In Chapter 18 of American Colonies<\/i>, Taylor focuses on Britain\u2019s conflicts and wars, particularly with the French and Spanish. He clearly outlines Britain\u2019s ascent to power in the New World, paying particular attention to their dominance of the trade industry with the native peoples. As Taylor states, the British simply offered superior goods to the French and Spanish at extremely fair prices. While the French treated the native people with more respect, tribes were forced to barter with the British in order to procure their superior merchandise.<\/p>\n

I feel as if the post \u201cColonial Origins of the American Dream,\u201d does a good job on focusing in on Taylor\u2019s main argument in this chapter. Throughout the narrative, Taylor clearly highlights the rise of British dominance in the New World. After the 7 years war with the French, the British clearly set themselves apart from the French and Spanish as the premiere colonial power. Ultimately, the British invested the most capital into establishing a firm base of colonies in North America, and inevitably they reaped the rewards. Their trade industry flourished and their capital increased, which allowed the British army and navy to reach a new level of dominance.<\/p>\n

Taylor does a particularly good job of highlighting the role of Native Americans in Chapter 18. I found the change of their allegiances to the British and the French fascinating, as well as their eventual decline in power. Previously, I failed to realize how much the Native Americans played the British and the French off of each other in order to maintain relevance in North America. As Taylor shows, the Natives played a key role in advising the French and British military leaders. Moreover, although many Native Americans shifted their allegiance to the French, without the expertise of native guides the British never would have mastered warfare in North America. However, with the defeat of the French, Native Americans lost much of their power, as they now relied solely on the British for trade opportunities. Something the British ruthlessly exploited to their benefit.<\/p>\n

Overall, I feel as Taylor does a fantastic job of describing Britain\u2019s ascent to prowess in the New World. Although, as mentioned in other posts, he forsakes his previous style of a social narrative for more of a direct military history in Chapter 18, I find the change of pace refreshing. He clearly allows the reader to understand how economics, native relations, and social policy played a role in Britain\u2019s domination of North America. Additionally, in this chapter he does a good job of foreshadowing \u00a0colonial independence, paying particular attention to taxes and the free spirit of the 13 colonies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Chapter 18 of American Colonies, Taylor focuses on Britain\u2019s conflicts and wars, particularly with the French and Spanish. He clearly outlines Britain\u2019s ascent to power in the New World, paying particular attention to their dominance of the trade industry with the native peoples. As Taylor states, the British simply offered superior goods to the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Britain’s Rise To Power”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[42,108,261],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-british","tag-french","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}