Chesapeake/New England Colony
United States History 1993 Document Based QuestionDuring the late sixteenth century and into the seventeenth century, European nations rapidly colonized the newly discovered Americas. England chartered groups to two main regions of the New World: the Chesapeake and the New England areas. The Chesapeake region of the colonies included Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia; New England was north of the Chesapeake and included Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. Unemployment, as well as a thirst for adventures, for markets, and for religious freedom provided the motives for potential colonists to make the voyage. The colonies differ from each other primarily because of the main reason each colony was founded; however, this principle has affected the colonies economically, politically, and socially.A major difference caused by the founding purposes was the economy of the two regions. Chesapeake settlers traveled to America purely for economic gain; they hoped to find gold, silver, a northwest passage to Asia, and anything that might be worth a profit in Europe (Document F). The Chesapeake economy revolved around the tobacco industry, which paved the way for slave trading.
In fact, New England settlers reproduced much of England's economy by not investing largely in staple crops, but relied on artisan industries like carpentry, shipbuilding, and printing. The fortune-seeking economists in the Chesapeake created a society around this ideal, and the New Englanders promoted a society looking for religious freedom, not economic gain. Entire families migrated to this area due to the reputation the New England colonies had as a place of religious freedom (Document B). Since the economy was based on economic gain, defense was poor due to the lack of available men; the slaves and indentured servants were the majority of the population and they were needed for labor (Document G). This surplus of young men in the area gave women a high status and more privileges than the New England women. Corn, introduced by the Powhatan Indians, also flourished in the South as a staple crop. The church established conditions that focused the colony on the unity of the church, and not on personal wealth (Document A). The majority of the southern population, black slaves, did not attend church making religion a miniscule factor in the Chesapeake. This was simply because New England's focus was not on economic gain. With the boom in the tobacco industry, plantation owners relied on the cheap labor slaves or indentured servants provided. Slave trade relied on the tobacco plantation owners as a market to sell the slaves to. In the Chesapeake, however, the majority of the population consisted of black slaves. New England's motives for colonization were religious in nature and not economic. The Chesapeake and New England attracted different types of settlers, and by 1700 the populations differed enormously. It is because these motives that the Chesapeake and the New England regions of the New World became so different by 1700.
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