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How were the 17th and 18th century English colonies alike and regionally distinctive?
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The 17th and 18th-century English colonies shared agrarian economies, English political traditions, and a degree of autonomy. However, regional distinctions were prominent. The southern colonies relied on cash crops and slavery, forming a planter elite. New England, influenced by Puritanism, focused on trade and manufacturing due to its harsh climate. The middle colonies were noted for their ethnic and religious diversity. All colonies faced survival challenges, maintained royal governance, and practiced some form of representative government.
If you look at the American colonies collectively, in general they are divided into three zones: the New England colonies, the middle colonies, and the southern colonies. There are certain similarities that run across them. For one thing, they were all agrarian economies. This is important, because even though New England might be known for its comparatively extensive trade and manufacturing, the vast majority of its population was still made up farmers. Additionally, all of the colonies were governed under English political and legal traditions, with the colonists holding a shared loyalty to England itself. Finally, because of the distances separating the Americas and Europe, all of the colonies tended to have a great deal of practical autonomy—self government is a repeating theme in the colonial era. All this being said, there were significant differences between them too.
The southern colonies featured the cash crop economy, and also the entrenchment...
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of slavery. It was also in the South that you see the rise of a planter elite. The New England colonies, by contrast, had a very strong religious impetus behind it. New England was originally colonized and dominated by the puritans. Disagreeing with the church of England, the English Puritans set out to create their own society, according to their own religious strictures. This context was something very specific to New England. Finally, the middle colonies had a particularly diverse population, both in terms of ethnicity and religious background.
There were ways the English colonies were similar and regionally different in the 1600s and 1700s. Similarities included heritage, government, needs, and concerns. Differences included jobs, use of slaves, and climate.
There were similarities for the English colonies. They all faced similar needs and concerns when they began. Would they survive in the new land? How would they deal with Native Americans? Would they get everything they needed from England? Another similarity is that the King of England ran most of the colonies. In other words, they were royal colonies. All of the colonies had some form of representative government. They were English citizens and believed they had the same rights as the people who lived in England. They wanted to continue to follow English ways of living and traditions.
There were also differences between the English colonies. The people who lived in the South were most likely farmers. Those who lived in New England were more likely to run businesses, fish, manufacture things, and build ships. The reason for the differences in jobs was the climate was different in each region. New England had a cold climate with rocky soil that wasn’t good for farming. The South had a warm, mild climate with fertile soil that was great for farming. As a result, the South used many more slaves than New England did. Most slaves were used on the southern farms.
There were similarities and differences between the colonies while they were part of the British Empire. Some of the similarities and many of the differences continued after they became independent.