In the early 17th century, the English swiftly colonized the New World. This act encouraged Englishmen to explore and learn more about the newly claimed area. In groups, many people set off abroad to the east coast residing in two regions, being either the Chesapeake or New England area. As people began to settle, the differences of the two colonies started to emerge. Although New England and the Chesapeake region were both settled largely by people of English origin, the two evolved into distinct colonies because of their many differences.
Firstly, both regions were founded to serve two completely different purposes. The Chesapeake region was founded for economic purposes. The settlers in Jamestown were on a search for gold. A majority of people were lone men predominantly aging in their 20s (Document C) who’ve set sail to Virginia in hopes of gaining fortune for their country. The New England area was founded for religious purposes. This
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area was seen as a paradise for people of different religious groups. The Puritans wanted to reform from the Church of England, since Protestantism thrived in England. However, some Protestants wanted to separate from the Church of England to instead practice Calvinism. Whole families set out to reinvent themselves on unfamiliar soil. On the Ship’s List of Emigrants Bound for New England, the record displays ministers, tailors and husbandmen heading abroad with their families in search of better religious opportunities (Document B). Secondly, both regions differed politically and economically. The Chesapeake area was solely based on work ethic. John Smith quoted “he who shall not work, shall not eat.” Indentured servants and slaves were the main source of labor because they worked on the plantations. Therefore, if the crop cultivation were to fail, the economy would’ve followed suit. Politically, the majority of residents living in the Chesapeake area were hardly represented. The legislative was owned by the aristocrats. The New England area was less focused on agriculture because they instead set their attention on industrialization. This area did not flourish through farming because their location wasn’t ideal. The New England area had rocky soil compared to the fertile soil in the Chesapeake region. Instead of people being forced to limit themselves to farming, they were able to create small businesses or become tailors, fishers, builders, etc. Economically, the people living in this region had more control over their money because they did not rely on one source of income (Document E). Politically, the residents in this area had more of a voice considering the middle class was about 65% of population. The legislative was owned by theocrats. Lastly, both regions differed socially.
In the Chesapeake region, the people who owned the tobacco plantations were viewed as superior. People who didn’t own plantations most likely worked on them as indentured servants or slaves. Many people were uneducated and poor. Landowners would often flaunt their money to display their power. By doing this, they’d hope to prevent their workers from revolting. In 1676, Bacon’s rebellion occurred. This rebellion took place because Nathaniel Bacon felt unequal to the wealthy and objected to their rights (Document H). Bacon was also fed up with Berkeley’s inability to protect Virginia against the attacks from the natives (Document G). In the New England area, many people were educated. Puritans believed that the salvation can only be obtained from oneself. Due to the fact that the Church of England was established in the Chesapeake region, there were no Puritans. Colonies of New England were considered to models of religious qualities, each was set to "be as a city upon a hill." (Document
A) Since the Chesapeake region and the New England area differed in many aspects, they both evolved into two distinct societies. The two areas both served different purposes. The New England economy was more stable compared to the Chesapeake Bay’s risky and unpredictable economy. The New England area was very religious opposed to the Chesapeake region, which was more focused on labor. These two regions developed into very different societies because of factors
First off, colonial New England was more family based, as I believe America is today. When immigrants landed in New England they brought with them their families, expecting this place to become their permanent place of residence. Therefore their communities were more tight nit and more concerned with the promotion of values that would benefit the community as a whole. Whereas the Virginia colonies brought in more business oriented tobacco farmers who would establish communities in areas based on the Agricultural value of the land, therefore these communities were more focused on money, profit, and expansion rather than the...
The Chesapeake and New England regions were settled by people of English descent, but by 1700, they had become two distinctly different societies. They had evolved so differently, mainly because of the way that the settlers followed their religion, their way of conducting politics and demographics in the colonies. Even though the settlers came from the same homeland: England, each group had its own reasons for coming to the New World and different ideas planned for the colonies.
While the Protestant Revolution raged in Europe, Catholics and other radicals were fleeing to the New World to find religious freedom and to escape prosecution. Because of this, the northern colonies became more family and religiously orientated as the families of the pilgrims settled there. From the Ship’s List of Emigrants Bound for New England we see that six families on board made up sixty nine of the ships passengers (B). Not only did families tend to move to New England, but whole congregations made the journey to find a place where they could set up “a city upon a hill”, and become an example to all who follow to live by as John Winthrop put it to his Puritan followers (A). Contrastingly, the Chesapeake colonies only had profit in their mind, which pushed them to become agriculturally advanced. Since Virginia, one of the Chesapeake colonies, was first settled with the intention of becoming an economic power house, it was mainly inhabited by working-class, single men. The average age of a man leaving for the Americas was only twenty two and a half years old according to the Ship’s List of Emigrants bound for Virginia (C). The harsh conditions of the colony did not appeal to those who wished to settle with a family. Added on to that was the fact that the average lifespan in the Chesapeake colonies was a full ten years or more shorter than that in other more desirable living quarters to the north.
