When America Was Really Diverse

“The People of British America, 1700–75” by Alan Taylor, in Orbis (Spring 2003), Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1528 Walnut St., Ste. 610, Philadelphia, Pa. 19102–3684.

Many Americans retain from their school days an image of 18th-century emigrants coming to British America of their own free will in search of liberty, and becoming more united as the revolution neared. But the demographic reality was very different, observes Taylor, a historian at the University of California, Davis.

By one estimate, the United States had a higher proportion of non-native speakers in its population in 1790 than it did in 1990. Many of the newcomers spoke African languages. “Most [emigrants] were enslaved Africans forced across the Atlantic to work on plantations raising American crops for the European market,” Taylor writes. “During the 18th century, the British colonies [including the West Indies] imported 1.5 million slaves—more than three times the number of free immigrants.”

Even so, he notes, “the colonial white population remained more than twice as large” as the population of enslaved Africans. The harsh conditions of slavery accounted for much of the gap. “In 1780 the black population in British America was less than half the total number of African emigrants received during the preceding century, while the white population [was three times] its emigrant source.”

Virtually all of the 275,000 slaves imported into British America during the 17th century went to the sugar plantations of the West Indies, where extremely harsh conditions kept the death rate high and the birthrate low.

As the slave trade expanded in the 18th century, more slaves were taken to the Chesa­peake and Carolinas. “On the colonial mainland,” says Taylor, “slave births exceeded their deaths, enabling that population to grow through natural increase, especially after 1740.” The mainland imported 250,000 slaves during the colonial period, and it sustained a black population of 576,000 by 1780. (The British West Indies had only 350,000 slaves in 1780, even though 1.2 million had been brought to the islands over the preceding two centuries.)

Meanwhile, emigration from England declined, from 350,000 in the 17th century to only 80,000 between 1700 and 1775—and at least 50,000 of these were convicted felons who were sold into indentured servitude. As England’s economy and military might grew in the early 18th century, imperial officials began looking elsewhere for colonists—chiefly, Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. “The new recruitment,” says Taylor, “invented America as an asylum from religious persecution and political oppression in Europe” (so long as the immigrants were Protestants). The years 1700 to 1775 brought 145,000 Scots—many of whom preserved their Gaelic speech and customs—and 100,000 Germans. These foreigners outnumbered English newcomers 3 to 1. Thomas Paine was not indulging in his usual hyperbole when he declared, “If there is a country in the world where concord would be least expected, it is America.”