2.5Early self-government

English colonists brought traditions of representative government and expanded them. Virginia's House of Burgesses (1619) and the Mayflower Compact (1620) were early experiments in self-rule. Most colonies developed elected assemblies that controlled taxation and local affairs, while governors represented the Crown.

Property-owning white men could often vote—a broader franchise than in Europe, though still narrow. Colonists came to see these assemblies as their local parliaments, protectors of their "rights as Englishmen." This habit of self-government, practiced for generations, made later interference from London feel not merely costly but illegitimate.