The political difference between the New England and Chesapeake region was that New England government associate more with religious matter than the Chesapeake government. The New England regions included the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Plymouth colony, the New Hampshire colony, Maine colony, Connecticut colony, and Rhode Island colony. Massachusetts colony for example was governed as a theocracy government. As the first governor of Massachusetts colony once stated in A Model of Christian Charity (Written on board the Arbella on the Atlantic Ocean, 1630),"we shall be as a city upon a hill" a holy commonwealth that could be served as an example community to the rest of the world. The Massachusetts Bay colony placed great importance on religious matters. Only the church member were allowed to vote or held office position. Those who held office position would enforce the law requiring attendance at services. Jamestown, Maryland and the Carolinas were some colonies in the Chesapeake regions. The governments in these regions were less concerned about...
As colonies of the British Empire, both the New England and Chesapeake regions were inhibited by innumerable immigrants of English origin. Despite this common characteristic, the two areas greatly differed from each other. New England was more tolerant and community based whereas the Chesapeake was focused more directly on personal wealth and land. While they both drew from British influence, the distinct conditions in each region caused them to develop separately and become unique in their own way.
Social differences are one of the reasons New England and Chesapeake developed into two distinct societies. People in England were tired of being oppressed by the government, so they wanted to come to the New World for new opportunities and better treatment. According to a source from Massachusetts of the New England Colonies, “our town shall be composed of forty families,…rich and poor…every inhabitant shall have a convenient proportion for a house lot, as we shall see [fit] for everyone’s quantity and estate…everyone shall have a share o...
New England was north of the Chesapeake, and included Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Haven (which soon became part of Connecticut). The New Englanders were largely Puritan Separatists, who sought religious freedom. When the Church of England separated from Catholicism under Henry VIII, Protestantism flourished in England. Some Protestants, however, wanted complete separation from Catholicism and embraced Calvinism. These "Separatists" as they were called, along with persecuted Catholics who had not joined the Church of England, came to New England in hopes of finding this religious freedom where they would be free to practice as they wished. Their motives were, thus, religious in nature, not economic. In fact, New England settlers reproduced much of England's economy, with only minor variations. They did not invest largely in staple crops, instead, relied on artisan-industries like carpentry, shipbuilding, and printing.
The New England, Middle and Southern colonies were all English ruled, but yet very different. Among their distinctions, was the geography which played an important role in shaping these colonies. New England attracted Puritan farmers who wanted to separate from the Catholic Church. But because of the bone dry soil in the North, these colonists found they couldn't continue with their traditional ways of farming. However, with the immense amounts of water that surrounded them, they found that they could fish and trade. The Middle colonies on the other, hand had a moderate amount of everything. The fertile soil and the major seaports such as Philadelphia and New York, allowed these Middle colonists to make a living any way they saw fit. This led to the brisk development of the Middle Seaboard . Unlike the Middle and Northern colonies, the Southern colonies had large amounts of fertile land allowing for the development of large plantations. Because farming the plantations was the economic thrust for the South, towns and cities developed slowly. Thusly Geography greatly affected the lifestyles of these regions in the New World.
The colonists had different reasons for settling in these two distinct regions. The New England region was a more religiously strict yet diverse area compared to that of the Chesapeake Bay. The development of religion in the two regions came from separate roots. After Henry VIII and the Roman Catholic Church broke away from each other, a new group of English reformers was created called the Puritans. The Puritans came from protestant backgrounds, after being influenced by Calvinistic ideas. When their reforms were thwarted by King James I of England, they fled to the New World in what is now known as the "Great Migration". The Puritans were then joined by Quakers, Protestants, and Catholics in the religiously diverse New England area. These diverse religious factions were allowed to live freely but under the laws of New England. It was due to this religious freedom that these people came to escape religious persecution back home. The New Englanders had a religion-based society and religion was based on family. As the Bible highly regarded family, it condemned adultery. Adultery was considered a punishable crime. Adulterers were marked as impure by a letter "A" stitched on their clothing, as in the book "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. As religion was a very high priority in New England, it was very much less severe in the Chesapeake Bay region. The one established church in the region, the Anglican Church of Jesus Christ, was only then established in 1692, more than 70 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
The Chesapeake Bay Colonies and the New England Colonies were both colonized by the British, but both regions were vastly different from one another. The English-Native American relations remained tense since the moment the English arrived, and the results of the war was the same: English won, Indians lost. The Chesapeake and New England were both influenced by the geographical differences and lead to a difference in economic values as well as governments. The Chesapeake and New England were both established for different reasons: to expand an empire and to get away from religious prosecution. The oversea British Empire was the most dominant in the world, and even though the colonies were all “British”, they are all vastly different from one another.
