America, one of the youngest countries in the world, partly owes its success to the events that took place in the northeastern coast in the 1600s. It was great risk for English to colonize in America, a foreign and faraway land, from which they did not know what to expect. At that time, America was dominated by Dutch and French traders and a native population not-so-friendly with most of the settlers. The colonies in Massachusetts and Chesapeake, located at the main crossroads of English, Dutch, and French settlers and natives, play a significant role in the development of the future world power. Although today the east coast enjoys a harmonious and successful lifestyle, in the early days of our Nation’s birth, the Massachusetts and Chesapeake communities were very distinct from each other in development, economy, and the population.
The Chesapeake colonies were the first to establish in North America along the mid sections of the east coast. In the early 1600s, a group of London investors, Virginia Company, sent a hundred men to build a fort named Jamestown, in honor of the King. This became the first permanent English settlement in North America. Mostly gentlemen type figures were in Jamestown. They were inexperienced, trying to understand how to build a thriving colony. Later in 1632, King Charles I granted 10 million acres of land to the Calvert family who named their land Maryland, after Calvert’s wife. Rulers of Maryland were a Catholic minority in England. They formed the only English colony in North America with a significant Catholic minority. Maryland was a proprietary colony in which the Calverts controlled the land and created feudal manors that would provide them with money. The majority of the English migrants were ...
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...ements without proper agreement. They believed the land was “unused,” whereas the Native Americans’ way of nomadic life was to let nature replenish the land after they used it. The English forced them to sign “quit-claims,” documents that forced natives to give up their land when they signed it. The natives tried to resist these harsh actions, but were unable to defend themselves due to the epidemic of smallpox killing most of their population. The Pequots, a nearby Indian tribe, raged war against the English and Naragansetts in which the English acted very brutally.
These harsh yet significantly different conditions forced the Massachusetts and Chesapeake communities to develop their own self-sufficient governments, strong economies, and freedom-loving populations. Later, these two communities formed the core of the nation known as the United States of America.
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Show MoreThe New England and the Southern colonial settlements were united in several areas that created the opportunity for each group of colonies to grow. However, these groups of colonies took divergent paths when it came to the founders’ motives to settle the New World, the importance of religious and social orientation, economic approaches and political developments. These different approaches were ultimately successful beyond the early founders’ expectations.
silence. Living from “hand to mouth” induced the gold miners to only be able to
...y robbing the Indians of their land, the English upset and hurt many of the Native American tribes, which lead to many disputes over ownership of the land.
When the English settled into the New World, they were split up into two sections, the Chesapeake region and the New England region. Although the English settled both, the two regions were severely different from each other when they were brought about. The New England and Chesapeake colonies differed in three ways: their reason for venturing over, economy, and population. These major differences were what shaped our nation today and what will continue shaping our nation in the future.
The land of the Native Indians had been encroached upon by American settlers. By the
The English had two main colonies in the new world, Jamestown and Plymouth. The first colony was Jamestown, established in Virginia in 1607. Jamestown was settled by Captain John Smith, and was named after King James I. Tobacco was the main export of Jamestown, and became the basis of the Jamestown economy, sending more than 50,000 lbs of the plan back to Europe by 1618 (textbook 46). Jamestown had a very rocky start, many colonists dying in the first few years of the settlement, and the settlers had many problems with natives. Shortly after the arrival of English colonists the Natives attacked them, and were finally forced back by a canon from the English. A very uneasy truce was finally settled between the natives, called the Powhatans, and the English (textbook 44-5). Economic growth and expanding their territories were the main priorities of the English in the Jamestown colonies.
The Chesapeake region and New England colonies greatly differed in their development of their two distinct societies. The Chesapeake region was a loosely fitted society with little connection with each plantation while the New England colonies had tightly knitted communities with a sort of town pride. The difference in unity and the reason for this difference best explain the significant disparity between the dissimilar societies.
The seventeenth century was a time of great change in colonial America. Virginia, the first colony in the Chesapeake region, was established in 1624. Plymouth, the first colony in New England, was established in 1620. These two regions developed in distinct ways, but were intertwined because of their ties to England. The Chesapeake colonies were established for economic reasons, as the Virginia Company of London looked to mass-produce cash crops in the new world. The New England colonies, however, were created to be a religious haven for those who opposed the English church. Both regions developed economic and political systems that catered to the desires of the respective populations and the geographical conditions.
Between the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 and the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the most important change that occurred in the colonies was the emergence of society quite different from that in England. Changes in religion, economics, politics and social structure illustrate this Americanization of the transplanted Europeans.
Although New England and the Chesapeake region were both settled largely by the people of English origin, by 1700 the regions had evolved into two distinct societies. The reasons for this distinct development were mostly based on the type on people from England who chose to settle in the two areas, and on the manner in which the areas were settled.
While both the people of the New England region and of the Chesapeake region descended from the same English origin, by 1700 both regions had traveled in two diverse directions. Since both of these groups were beset with issues that were unique to their regions and due to their exposure to different circumstances, each was forced to rethink and reconstruct their societies. As a result, the differences in the motivation, geography, and government in the New England and Chesapeake regions caused great divergence in the development of each.
...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.
During the late 16th century and into the 17th century, European nations rapidly colonized the newly discovered Americas. England in particular sent out numerous groups to the eastern coast of North America to two regions. These two regions were known as the Chesapeake and the New England areas. Later, in the late 1700's, these two areas would bond to become one nation. Yet from the very beginnings, both had very separate and unique identities. These differences, though very numerous, spurred from one major factor: the very reason the settlers came to the New World. This affected the colonies in literally every way, including economically, socially, and politically.
From its earliest settlement in the early 1600s by small groups of British individuals to the conclusion of the American Revolution, when some five million people were poised to sprawl across a continent, British America had a dual economy. On the one hand, it was a colonial economy that depended on its ability to export commodities to the home country of England, the other colonies of the Western Hemisphere, and the eager buyers from foreign empires. Exporting, in turn, fostered deepening networks of credit, ability to import necessary and desirable goods from other sources, and systems of payment throughout the Atlantic world. On the other hand, British Americans developed a thriving internal economy in which they cleared land, grew much
Although the New England and Chesapeake regions of the United States were both settled by the English in the 1600s, they developed into two very different communities based mainly on their geographical location and religious devotion. Unlike their European rivals, the English founded colonies in North America.