Comparing Pritan New America, And Puritan New England

While the individuals in the Virginia colony and Puritan New England immigrated from the same country, they both shared unique differences while maintaining some similarities. The Virginia colony provided a large source of tobacco after John Rolf was able to plant some seeds that he took from Spain. Around this time period, John Winthrop and a group of Puritans settled north of Jamestown in order to escape religious tensions in England. Puritan New England had a large emphasis on religion, while the Virginia colony was primarily focused on economic gains from cash crops, like tobacco. Furthermore, both of these locations had a form of representative government, in which land owning males could vote. Taking into consideration that Puritan

In New England, yeoman farms had much more power than yeoman farmers in the Virginia colony. However, in the Virginia colony, this was not the case. Once John Rolf discovered the prosperity of tobacco, many large plantations formed with the intention to sell most of the crop back to England as an export. This worked for a period of time, until eventually the supply of tobacco exceeded the demand and this lowered the price dramatically. According to slide ten on Mr. Kurth’s presentation on the Jamestown colony, the amount of tobacco exported per year jumped from 20,000 pounds in 1618, to a whopping 1,500,000 pounds in 1629. According to slide eleven of the same presentation, the price of tobacco dropped from thirty pounds of pennies (sterling) to under three pounds of pennies (sterling) in approximately ten years. This rendered farmers unable to profit off of the sale of tobacco and eventually, the sale cost of tobacco dropped below the point where farms could even break even on selling the crop. Regardless, a so-called “Plantation Elite” formed in Virginia and this heavily reduced the power of yeoman

Religion played an extremely large role in Puritan society, but not as much of on in Virginia. Also, many farmers in Puritan society were yeoman farms, while most of the farmers in Virginia were part of a plantation elite that had many indentured servants, and later on chattel slavery. Furthermore, both of these colonies had a form of representative government where land owning males had the right to vote, however, town meetings in Puritan society were a form of direct representation, while the House of Burgess in Virginia was an elected representative