American Colonies: The Settling of North America

by Alan Taylor

Unlike the French and the Spanish, the British colonies relied in war primarily on local militias of common people, rather than on professional troops. That increased the political leverage of common men as it involved them in frequent conflicts with Indians and in patrolling the slave population. In those roles, the ethnically diverse militiamen found a shared identity as white men by asserting their superiority defined against Indians and Africans conveniently cast as brutish inferiors. To avoid alienating the militiamen, British colonial elites gradually accepted a white racial solidarity based upon subordinating “blacks” and “reds.” Once race, instead of class, became the primary marker of privilege, colonial elites had to concede greater social respect and political rights to common white men. In sum, white racial solidarity developed in close tandem with the expansion of liberty among male colonists.