French & American War and the Revolution

By the 1700s, it was clear that the New World had begun to differentiate between its regions. Even though the colonists shared England as their common origin, they were extremely diverse in their social and family structures, economy, and governmental policies. In addition, ssince one of the primary reasons for the colonists coming to the New World was religious freedom, it is not difficult to see that most all of their differences revolved around religion in one form or another.

Due to richness of the soil in the Chesapeake area, the colonists were able to excel agriculturally. Their main product became tobacco and they became experts at exporting this commodity back to England. However, in order to be successful in this area, the colonists needed a great deal of manual labor. Consequently, they imported many slaves to help on their plantations. Under this structure, they became very agriculturally successful.

On the other hand, the soil in New England was too rocky to produce any crops. Interestingly, this colony evolved much like the colonies of ancient Greeks in that since their soil was so rocky; they started to base their economy around fishing. The area of New England became known for fishing. Eventually, the economy became much more industrial and heavily dependant upon trade and the importation of goods. Because they did not do as much manual labor with the land, they did not import as many slaves as the Chesapeake area. Instead, most of the labor in New England was based on specialized trades, such as blacksmiths, ironworkers and textile workers.

A very important reason for their differences was their religious beliefs. The New England colonists were religious extremists. Family played a very important part in those beliefs and as a result, when they first colonized the New England colonies they brought mostly families with them. This aided with the rise of their population. Whereas, the Chesapeake colonies, which was founded by individuals who primarily came to the New World for economic freedom, brought predominately men with them. Consequently, they had very little population growth throughout their colonies. As a result, the northern colonies were much more populated and settled than those in the south.

Additionally, New England colonies had their laws based around their religion. They were much harsher on their citizens than in the Chesapeake area. For example, if you were accused of being a witch and found guilty, which the majority of those accused were, you were sentenced to death. Also, if you