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Religion in American colonies
Religion in American colonies
The influence of religion on the chesapeake colonies
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The Virginians were better off than the Puritans were, because they had tobacco for a cash crop, they had a longer growing season, and they could trade and sell to England easier than the Puritans could. The Virginians were also more loosely structured than the Puritans, and were allowed to be individual people instead of one large mass.
Smith and Bradford’s ways of leading their colonies were similar, yet so very different.
Smith’s main concern was to make money and be famous. Bradford’s concept was to start a new life, and preach his own, new religion. Both had keeping their people’s health and well being a high priority. The idealistic colony for Bradford was a colony where people were religiously bonded, and kept together by the church. Smith was more interested in profit for himself, and let the people conduct themselves more freely.
One of the main industries that the Virginians had was the harvesting and selling of tobacco. The good thing about this is that the majority of people in the 1700’s used tobacco. Of course the
Puritans also had tobacco, but it was harder to grow up north because of the rocky terrain, and the difference in temperature. The Virginians found that selling tobacco was very profitable, and growing it was relatively simple. It was a fairly easy way to make money, and expended little effort.
The Virginians had a longer growing season than the Puritans did, due to their latitude. The longer growing season not only allowed the Virginians to grow their cash crop tobacco longer, but also enabled them to grow fruits and vegetables longer into the year. This made winter less harsh for the
Virginians. Smith liked the idea of being able to grow longer, because he profited from it.
Bradford was more concerned with keeping his people faithful to God, and well from sickness.
The Puritans had a growing season also, but not as long as the Virginians. The longer the growing season was, the longer money could be made, and produce be harvested.
The Virginians could more readily trade and sell their cash crops to England, because they were partially funded by England. This made trips across the Atlantic less expensive for the
Virginians. Not only did England fund the
Virginians, but also the Virginians were welcomed with open arms, and the Puritans weren’t as much because they sought religious refuge, and were looked upon as outcasts.
Virginia was a better-founded colony due to their
Both the colony of Massachusetts and Virginia were founded by companies looking to make money off the New World, but the founding of Massachusetts was motivated more by religious goals and family dynamics. Erin Bonuso, author of “Colliding Cultures”,
In 1606, King James I created the Virginia Company to attempt to free England from dependence. Both the London and Plymouth group parallels were colonized and developed as English colonies. Despite the fact that the English settlers of the New England and Chesapeake regions had similar colonial development, by the eighteenth century they had become into two, individual societies. The gentries who settled the London group parallels and the Puritans who settled the Plymouth group parallels began to grow differently from the start, as their economical, leadership and social viewpoints arose.
The Jamestown and Plymouth settlements were both settled in the early 1600's. Plymouth and Jamestown were located along the shoreline in Massachusetts and Virginia, respectively. Although both had different forms of government, they both had strong leadership. Jamestown was controlled by the London Company, who wanted to profit from the venture, while the Puritans who settled at Plymouth were self-governed with an early form of democracy and settled in the New World to gain religious freedom. John Smith took charge in efforts to organize Jamestown, and at Plymouth William Bradford helped things run smoothly.
Looking at the early English colonies in the Chesapeake Bay region, it’s clear that the English had not learned any lessons from their experiences at Roanoke. Poor planning, a bad location, unrealistic expectations, flawed leadership, unsuccessful relations with the local Indians, and no hope of finding the mineral wealth the Spanish found in Mexico, all contributed to failure. The first colonists in the Chesapeake region were not only ignorant, lazy and unambitious, but their attempts were hampered before they had begun. However, a solution to these problems was found in a single plant: tobacco. Nevertheless, this cash crop ultimately created numerous problems for the colonists. The ignorance and indolent acts of the Chesapeake colonists to unsuccessfully restore the colony by themselves led to the demise of the colony as a whole especially regarding the planting of agricultural goods for food.
