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Compare And Contrast Jamestown And American Colonies

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In the early 17th century, English countries were looking for new land to control. This was due to overpopulation and a dearth food supply. The British needed a new place to claim as their own so they could accommodate their ever-growing populace and after Christopher Columbus expedited North American exploration of the Eastern world, many citizens shipped off to form the Jamestown colony in 1607, marking the beginning of an exploration era. By the end of the seventeenth century, as many as 295,000 people shipped off to the Atlantic coast of North America (Pursuit of Happiness). As the colonists expanded past Jamestown, there were noticeable differences in the two areas were colonists lived. They developed differently through the century because the contrasting foundations they were morally different. The New Englanders fixated on seeking personal piety and a strong community while the Southern colonies' motives predicated mercantilism.

During this time of great migration, there were two sections of the English colonies in America most seeking a new life settled in. The southern area of the east coast in the state of Virginia and the New England area that encompasses Massachusetts. From the birth of the Jamestown, Virginia settlement in 1607 to 1660, approximately fifty thousand settlers and about the same amount of settlers arrived between 1630 and the 1660s to Massachusetts (Pursuit of Happiness). There was a multitude of reasons for a person to uproot themselves from their English home and disembarked to a new land, but most either came for mercantilism or religious reasons, all seeking a new and better life in the Western hemisphere. The first one-fourth of the seventeenth century transmigration was mostly to the Virginia colony and specifically to Jamestown, the first everlasting settlement in America. Although most of Jamestown’s historical documentation came from an eyewitness account of the colony’s development from Captain John Smith, his understanding of the events occurring around him could be misinterpretations of normal Native American culture and the North American environment. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that English citizens who risked the harsh voyage to the Americas were looking for

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