English Colonization Summary

The New England and Chesapeake colonists settled in the new world for different reasons like religious freedoms in the North and quick profits in the South.

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.

Today, the United States of America is a very racially and religiously diverse society. We saw the seeds of diversity being sown in the early days of colonization when the Chesapeake and New England colonies grew into distinctive societies. Even though both regions were primarily English, they had similarities as well as striking differences. The differentiating characteristics among the Chesapeake and New England colonies developed due to geography, religion, and motives for colonial expansion.

The immigrants that settled the colonies of Chesapeake Bay and New England came to the New World for two different reasons. These differences were noticeable in social structure, economic outlook, and religious background. As the colonies were organized the differences were becoming more and more obvious and affected the way the communities prospered. These differences are evident from both written documents from the colonists and the historical knowledge of this particular period in time.

First Generations: Women in Colonial America delivers a broad analysis over American women in the colonial period. It is evident that married women in colonial America were not considered equal to their husbands or to society in general. The rights of American women have come a long way in regards to civil rights. The control a woman in early Colonial America had over her own life was linked to race, religion, and class. Berkin organizes the first chapters according to race and region. Other chapters are organized by African American women, New England, and the middle colonies, Native American Women, and white women in the Chesapeake. Within each chapter, Berkin gives details about one woman from the region. European, Indian, and African women of seventeenth and eighteenth-century America were protectors of their native land, pioneers on the frontier, like-minded immigrants, and courageous slaves. They were also, as most scholars tend to leave out, just as important as men in shaping American culture and history.

Although the Chesapeake and New England colonies were the earliest English colonies to flourish in the New World, they were both extremely different in the ways that they developed. Similarities between the colonies can be found, but the colonies were mostly different. The colonies differed most in religion, society, culture, economy, and their relationships with the American Indians of the region. The reasons for such differences can be understood by realizing that the colonies were settled by incredibly different people who possessed different cultures, religious beliefs, and motivations for settling in their respective colonies in the first place. The Chesapeake and New England colonies had similarities and differences in their development, including how each colony affected nearby American Indians. Their differences and similarities can be understood by analyzing each colony’s geography, economy, religions, and cultures.

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.

In the past historians have written that the regions of Chesapeake and New England are extremely different, but still have something in common. Accordingly, they are found in their times of origination, they were both founded around the same time and also by the same people. Ultimately, they have both accepted Protestantism and the colonies both speak English. One major similarity is that they haven't forgotten who and where they came from, England, they still pledge allegiance to one crown. Like any other colony, they have created a society where both have been slow to establish social status. Unlike New England in Chesapeake a governing power tried to create a feudal system but the colonies shit it down quite fast. Notably they both have put themselves into a social group and no outside force trying to sway the people's social ranking placement.

A community is a group of people who work together towards a common goal and share a common interest. Lack of such a quality can and most likely will cause a struggling town or city to fall into the extremes of poverty and wealth. The New England community was so strong and so supportive in comparison to that of the Chesapeake Bay, that it is no wonder they developed into two distinctly different cultures before the year 1700. The Chesapeake region developed into a land of plantations and money-driven owners, with the elite wealthy, almost no middle class, and those in poverty creating the population. New England, on the other hand, had developed into a religion and family based society comprised of mostly middle class families by 1700.

While the Chesapeake and New England colonies were similarly the earliest successful English colonies in North America, the colonies developed quite independently of each other. When looking at the differences and similarities in the development of these colonies, it seems as though the differences far outweigh the similarities. These colonies varied in regards to their religious beliefs, their societal organization, culture, economy, and relationships with local American Indians. The differences and similarities between the colonies can be further understood by analyzing the individual colonies’ geography, economy, religious beliefs, and cultural practices.

The social interactions that the New England and Chesapeake colonies had between Indians and their own people were very different due to alternate motives. Documents A and H each show the steps taken in order to achieve social unity. It is obvious that the two colonies didn’t have the best relationship with the Indians, but both colonies had different approaches when it came to mending relationships. Bacon’s Rebellion was a revolt against Governor Berkeley of Virginia in 1676 that started due to Berkeley's resistance of not fighting against the Indians because of the fur trade. This showed that the Chesapeake colony would rather take a better economy as opposed to stable social interactions,

In 1419, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal began the period of time known as the “Age of Exploration”. Europe’s leading superpowers, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, and England, all competed for colonization in unknown territories. Samuel de Champlain colonized along the St. Lawrence River in 1608, Henry Hudson of Holland established Albany in 1609, and Spain established colonies in Mexico and Mesoamerica. In 1607, England established its first colony in North America around the Chesapeake Bay, and nearly a decade later established a second colony in present-day New England. Both New England and the Chesapeake were founded by the British around the same time; however, both colonies developed a different economy, government, and many

Edmund S. Morgan’s famous novel American Slavery, American Freedom was published by Norton in 1975, and since then has been a compelling scholarship in which he portrays how the first stages of America began to develop and prosper. Within his researched narrative, Morgan displays the question of how society with the influence of the leaders of the American Revolution, could have grown so devoted to human freedom while at the same time conformed to a system of labor that fully revoked human dignity and liberty. Using colonial Virginia, Morgan endeavors how American perceptions of independence gave way to the upswing of slavery. At such a time of underdevelopment and exiguity, cultivation and production of commodities were at a high demand. Resources were of monumental importance not just in Virginia, but all over North America, for they helped immensely in maintaining and enriching individuals and families lives. In different ways, people in colonies like Virginia’s took advantage of these commodities to ultimately establish or reestablish their societies.

Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia by John Ruston Pagan highlights the paradoxical nature of life in the colonial times and how it aided the creation of American law. The four cases that resulted from the fornication between Anne Orthwood and John Kendall gave present historians a vivid image of how English settlers modified English traditions and began to create customs of their own. Furthermore, it was able to reveal some of the cultural, economical and political values in the colony of Virginia such as tobacco and unfree labor. They helped reveal the reasons why legal systems were created in the first place by documenting the prolongation of social order as well as the preservation of self interest. Anne Orthwood’s Bastard critically examines the role of unfree labor, women, and law in colonial life which perfectly aligns with the deeper question of what values helped shape the nation’s founding in the 17th century Chesapeake.

British colonialism began in the early fifteen hundreds and even continues today with the British rule of the British Virgin Islands.  For centuries, literature has served as a type of historical documentation of colonization as many authors wrote about colonization from both a colonized and a colonizer's point of view. During colonization, and post-colonization, the physical environment of each colony was changed. Using references to A Small Place, A Passage to India, and Robinson Crusoe, I will provide examples of the physical changes to the colonized societies made by England and discuss the reactions of the colonized people.