Main Differences Between The Chesapeake And New England Regions Of North America

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The Chesapeake and New England regions of North America were made very different from each other. The main difference between the Chesapeake region and the Puritan region was that New England was more religion focused and the Chesapeake was more profit focused. The settlers coming to each colony also varied. For example in the Chesapeake colony of Virginia, most of the people coming where male, this also makes sense since people went to the Chesapeake colonies to make money it makes sense that only males went there (doc.4). On the other hand, some people that went to England were emigrants, meaning they were escaping Weymouth due to religious persecution (Doc.3). The record keeping in document 3 and 4 were strictly to keep record and inform …show more content…

Another difference was New England had shaped into a set of colonies that focused more on industry, while the Chesapeake colonies focused more on agriculture. Due to the long winters and poor rocky soil, New England only did small scale farming and focused on more on industries such as fishing, lumber, shipbuilding, and whaling. New England colonies were the most industrious of all colonies. Political wise, New England was made for religious freedom. New England colony towns were compact and held town meetings and white Puritan males with land were able to vote. They did not have an aristocratic dominated assembly and they had a less defined hierarchy. On the other hand, Chesapeake colonies politically had a legislative only with aristocrats. They were more spread out with only county governments leading to the under representation of back- country farmers. Economically, the Chesapeake was primarily based on agriculture, large plantations, very little industry. Fertile land, fertile agriculture they planted staple crops including tobacco, rice, and indigo. The main social aspect that differed was education. In the Chesapeake education was not emphasized as kids worked at wide spread plantation. Due to the rural environment schools and churches were more difficult to come. Chesapeake children had the lowest literacy levels. On the other hand, New England colonies, Puritans believed education