Compare and contrast the government, religion, geography, and economy of the three English colonial regions (the Chesapeake area, New England, and Pennsylvania). Be sure to consider the role of race, gender, and ethnicity. The Chesapeake Area (Maryland/South Colonies)! In regard to government, Maryland was a proprietary colony which means that it gave the Calverts (its owners) the right to appoint all people and to control the government or the land. In broad terms, the Southern Colonies were ruled by the high-class people who developed a political system that honored local laws and customs based upon their elite, socially-stratified beliefs. Additionally, in 1619, the House of Burgesses was formed. The House is a legislative assembly made …show more content…
The desire for huge profits (which needed a reliable form of cheap labor) created an enormous slave population in the colonies. New England! The government consisted of a central state government and local governments. State governments were made up of a governor and bicameral legislature. Officials were annually elected by white, free men who were also church members. Local government consisted of town meetings, where all white male Church members who owned property gathered regularly to decide matters of local importance. The Puritans who were seeking religious freedom were the first to affect New England religiously. Therefore, religion was heavily influential in the New England colonies. This area was strictly Calvinist, and there was little to no tolerance for any other religion. This homogeneity allowed for a rigorous sense of local order. The church was an equally-important partner with town governance in preserving social order (Church and State were not separate!) In every colony except for Rhode Island, law required everyone to attend worship services on the Sabbath and every taxpayer to contribute to the support of the
Some of the similarities between the colonies was they all had good land and good resources. Example the new England colonies had good resources and good trade. Many people moved there hoping to profit from the trade. Some also came to practice their religion freely. They built their colonies starting off from small farms. The middle colonies settled for almost the same reason as the new England colonies. What they did different though from the new England colonies was that they had more opportunities to profit from. They had choices like trading and farming. The middle colonies had jobs like ship building and lumbering. The southern colonies were very different though they lived by a river and in the wetlands. Something similar though they
Southern colonies were hilly coast with grew cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar cans .also they had specific regions which gave way to religious freedoms.The founders of the Southern Colonies were, for the most part, out to make money. They brought their families, as did the New England colonists, and they kept their families together on the plantations.In the Southern Colonies and travel environment controlled social life. The Southern Colonies had a hard-and-fast three class system. Upper-class rich colony owners, middle-class small colony owners, lower class.The southern colonies were established early on after the settlement of Jamestown in 1607. At first, the south also relied on the forests and the water, but tobacco and cotton later emerged as cash crops. Initially, these crops were harvested by indentured servants, but with the growth of plantations, planters started to import slaves from Africa. In the South, there was a great divide between the rich and the poor. The Church of England was the dominant religion and the center of life for southerners. Laws were made by county governments and the economy centered around the large
Many of the New England colonists were white and the most prominent and religious families owned the best land. They had a system of self-government in these colonies which had representative town meetings across the colonies. The life expectancy of its citizens became longer than that of the Middle and Southern colonies because of the cooler climate they were accustomed to in Britain. The New England colonies were more industrialized and had built more towns than the others, causing the New England colonies social life to be more active than the other colonies and were centered around the towns. Many of the Southern colonists were primarily white and black, with the minority consisting of free men and women and the majority consisting of laborers and slaves.
There were a myriad of differences between Great Britain and her American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but these differences can be divided into three basic categories: economic, social, and political. The original American settlers came to the colonies for varied reasons, but a common trait among these settlers was that they still considered themselves British subjects. However, as time passed, the colonists grew disenfranchised from England. Separated from the king by three thousand miles and living in a primitive environment where obtaining simple necessities was a struggle, pragmatism became the common thread throughout all daily life in the colonies. It was this pragmatism that led the colonists to create their own society with a unique culture and system of economics and politics.
The Southern colonies were developed for freedom of economic opportunity. The New England colonies had aspirations for a distinct society, where they could show their homeland, how a country should be run. The southern colonies had goals for mercantilism, and increasing the prosperity of England. The New England colonies were based on theocracy, where the state forced the people to live and worship in an orthodox way. The southern colonies(Virginia) had a government based on a royal government, where the state was governed by a governor and council named by the king, and an elected assembly chosen by the people.
Many colonies were founded for religious purposes. While religion was involved with all of the colonies, Massachusetts, New Haven, Maryland, and Pennsylvania were established exclusively for religious purposes.
It seems important to understand the similarities of the colonial regions in order to comprehend the implications they had. By comparing the Middle Colonies and New England, and by contrasting the future North to the South, it becomes relatively easy to draw patterns.
