John Winthrop states that the Puritan goal was to form "a city upon a hill", which would represent a "pure" community, where Christianity could be pursued (Document A). In New England, religion was considered to be most important thing while the colonists that landed at Jamestown in 1607 were not as religiously inclined as the Puritans. The History of Virginia, written by the leader of the colony, John Smith in 1624, describes how hard it was in the first few years at Jamestown (Document F). There was little food, new diseases, lots of quarreling between the settlers and they had many problems with the Indians (Document H). The colony was almost devastated before it had a chance to even be settled.
As being one of the earliest settlements of the new world, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, settled by Puritans, was to be a colony that many others would look at in either disgust, or idolization. In that, they wanted to not only find a new land to freely practice their religion, and purify their church, but they also wanted to create a pure community altogether to be the light of the New World in the eyes of others. These colonies in New England portrayed equality to great extent, as they wanted “everyone [to]
One of the bigger differences socially was the people that came to the colonies and the later effect that it evolved to with the future of their colony. In New England, most of the people that came to the colonies were families that wanted to leave England so they could freely practice their religion and focusing on building a well-built society in their colony (A). In the Chesapeake region the colonies were focusing on bringing in money for England, they first were there to find gold like the Spanish did one hundred years earlier (F). Once they found out that there was no gold to bring in a decent enough of a profit, they started to grow tobacco since the price of the product was dropping. Once they started to plant the colonists realized that the plant would just flourish on the new and fertile soil, they then had the production of that plant to feed that economy for their early settlements.
The colonists tried different outlets to produce income for the colony such as silk, wheat, glass, timber, and cotton, before discovering tobacco’s profitability. Nicotiana rustica, the native tobacco raised in Virginia before the colonists arrived, was not favored by the Europeans. John Rolfe, however, was the first man to successfully raise a strand that the Europeans embraced. By contrast, Plymouth had more success by implementing a variety of cash resources for the colony. Its largest profits came from fur trading with Maine and the Dutch of New Amsterdam.
But instead of docking in Virginia they ended up landing in New England, and so it marked the beginning of Puritan settlement New England. Others desired a change in lifestyle, despite originating from the same area, England, Members of the Anglican or Church of England, these men had no reason to search and establish a new way of life, instead they wished to fortify and make their lives better for materialistic reasons as opposed to religion. From the beginning New England and Chesapeake settlers started off creating their colonies disparately. (Document C) Since settlers came to the Chesapeake with the intention of not staying for long, they traveled alone, not with families. At a six to one ration of mostly men, they left England to seek profit from gold.
John Winthrop reflects this in Doc. A by saying their failure would “open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of…God.” The Chesapeake settlers, however, had similar yet, separate, goals based on the economies. People’s main motives were not religious, but to “dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load gold,” as per doc. F. This resulted in competition, rather than bonding, over the settlement. Document B reflects that people settled in New England with their families, whereas Doc.
The development of society in New England was based on religious motive, and the idea of being part of a community. Document 1 shows how they believed that they should maintain a familiar commerce together, and join together as members of a community. John Winthrop, who was a leading figure in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay colony states how they should be as a city upon a hill, setting an example and being a model of Christian charity. Winthrop expected that Puritans should uphold gentleness, patience, and liberty. In Virginia, people were gold seekers, and their main motives was to find gold and become wealthy.
Analyze the extent to which religious freedom existed in the British North American colonies prior to 1700. Prior to 1700 there was some form of religious tolerance in the Southern and Middle colonies while the New England colonies showed strict religious intolerance. There was hardly any religious tolerance in the New England colonies which was inhabited mostly by Puritans. After separating from the Church of England many of them moved to the New World in order to escape prosecution. The forming of towns and communities together with their strict beliefs, lead to this superior number of Puritans.
By 1700 in English North America, there was an establishment of a unique Anglo-American society in which religion, race and ethnicity, agriculture, and socio-economic class were fundamental in its creation. Although these factors collectively aided in the foundation of Anglo-America, the religion of the colonists played the most important role in this process. Religion was a central motif in the inception of Anglo-American life. Without religion, the motive for a large amount of immigrants to migrate would have been non-existent; making the colonies nothing more than a tiny hiccup in the English historical timeline. All of these factors were brought out in David Freeman Hawke’s Everyday Life in Early America, a detailed chronology of the life of the colonists.
Europeans began the colonization of America in the early 1600's. In the beginning they all came to escape from something in Europe, and while there were many various reasons for leaving, most were fleeing from religious persecution. The other main attraction was economic prosperity in a new world rich with resources, to either be sent back to Europe, or to simply use here and make a new life for themselves, better than that which they had back home. The English colonies of the Chesapeake and New England were similar in terms of who founded them ( English settlers), but the similarities pretty much stopped there when it came to reasons for settling, and once they had established themselves how their economies and societies were set up. They differed greatly in economic structure, religious beliefs, societal structure, and also population make-up.