Compare And Contrast The Chesapeake And New England Colonies

Although both the Chesapeake and New England colonies were settled largely by the same people, they became increasingly different as time went on. New England was colonized mainly by puritan settlers who sought religious freedom in the new world, leading to their colonies to develop around the church. However, the Chesapeake colonies which had original motivations of economic prosperity and a haven for Catholics. Due to these dissimilar initial motivations, the two regions continued to diverge as they progressed through history, creating two unique colonies.

These two colonies social religious structure continued to widen throughout the years. New England colonies had a strict religious code based upon the congregational church that the colonies

The Chesapeake colonies relied on slave labor and the commercial farming of tobacco to stimulate their economy (Edmund 6). With a large amount of fertile land, and a system that favored unfree labor, the Chesapeake colonies were able to build a healthy successful economy off of the exportation of tobacco. New England, however, lacked the fertile lands that the Chesapeake had, and was not tolerant of outright slavery. Despite being intolerant of slavery, New England’s society did rely heavily upon indentured servitude as they progressed through history. The town of Andover provides an excellent example of this, which was composed of a close family dynamic where the children are indentured servants to their fathers until they get their own land (Greven). As a result, New England became a patriarchal society of skilled laborers. Through trades such as fishing, small scale farming and shipbuilding they created a healthy system of global trade .Yet the Puritans were not pleased with the economic success, in fact, it could be seen as a negative because a focus on economic success would take away from their goal of creating God’s utopia. Which may be the reason that some of the economically successful colonists were persecuted. Many of the women who were accused of being witches in the Salem Witch trials were successfully economically, indicating that their decision to be successful instead of fully commit to the colony’s original cause made them martyrs (Lynn 6.5.15). The lack of flexibility in the New England colonies motivations led to the repudiation of economic success while the Chesapeake colonies embraced