Page 110 - American Stories, A History of the United States

4experience of empire:

eighteenth-Century america

1680–1763

Constructing an
anglo-american

identity:

the journal of William byrd
W illiam Byrd ii

(1674 –1744)
was a type of british
American one would
not have encountered
during the earliest years of settlement. this
successful tidewater planter was a product
of a new, more cosmopolitan environment,
and as an adult, byrd seemed as much at
home in London as in his native virginia.
in 1728, at the height of his political influ-
ence in Williamsburg, the capital of colonial
virginia, byrd accepted a commission to
help survey a disputed boundary with North
carolina. During his long journey into the
backcountry, byrd kept a journal, a satiric,
often bawdy chronicle of daily events
that is now regarded as a classic of early
American literature.
On his trip into the wilderness, byrd
met many different people. No sooner

Learning O b j e c t i v e s

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5

What difficulties How did How did Why were Why did
did Native european the Great eighteenth- colonial
Americans face ideas affect Awakening century Americans
in maintaining eighteenth- transform colonial support William Byrd iii byrd’s History
their cultural century the religious assemblies Great britain’s of the Dividing Line: Run in the Year
independence American culture of not fully wars against 1728 contains a marvelously satirical
on the frontiers account of the culture of poor country
of english life? p. 85 colonial democratic? France? p. 95 farmers in eighteenth-century
and spanish America? p. 93 North carolina.
settlement? p. 89
p. 79

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