Puritans In The New World Essay

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Puritans in the New World Puritans were a section of the Church of England that wanted the church to change completely all aspects that linked them to the Roman Catholic Church. In the early 17th century, King Charles got into a union with France through marriage in preparation for the war with Spain (Heimert & Delbanco, 1985). Puritans feared that the Roman Catholic Church would be restored in England and coupled with the fact that Charles was blocking reforms in the Church of England, they requested the government to allow them to set up their own colony. They established the Massachusetts Bay Colony where they could remain English citizens but still practice their religion how they saw fit (Heimert & Delbanco, 1985). Unlike previous colonies …show more content…

They also got direct routes to places that they previously could only access through expensive land routes such as Asia and some parts of West Africa (Thornton & Thornton, 1998). These explorations led to an unprecedented turn in human history that referred to as the Atlantic World (Kidd, 2006). The Atlantic world was comprised of interactions between Europe, the New World [Americas and neighboring islands], and Africa. The major players were the French, Spanish, Dutch, and English with unwilling participation from African slaves and Natives of the New World such as the Red Indians. The cross-cultural interactions had various long-term effects that included the Columbian exchange, changes in demographics, and the forging of races. The Colombian exchange refers to the transfer of foods, diseases, medicines, populations, ideas between the New World and the Old World. From the New World, the Old World gained a lot such as cassava that became the staple food in West Africa, new supplies of metal, and tobacco; which was used as a form of currency at some point. The exchange also had some drastic effects, Nunn and Qian (2010) note that the discovery of quinine assisted the Europeans in colonizing the Old World especially

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