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Compare And Contrast Chesapeake And New England Colonies

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The Chesapeake and New England were some of the first areas to be colonized by the English in America. The Chesapeake is what we now know as Maryland and Virginia, named so in reference to the Chesapeake Bay. New England, now divided into four states, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, was named in homage to the mother country England, as a promise to be a “New” England where the Puritan settlers could worship as they pleased.[1] Though the two bear many similar characteristics—they were both English colonies, facing the obstacle of the Native Americans, attempting to settle and create new societies—there are many more differences which set the colonies apart, economically, socially, and geographically. For example, …show more content…

Physically, it can be characterized as cold, with bad soil; definitely not ideal for commercial agriculture. However, due to the cold, there is a lessened risk for diseases like malaria and yellow fever which could wipe out whole societies.[1] This limited the economy agriculturally speaking, but led New Englanders to pursue other means of business, including lumber, fishing, fur trade, shipping, and much more.[2] The Chesapeake, located near the ocean, just barely brushing the deep South, can be physical characterized by its rocky, hilly land, with moderate temperatures and close access to Atlantic trade routes. Beyond the shore, there are steep hills and mountains, sprinkling off from the Appalachian Mountain Range. My great grandparents owned half of a mountain in eastern Virginia, where they farmed chickens. As children, my cousins and I used to go out and help remove rocks from the vegetable garden. We could be out there for eight hours and still not dispose of all the rocks in the small 12 by 12 foot patch of land. This rocky environment left very little opportunity for cash crops such as cotton, corn, wheat, and soy beans, but was perfect for tobacco, a much heartier crop which requires less nutrients from the soil to thrive. This secured tobacco as the number one cash crop of the Chesapeake and led to the development of large farms and plantations where the crop could be grown and distributed …show more content…

There are already people there, the Native Americans, who upon being met with violence and hostility, responded to defend their land. This immediately set the Chesapeake colony up for disaster. In New England, the Puritans were also met with resistance and fear towards their arrival. When you try to displace an entire people, that group is likely to respond in a way that is oppositional to their own displacement, and that’s just what they did. However, Attitudes towards the Native Americans was very different between the Chesapeake and New England. Nathaniel Bacon, a Virginia farmer and self declared Governor of the people, despised the Native Americans for limiting his opportunity to own more land. He saw them as an obstacle that threatened his quality of life and thus had to be destroyed.[1/3] This characterized the vast opinion of the Natives in Chesapeake society. In New England however, Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan woman concerned with keeping God appeased, feared that the Natives would test Puritan faith, and lead to the fall of Puritan society. Like Bacon, she wanted them gone, but found moral issue with the slaughter of so many people. Not one to step out of line, she along with many of the Puritans lived in fear, praying for the Native Americans to disappear. In the Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson: about the sovereignty and goodness of

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