Summary: American Life In The Seventeenth Century

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Chapter IV: American Life in the Seventeenth Century 1) Massachusetts Bay Colony was a healthier place to live than Virginia because life in the American wilderness was a nasty, brutish and short for the earliest Chesapeake settlers. Malaria, dysentery, and typhoid took a cruel toll, cutting ten years off the life expectancy of newcomers from England. Yet despite these hardships, the Chesapeake colonies struggled on. The native-born inhabitants eventually acquired immunity to the killer diseases that had ravaged the original immigrants. 2) The Chesapeake was immensely hospitable to tobacco cultivation. The enormous production of tobacco depressed prices, but colonial Chesapeake tobacco growers responded to falling prices by planting still more acres of tobacco and bringing still more product to market. This caused the need for more labor, which was satisfied through indentured servants, who voluntarily mortgaged their bodies for several years in exchange for transatlantic passage and eventual freedom dues. 3) Slavery existed through indentured…show more content…
Righteous New Englanders prided themselves on being God’s chosen people. They longed boasted that Boston was ‘the hub of the universe.’ 7) The ‘FFVs’ were the First Families of Virginia. A clutch of extended clans, such as the Fitzhughs, the Lees, and the Washingtons, possessed among them horizonless tracts of Virginia real estate, and together they dominated the House of Burgesses. Just before the Revolutionary War, 70 percent of the leaders of the Virginia legislature came from families established before 1690, the famed FFVs. 8) Roundheads was the name given to the supporters of the Parliament during the English Civil War. They fought against King Charles I and his supporters, the Cavaliers. England’s many Puritans were almost invariably Roundhead
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