English Vs. Spanish/french

AP US History

English Vs. Spanish colonizers

The original settlers in New England and the Chesapeake area were similar in many ways, but by the early 1700s the two regions were quite different. The prime motivation in the Chesapeake area was gaining material wealth and in New England Puritanism was central to their lives. Another distinction is the ratio of males to females and its effects on domestic affairs; the Chesapeake had every few women whereas New England had a stable amount of women able to produce large families. A third notable shift is the growing gap between the have and the have-nots in the Chesapeake. New England did not have such an obvious hierarchy.

The English Puritans that ventured into the Bay colonies were not seeking to become wealthy, they were already fairly prosperous and educated. Their main reason for fleeing Henry the Eighth was to practice Puritanism, a branch of Calvinism, freely with interference of the newly establish official church of Anglicanism. John Winthrop, an influential theologian whom founded Connecticut, makes this clear in a speech entitled A Model of Christian Charity(document A) he thought up while sailing to the colonies from England. He writes;

‘We must knit together as one man… A city upon a hill, with the eyes of all people upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work…and cause him to withdraw his presence…we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.’

It is clear that the original Puritans had no intention of deviating from Winthrop’s words as shown in Document E, a wage and price Regulation in Connecticut, 1676. It states that all prices and wages were to be set at each of the General Courts annually and that neighbors do not enrich themselves by impoverishing others. This is a stark contrast to the attitudes of Virginians of this era, whereas the colony was founded by a company to generate capital in the first place. Captain John Smith, 1624, in Document E describes how useless some of his workers are because of their high hopes of wealth. He states many only had interest in finding gold and had no plans of anything else.

Not only were Chesapeake men of that time frame focused on solely gaining material in sharp contrast to the pious people in the NE, but they also drastically out numbered their womenfolk. Document B gives a long list of the British immigrants bound to New England. All of the men on the list have large families and even servants. These people will later go on to have a generous birthrate and self-populate most of their colonies. Document C, on the other hand, gives a list of men and a few women on their way to Virginia. In addition to having a small amount of females and therefore having a lower birthrate, settlers in the Chesapeake are more likely to die of disease because of the milder climate.