Settlements Of The British Essay Research Paper

Settlements Of The British Essay, Research Paper

Many factors led to the diversity found in the British settlements in America. More than simply for religious freedom, economics played a large role in the settlement of various geographic regions in North America. Like the Spanish and the French however, the first successful English settlement Jamestown, was dependent on the trade of tobacco back to England for its success. The differences in the settlers reason for moving to the colonies can be explained by where they decided to settle. The first colonies were built in areas that the colonists thought would best support new towns, and where the Indians happened to be helpful enough to assist the newly formed towns in survival. Both in climate and in geography, the northern coast of North America was far different from the Chesapeake. (63)

The south was a much more favorable region to plant and grow crops, for the land in the north would not grow plants such as tobacco. It was in this line of reasoning that those who came to North America came not in search of trade and riches, but in search of religious freedom. It became a haven for Protestant dissenters from England, who gave the colonies of the North a distinctive character. (63) Conversely, those in the south planted cash crops and were usually not fleeing religious persecution.

The Pilgrims were the first of the English to form a colony in New England. They were English Separatists who fled England to establish their own church. Because there was no land suitable for the Pilgrims in Europe they, backed financially by Virginia Company landed in Massachusetts Bay in 1620. However, because most families raised their own crops and kept their own livestock, they produced little to trade with the Indians and were always deeply in debt to their investors. Although it was not the financial success their investors had hoped, the Pilgrims succeeded in establishing the separate church and community that they had hoped for.

In 1629 many Puritans left England to form a city on a hill in New England. Backed by the Massachusetts Bay Company, a force of 200 settlers left for a fishing settlement on Massachusetts Bay they named Salem. Soon however (1643), New England was filled with 20,000 people and had spread seventy-five miles west into the Connecticut River Valley. Using a loophole in their charter, Puritan leaders transferred company operations to America in 1629, and within a few years they had transformed the company into a civil government. (65) The motivation for religious freedom eventually shifted to a religious expansion in which the settlers wished to rapidly expand their territory by taking advantage of the Indians unused lands. Soon the colonists were forcing their religion on nearby Indian tribes and were even punishing them for working on the Sabbath. Many of the coastal Algonquians eventually surrendered themselves and were placed under English control. Because the Puritans believed that they earned their place in heaven, they were very hardworking. With very few servants, much pressure was placed on the children.

The Puritan family life was strict. Parents ruled over their children and chastised the spirit out of them. Men worked the fields and were responsible for the success of the households. Women however, were the heads of the households. The high male to female ratio also made marriage a problem. Almost all of the marriages that took place were arranged by the parents of the two to be wed. The Puritans may have emigrated to North American in order to practice Christianity, but they showed no tolerance for people of different religions. The Puritan Commonwealth that was formed in England tended to England and not the colonies. This period of self-rule led to more colonial assemblies that were more powerful and resistant to outside rule. However when Cromwell died in 1658 the Puritan new order died with him.

The North American colonies were also not the huge financial success the southern colonies were to be. The colonies in the south such as those in Carolina had one main difference between their northern counterparts: slavery. Such a practice was rare in the northern colonies but was critical to the large, labor intensive plantations in the south. Slavery itself played a role in the social, economic and political climate in both the north and the south. In 1663 the first Restoration charter was issued which called for the establishment of the new colony of Carolina stretching from Virginia south to Spanish Florida. (70) The plantation owners soon learned that their large plantations could not function without the help of slaves. In South Carolina, slaves were imported from the English controlled Barbados to work on the plantations. These slaves soon made up a majority of the population in South Carolina. It was not long before slavery was to become the staple of the economy in the entire south. In 1662 colonial officials declared that children inherited the status of their slave mothers and in 1669 it was stated that a master could kill a slave during punishment and would not be regarded as a felon. Finally in 1705 all the slave laws were gathered together in the Virginia Slave Code.

This code of laws protecting the master s rights to his property became the model for other colonies. By 1770 more than 250,000 slaves labored in the colonies of the Upper South and