Chapter II and III Response Questions

Chapter II Response Questions

1. European societies differed from one another in many ways. One way was that each of the colonies had different motives and such. The Chesapeake colonies were settled primarily for the sake of the establishing a settlement in the new world. The people spent valuable time looking for gold instead of farming. The New Englanders on the other hand wasted no time in working. Their reason for coming over was to escape religious prosecution. There was also a difference in the type of people that came over. Many English people were quite wary of the New World, after they had heard of the disappearance at Roanoke. Therefore since not many were willing to make the passage, criminals and such were sent over because for them it was either go to the new world or face execution; they chose the new world. Also, many gentlemen and indentured servants were on board. As the indentured servants died out, many of the gentlemen were too ignorant to work and thus the colony starved. The New Englanders were hard working, religious devoted people; therefore they got a lot of work done. Also from the start, the colonies were planned out much differently. Pennsylvania carefully planned out the colony; William Penn made several drafts of the colony’s governmental structure. The New Englanders made treaties on board the ships so that the colony had a body of rules to be governed upon. The Chesapeake settlers did not have such foresight.

2. The role of religion was very important. It is responsible for the founding of both the New England colonies and the Pennsylvania colony. Missionaries also worked hard at spreading Christianity, even up in Canada and down in Central/ South America. If the Church of England hadn’t been corrupt or if there was religious tolerance in England, then the Puritans may never have migrated over the New England area. If the Quakers were tolerated anywhere in Europe (or New England), then they may never have founded Pennsylvania. The total devotion to one’s religion and the total intolerance of these new ideas in traditional regions paved the way for religious groups to come to the New World.

Chapter III Response Questions

1. England realized that they weren’t making any huge profits of the colonies, like other countries were with there colonies. They also realized that the colonies were trading with foreign countries, making them wealthier. Also, at the time the mercantilist thought process was that there was only a fixed amount of wealth in the world. Therefore if one country gets richer then they take more from the pot of money, leaving less money for other countries to take. Therefore with all this going on, England decided that it had to do something about it. They passed the Navigation Acts so they could get sole control over trade with the colonies, and subsequently block the Dutch from trading with the colonies. The Navigation Acts proclaimed that the colonies only import from England, therefore letting England export more, thus making them richer. England also passed two other acts, The Stamp Act of 1663 and the Plantation Duty Act. The Stamp Act of 1663 forced the majority of products to be shipped to England first and then to the colonies. This way England could regulate what goods went into the colonies. The Plantation Duty Act of 1673 wanted to redirect revenue to England and to have traders trade exclusively with England. For example, a penny tax was placed on each pound of tobacco and there was a five-shilling tax for every hundred weight of sugar. There were also appointed collectors of these taxes. England established it’s first revenue collecting system with the Plantation Duty Act.

2. The Indians realized that they probably needed to band together to help stop the European colonization. In the north, the Indians formed the Five Nations of the Iroquois. They supported each other in the fight to keep their land. Yet, peace talks were reached when Edmund Andros negotiated a peace treaty between the Iroquois Confederacy, the British colonies, and other Indian tribes to form the Covenant Chain. Here, they settled trading, violence issues, and settlement disputes. Other Indian tribes resulted to war for survival. The Wampanoags and their leader, Metacom, started some trouble up in New England. Allied tribes to the English also fought against the Wampanoags, like the Mohawks.

3. Mercantilism is the idea that one should export more than they import to generate a profit. They also believed that the world’s wealth was fixed and it was a survival of the fittest to gain the most of it. Therefore, countries believed that as they got richer there was less money for them to take. The Navigation Acts expressed mercantilistic ideas because they wanted the colonies to trade more with England and less with foreign countries like the Dutch. This way they could export more goods to the colonies and hopefully gain more money. This is important because at the time England wasn’t making any huge profits off of it’s colonies and they also wanted the colonies to develop into more favorable ways to the British.

4. The authors meant to describe the variety of differences between the colonies even though they all emerged, or came to be, from one source: England. Each color on the spectrum represented a colony. Each color was unique from one another. They had their own shades and hues. The same went for the colonies. Each colony had its own demographic differences, religious views, economical foundation, etc. For example, the sugar islands down in the south could have been a whole another world to the Puritans up in the north. Yet they could all trace back their beginnings to England, which sustained some kind of unity between them.

5. There were many demographic differences in the colonies. The most notable are the life expectancy standards in the north and south. The north had a much higher life expectancy. There also was a higher men to women ration in plantation areas, which were mainly located in the south. Each area had it’s own sort of aristocracy develop, especially in the south. The race and ethnicity differences between the two regions were different as well. There are far more blacks in the south than in the north. Black slaves account for a majority in the West Indies and the lower south. The New England region and New France region was almost all English or French, respectively. There was also quite a European ethnic mix in the Mid-Atlantic colonies. The farther north one got, the less diverse it became. The father south one traveled, the more diverse it became. The driving forces and goods of the economies of the two regions also differed. In the south, the economy was driven by plantations that grew either sugar or tobacco. Up north, fur-trapping and farming were popular. New England, being a center of commerce and trade, also had ship building mixed into their daily economic activities. The religious views of the regions also had a discrepancy. The farther south one traveled, the less religious fervor there seemed to be. For example, the West Indies regarded religion as irreverent, and that slowly works it’s way up to the New France region where religion fervor is intense. The Mid-Atlantic to New England region had mostly family-based piety, although religion is slowly losing ground in New England due to the increase of attention to trade and wealth. In all areas except the Mid-Atlantic, there was some form of established Church. The Mid-Atlantic seemingly lacked an established church because the biggest colony there, Pennsylvania, was tolerant of all religions.