Rhythms of Colonial Life
It is a misconception at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War that the colonists from Massachusetts Bay and Chesapeake Bay regions had solidarity on their side. It is a theme of American patriotism one would like to believe but could not be further from the truth. The truth is the colonies had vast differences. This paper will discuss the environmental and volitional factors that contributed to these differences. Environmental factors include geography, climate and soil. Volitional factors include goals of the founders, decisions concerning land ownership, labor systems, and religious practices. These factors contributed to important demographic and economic changes "in the years between settlement and the War of Independence" (51). Did these changes bring the two colonies closer together or create a larger divide? I believe these changes set in action the characteristics that make each region unique and definitely created a divide in cultural perspective.
Environmental Factors
Environmental factors played a direct role in how colonists from both areas made a living. Massachusetts Bay and Chesapeake Bay vary vastly in geography and climate. While Massachusetts is rocky,...
In Massachusetts the puritans were in a mission to purify the Church of England and were intolerant when it came to religion. Rhode Island viewed church and state as separate entities. The settlers here posed a challenge on the protestant beliefs and therefore granted religious freedom to everyone (Religion Shaping New England and Chesapeake Bay Colonies, 2011). When comparing the settlement of these two colonies it is seen that settlement
(Winthrop) In comparison the works all also demonstrate the extreme difficulty that must have been experienced by the colonists when they sought to move to places where there was no infrastructure. The Plymouth and Jamestown accounts even say something so similar it could have been written about the same place and peoples, "But when they departed, there remained neither tavern, beer house, nor place of relief" (Smith) and "Being thus
Colonial Unrest To be sure, the smattering of colonial unrest that occurred in North America throughout history still echoes and occurs even to this day in some forms. Back in 1676, it started with Bacon's Rebellion in Pennsylvania when there were squabbles about alleged non-payment for services rendered and the wrong group of Indians were attacked in retaliation for one of those squabbles. The latter led to more conflagrations (NPS, 2015).
Also, the land in New England did not allow for vast fields of crops, such as Virginia was blessed with. Small farms were the rule of the day in New England. Another very different part of life for New England was that they had a better relationship with the Indians than the Chesapeake settlers did. The Pokanokets even signed a treaty with the Pilgrims, "and during the colony's first difficult years
Women's Roles In New England During Colonial America Today, women still have not seen an acceptable level of equality compared to their male counterparts. Yet, the struggle for women's rights have improved conditions for modern women tremendously when compared to the roles that the sex was limited to play during the colonial period. In Colonial America, women were often limited to purely caretakers, dealing only with domestic and child raising matters.
England's North American Colonies And The Development Of The Atlantic World Besides the achievements and the colonial rule of the armed forces in the transformation of North Atlantic world, the effects of war cannot be underestimated. The end of the 18th Century saw the Atlantic world benefit both in economic and social terms is ways that paved way for permanent settlement. In the 17th Century, the Atlantic world was still reserved
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