Throughout the late 16th century and into the 17th century two colonies appeared from England. In search of glory, gold, and God (religious freedom), England started to discover and surmount North America. The two colonies were called the Chesapeake and the New England colonies. Although the areas were governed by the English, the settlements had similar potential as well as different. The Chesapeake and England colonies cultivated into visibly different establishments. The difference was the colonial motive, religion, political structure, socio-economic, and race relation, these are what were accountable for creating these territories. In the Chesapeake, the motivation for colonization was mainly due to the economic issue that the colony was
After the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus, European Nations competed in a race against one another to claim pieces of the new land. Before Columbus found this land, the sea separating the New World from Europe seemed endless, and mundane. The Europeans were only interested in the land to the East. But with the New World as a new hat thrown into the ring, the Europeans tossed aside their old toy to go play with a new one. This time period of conquest over the New World was known as the Age of Exploration, and by the 1700s, they kept their pickings. A New World meant more land to build homes and plant crops, and more money to be earned by buying out new houses and selling new crops grown in foreign soil. Spain claimed Mexico, and the Southwest portions of what would be known as America. France got their hands on most of present-day Canada, as well as Louisiana. The Dutch set foot on land they called New Amsterdam, however, The English, who had settled their first colony in Jamestown, Virginia, drove the Dutch out and claimed New Amsterdam for themselves, later renaming it New York. The English claimed more land as time passed, and eventually they had formed 13 different colonies in the Eastern part of America. The English Colonies were separated into 3 different regions. The New England Colonies (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire), the Middle Colonies (New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware), and the Southern Colonies (Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia). The New England Colonies were the earliest of the 3 regions, founded by English Settlers seeking religious freedom. The Middle Colonies were also founded by settlers seeking religious freedom. The Southern Colonies,...
Elbert Hubbard once said “Truth is stronger than fiction”, the truth about Jamestown, It was fated to be unsuccessful. In 2014, 320,090,857 people lived in the United States; in 1607, a sum of 100 men from England occupied the same land. Aspiring to be the first permanent English settlement in The New World colonist filled three boats and set sail up the Chesapeake Bay and landed in Jamestown, Virginia. The settlers had a problematic start to their journey causing almost 805 of the population to die in the initial stages of Jamestown. So many people died in the early days of Jamestown colony because the settlers’ went ready for the challenges yet to come in the New World.
English farming practices were replaced with tobacco plantations in order to both adapt to new crops based on the new land and provide a stable economy using cash crops. This new agricultural practice sped up the rate of expansion, and enraged the already discontent Natives. When a group of local Indians under chief Powhatan resisted English expansion, the Virginia Company went nearly bankrupt in its effort to suppress the uprising. Subsequently, King James I revoked their charter and controlled the colonies through appointed governors until the revolution in 1776. These governors imposed rigid leaderships and strict rules, both of which were crucial to Jamestown’s survival and expansion; however, this arbitrary and supressive rule later led to conflicts within Virginia - the most well known being Bacon’s Rebellion. Such rebellions demonstrated potential instability within the Chesapeake Bay colonies and highlighted the danger of social unrest amongst white subordinate class. As a result, Virginia colonists turned to the African slave trade to fulfill labor demands, thus beginnings the long history of slavery in southern
The problems that were occurring in Virginia at the time played a crucial part in the formation of Bacon’s Rebellion. Life in the Chesapeake region in the seventeenth century was unpleasant. Most men and women did not live over twenty. Many diseases such as malaria and typhoid were being passed around. Many of the immigrants and colonists were men. This caused an imbalance between men and women, which meant that many men did not marry. Families were also fragile and undone. As the eighteenth century came around, it began to become more stable. Their main profit was tobacco. To produce as much tobacco as they needed for their profit they needed a lot of workers. Indians died fairly quickly and Africans at the time were too expensive. This caused the colonists to use indentured servants. These men volunteered to work for a certain amount of time. Virginia used the head-right system, which was when wealthy men would pay to send servants to America and in return were rewarded with land. The indentured servants were working for land, but as land grew scarce, many masters did not give the land they had promised. These events led many servants to