Chesapeake Colonies Vs New England Colonies Essay

715 Words2 Pages

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the English were crazed with colonizing the Americas. Up until 1700, the Colonies were very similar, but by 1700 the New England and Chesapeake regions were forming into two different societies: the northern New England Colonies and the southern Chesapeake Colonies. Their differences shaped the colonies economically, politically, and agriculturally.

The New England Colonies included Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Haven, Plymouth, and Rhode Island. New England stood north of the Chesapeake region. The settlers of New England were mostly Puritan families with many skills who came to the colony for importantly religious freedom and secondly a better life. The political structure of New England was mainly a religious hierarchy, with the General Court as an assembly. The town meetings practiced power on the local level. There was not a huge gap between the rich and poor classes in New England. The towns had “self-sufficient” farms, market, lumber, fish, and rich soil for livestock. The workforce in New England had free labor, lifelong servitude, and some slavery, but not much. In the beginning, the relationship of the colonizers in New England and the Native Americans was mutual because the Indians helped out the settlers survive their first winters, but as competition for land grew, the greater …show more content…

Even their differences were much more diverse than that concerning everyday life. Their dissimilarities started with one difference: the reason for the colonists came to the regions. In the Chesapeake region, settlers rushed to the region to find an economic gain from its agriculture; however New England’s colonizers came to the region in order to run away from the religious persecution in England. These two important aspects influenced the regions to become the two distinct societies that they are in

Open Document