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
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.
The New England, Middle and Southern colonies were all English ruled, but yet very different. Among their distinctions, was the geography which played an important role in shaping these colonies. New England attracted Puritan farmers who wanted to separate from the Catholic Church. But because of the bone dry soil in the North, these colonists found they couldn't continue with their traditional ways of farming. However, with the immense amounts of water that surrounded them, they found that they could fish and trade. The Middle colonies on the other, hand had a moderate amount of everything. The fertile soil and the major seaports such as Philadelphia and New York, allowed these Middle colonists to make a living any way they saw fit. This led to the brisk development of the Middle Seaboard . Unlike the Middle and Northern colonies, the Southern colonies had large amounts of fertile land allowing for the development of large plantations. Because farming the plantations was the economic thrust for the South, towns and cities developed slowly. Thusly Geography greatly affected the lifestyles of these regions in the New World.
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
Just like their religions, Massachusetts gave more power to the people and Virginia gave power to England. In the New England Handout, Mailer describes the difference further, “Unlike in Virginia where a governor is elected from a faraway company in London, and after 1624, by the Crown itself, the ‘freemen’ of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire elect their own governors.” (1) This information describes the contrast in the way a governor gets elected. In Massachusetts, the “freemen”, men who own land, get to vote for their governor, while Virginia’s governor gets appointed by the crown. Virginia’s government also consisted of the Governing Council, rich elites controlling everything, and the House of Burgesses, upper middle-class landowners. The main reason the governments of these colonies differ is the fact that the charter of Virginia created by the Virginia Company resides in England, or in other words it is controlled by the crown. On the other hand, Massachusetts’s charter, created by the Massachusetts Bay Company, resides in the colony, so the colony self-governs itself. This brings forth another comparison of the two colonies; the reason why they were founded.
The political difference between the New England and Chesapeake region was that New England government associate more with religious matter than the Chesapeake government. The New England regions included the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Plymouth colony, the New Hampshire colony, Maine colony, Connecticut colony, and Rhode Island colony. Massachusetts colony for example was governed as a theocracy government. As the first governor of Massachusetts colony once stated in A Model of Christian Charity (Written on board the Arbella on the Atlantic Ocean, 1630),"we shall be as a city upon a hill" a holy commonwealth that could be served as an example community to the rest of the world. The Massachusetts Bay colony placed great importance on religious matters. Only the church member were allowed to vote or held office position. Those who held office position would enforce the law requiring attendance at services. Jamestown, Maryland and the Carolinas were some colonies in the Chesapeake regions. The governments in these regions were less concerned about...
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