...ere more concerned about the commonwealth of the people due to their strong sense of community. Chesapeake government placed a harsh rule to ensure the survival of the settlers like the colony of Jamestown. New England had a diverse product due to poor soil and cold weather. They engaged in small scale agriculture, fishing, trading and shipbuilding. The Chesapeake regions had a warmer climate therefore it was more suitable to farm. The economic products that the Chesapeake region produced were tobacco and rice. The New England colonies were more of a community than the Chesapeake colonies. One of the reasons was that the settlers New England emigrated as a family and the Chesapeake emigrants were mostly males with the ambition to find gold and to own a large plantation; this resulted in mostly male population without female to enforce a sense of a real community.
In the 17th century, the British colonies still identified themselves as European, but as the colonies expanded and grew more populous, they developed differing geographic, social, and economic systems. This difference between New England, and Chesapeake, is caused by the motivations for settlement between the two regions. While the New England colonies were mainly settled for religious motivations, most notably by the Puritans, the Chesapeake colonies were settled for economic prosperity. Also, while the Chesapeake colonies were mainly settled by individual young men seeking a profit, the New England colonies were settled by families hoping to settle and expand.
Beginning with the idea of independence, Breen explains that the people within society sought no form of constraint by a higher political leader, but at times worked together to make sure their colony was stable Moreover, by understanding their preferences, it is safe to say that they were more comfortable with having the freedom they had from not having a higher ruler. Due to the many immigrants that came in from the European rule, higher classes within the colonies of Virginia sought the opportunity to gain independence. This way, as Breen points out, the gentry were able to control as much land and property as they willed. Consequently, the amount of personal possessions among the people lead into a society built by competitiveness and they obsession of always having
...le and Northern colonies, the Southern rivers did not freeze, therefore commerce was year round. The flip side to having a warm climate, is the increase in growth of bacteria and disease. Consequently, the Southern colonists faced a shorter life span. Women were often left widows leaving them the rights to their husbands' estate. Therefore, women had the opportunity and position to have more power. As a result of this warmer area, agriculture shaped the plantation colonies.
In 1608, a group of Christian separatists from the Church of England fled to the Netherlands and then to the "New World" in search of the freedom to practice their fundamentalist form of Christianity (dubbed Puritanism). The group of people known as the Native Americans (or American Indians) are the aboriginal inhabitants of the Northern and Southern American continents who are believed to have migrated across the Bering land bridge from Asia around 30,000 years ago. When these two societies collided, years of enforced ideology, oppression and guerrilla warfare were begun. The great barriers of religion, ethics and world-views are the three largest factors which lead to the culture clash between the Puritans and the Native Americans.
Edmund S. Morgan's The Puritan Family displays a multifaceted view of the various aspects of Puritan life. In this book, we, the audience, see into the Puritans' lives and are thereby forced to reflect upon our own. The Puritan beliefs and practices were complicated and rather "snobbish," as seen in The Puritan Family.
The soil, being rocky, had to be worked constantly and patiently (Sarcelle, 1965). Patience and persistence were trademarks of Puritan ethics. The lush forests provided for a shipbuilding industry , while the fish provided a source of food (Brinkley, 1995). The New Englanders became fishermen, farmers, lumbermen, shipbuilders, and traders (Sarcelle, 1965).
Though the Puritans, as well as some later groups, fled to the American colonies to escape religious persecution or restrictions, the fact remains that the Puritans had been granted "a charter from King James" for their settlement. Thus, the colonists who came to America for religious reasons were serving the primary purpose of generating profits for the Mother country of England (Boorstin et al.
Edmund Morgan begins American Slavery, American Freedom the Ordeal of Colonial Virginia with a paradox. He presents his readers with the passionate rhetoric of men like Thomas Jefferson: belief in liberty and abhorrance for slavery and reminds us that he, and others like him, were slaveholders. Morgan asserts that the rise in such beliefs accompanied and in fact were dependent upon slavery. He claims that this contradiction is "American" and it is important, as Americans, that we understand its origins and development (5).
Our colony is Virginia, a great colony located on the east coast of North America.(http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/Virginia/VirginiaNameOrigin.html)
Puritan ideas on religion and Native Americans. The Puritan belief structure was built around the idea of treating one another as brothers, loving one another and having compassion. The Puritans also believed everyone should be virtuous to one another. The Puritans themselves did not treat the Native Americans this way.