declaration of Independence is not necessarily that thirteen colonies broke away from Britain. Many colonies have done that. Britain used to control half the world. And many other colonies would gain independence. And Britain had far more important colonies than North American ones.
As much as people from the US [00:25:00] think the US was the most important part of the British Empire, it wasn’t. India was. India was far more important.
But I think what makes the American Revolution, and the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence so important was the attempt to create a new political system.
Of course, the system they created had problems and flaws, and the United States has spent much of the past 250 years trying to fix its problems. But creating a new system from nothing was a remarkable achievement, and so many countries around the world, so many of the countries that you guys are listening in, have political systems based on these events from 250 years ago.
But what do you think? What do you think about the US being 250 years old this year? Have you ever visited the USA? Would you like to visit?
Extended Vocabulary List
Become a Patreon Subscriber to Access the Extended Vocabulary List!
Vocabulary Games and Activities!
Learn and practice vocabulary from this Thinking in English episode.
Practice using 5 different study games and activities – including writing, listening, and memorisation techniques!
Flashcards
Matching Game
Learning Game
Test Yourself
Listening and Spelling
Do you want to Think in English?
I’m so excited that you found my blog and podcast!! If you don’t want to miss an article or an episode, you can subscribe to my page!
