Analysis Of The Great Awakening

The first event that occurred was the Enlightenment. It occurred through the years of around 1650 to about 1700. The enlightenment opened up the eyes and the minds of the people living in the British colonies in America. The enlightenment changed the way people were thinking and gave them a sense of freedom and individualism, in this case, individualizing them selves from their British rulers. There was not much revolutionary action but the impact that John Locke’s enlightenment ideas had on people started unraveling events, one after the other to eventually lead to the revolution. His enlightenment ideas were that people had Natural rights. This meant that every person has natural rights that don’t need to be given to them by a government

The shift in thinking from the enlightenment sparked a change in thinking about religion in colonial America. The Great Awakening was a revitalization movement that ran across parts of Europe and the colonies in America. Because of the enlightenment people weren’t as religious as they used to be but during and after the Great Awakening people became more and more religious because of the different methods used by the preachers. Preachers used more emotion to deliver their sermons which made it more appealing to the people, George Whitefield being one of the most famous for this. The Great Awakening in a way unified the colonies, because it affected almost everyone in the country it brought together a sense of unity even though different types of christianity were formed due to the great Awakening. It also helped strengthen a sense of individuality because people felt that it wasn’t as necessary that in order to be a good christian you had to go to all the ceremonies and it made them think that in order to be christian they were the ones who had to

The name is a bit misleading because it suggests that the ones who were at war were the French against the Indians. This is not the case though, The French were vastly outnumbered compared to the British so they relied on the natives, also enemies of the British, to help them defeat the British. Although the extra men didn’t alter the outcome of the war it changed something in the colonies. Just like any other war, it costs money to have soldiers, weapons, and ammunition. The French and Indian war nearly doubled the national debt of the British so they decided to raise taxes on the American colonists in an attempt to raise money. It was not easy for the British to collect these new taxes as they were met with resistance, so much that they had to send in more soldiers to help the representatives of the British government perform their jobs safely. Being taxed more made the colonists start having revolutionary thoughts towards their British