The New England colony was very big on religion.They were made up of Puritans and they were pretty strict which might be one reason that everyone was really religious because they were told to be. The Puritans were one of the first people in New England and they dominated New England.There were other groups of religion but none as big as the Puritans. The Puritans dominated because they were very strict unlike the other groups. They were really big on family So the only thing that was as important as religion was basically your family. One other reason why
Religion was a fundamental part of colonial life, incorporated into Virginia society since the founding of Jamestown. (From Jamestown to Jefferson, 20-22). In fact, a major goal in the establishment of the colony of Virginia was to spread Protestantism, and religious ideals were incorporated into the laws and regulations by which the colony was governed. (From Jamestown to Jefferson, 25). The Church of England was the primary church in colonial Virginia and in the early days of the colony attendance at an Anglican Church was obligatory. Nonconformist denominations, such as Baptists and Presbyterians, began to grow, but they were allowed very little freedom to practice their own beliefs, and Anglicanism was enforced as the official state religion. Some choice was granted when the Crown’s Act of Toleration in 1689 allowed a degree of freedom of worship to nonconformists. (viginiamemory.com). However, members of these congregations were still required to be married in and pay taxes to the Anglican Church (virginiamemory.com). This allowed for a small measure of toleration, but did not truly institute religious freedom in the colonies. Until the Revolutionary War, the Anglican Church remained instated as the official religion on Virginia, and very little attention was given to the other denominations that were beginning to expand.
Since the established religion that the colony set up with was the Church of England, this provided a strong influence of this religion in the colony. This is evident through the demand for Sabbath observance. The requirement from the colonial government of Sabbath observance was for compulsory attendance of Church of England services for everyone. The intention of this was to try to improve the moral character of the people. This also brought in legislation to abolish recreational activities on Sundays, which was unpopular among many. Evangelical protestant
The New England colonies and Middle Atlantic colonies are two of many colonies that settled in America. The New England colonies came and settled in the northern part of America. While the Middle Atlantic colonies settled in states like Pennsylvania and New Jersey. These two colonies shared one major goal that they both shared. That major goal was to expand their religion. The Middle Atlantic colonies wanted to come to a new piece of land and expand their religion. Furthermore, they would also accept others that didn’t follow the same religion as them. The New England colonies also came to America to expand their religion. However, they wanted to purify themselves in order to become more holy Christians. They would not accept non-Christians.
The southern colonies were also self governed. Virginia had an elected assembly called the House of Burgess. The king of England appointed a royal governor, who in turn selected his council. This body was the upper house. These men were responsible for judicial and administrative matters in their area. Virginia House of Burgesses was a legislature picked by the people. The Pilgrims had said that they would follow the laws they made in the Mayflower Compact. Both of these are early examples of
These differences among the 4 regions led to a heterogeneous mix of settlers to spread among the Atlantic Coast, as people wanted to acquire better conditions away from England: avoid persecution, obtain economic gains, avoid prison, and provide enslavement. The 13 colonies, which are the 4 regions of the New England colonies, the Middle Colonies, the Southern Colonies, and the Backcountry are essential to our understanding how aspects of today’s current world has come about including the need to contend menacing mother countries, the need for a strong government structure, the establishment of states, the need to survive hardships of a mother country, and the
Most could probably see that is was painfully obvious as to who the religious fanatics were. New England’s colonists seemed to have a more religious tone, than did that of the Middle or Southern regions. The Puritans, who had apparently come to America to escape ridicule and religious persecution, were taking up on that very idea, punishing all those whom did not share in their ideas. They were stiff, strict people and did not allow for much, but the main idea is that they were driven by a higher power, God. This made the Puritans successful Massachusetts’s colonists in that they were strong-willed and willing to make their government work. The type of government chosen by the Puritans worked well, a theocratic environment. A theocracy is defined as government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided. According the John Winthrop, who was to be their governor for some number of years, it seemed that their grand purpose in A...
The Southern colonists had a mixture of religions as well, including Baptists and Anglicans. The original laws of the colonies had forced people to attend a specific type of church and to pay taxes that helped fund the churches. Later, colonists decided to become more religiously tolerant and to separate church from state. The idea of the "separation of church and state" first appeared when Baptists in Virginia wanted to have religious tolerance from the Anglicans living in the area. Today, our society seems to be uncomfortable when perspectives of faith are included in the consideration of public policy. For most colonists, however, the idea of faith being separated from community and governmental activities would have been a strange thing. They believed that community life and government were precisely where faith needed to be practiced if church members were going to be faithful to God’s covenant with them as His people. Religion played a huge role in the shaping of the original thirteen colonies. The part that religion and the church plays in today’s society has become quite different from the role it played in the early