America’s Colonizing

In search for prosperity for their mother country, in 1606 England colonists left for America not knowing that they would become a separate nation. Settling in America in 1607 the colonists began to form their own society apart from British rule across the ocean. The English colonists became aware of their future independence from Old England and began to unite together. Through battles and disagreements within the colonies, the people of America came together to rise against the rule of Old England. Between the settlement at Jamestown in 1607 and the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the colonists became their own society by changing their economic, political, and social structures from that of England.

In a similar economic revolution, the colonists outgrew their mercantilist relationship with the mother country and developed an expanding capitalist system of their own. Sugar formed the foundation of the West Indian economy. The sugar lords extended their dominion over the West Indies in the seventeenth century, and this profitable sugar-plantation system soon crowded out almost all other forms of Caribbean agriculture. This was because many wealthy growers bought African slaves who soon outnumbered the white four to one. It became the main export out of the West Indies. The Chesapeake was immensely hospitable to tobacco cultivation. Profit-hungry settlers often planted tobacco to sell due to its simplicity of growth and anyone was able to grow it. This was because tobacco was a cash crop that was able to be distributed easily and many farmers were planting it. Despite the quickly exhausting soil from tobacco cultivation, these tobacco farmers grew more of it and also brought in slaves due to lack of labor force. Triangular trade was infamously profitable and contributed to total colonial commerce. This set up America for its own trading system without England’s influence. This was because each leg of the triangle specialized in its own product, so when the cargo ship traded it made a profit all around. This trade influenced commerce and was a major influence of the importation of African slaves into America. Just as the colonists changed their economic structure, they had to change their political aspects as well to become their own society.

Building on English foundations of political liberty, the colonists extended the concepts of liberty and self-government for beyond those envisioned in the mother country. Representative self-government was born in primitive Virginia in 1619, an assembly known as the House of Burgesses. The House of Burgesses was set up to be a parliament in Virginia. This was set up in order to have a political say in government that England didn’t have. The House of Burgesses became one of the first representative self-governments that influenced other colonies to have a government for the people. In 1649 the Act of Toleration was passed by the local representative assembly in Maryland. This act guaranteed toleration to all Christians, and extended a temporary cloak of protection to the uneasy Catholic minority. This was made because the Catholics didn’t want to have severe restrictions on them as back in England, so they supported the act. This act later influenced the movement of Quakers to the colonies in search of a brighter future for Religion and Society. In 1636, Roger Williams created a freedom of religion in Rhode Island. William’s endorsement of religious tolerance made Rhode Island more liberal than any of the other English settlements in the New World, and more advanced than most Old World communities as well. This religious freedom gave shelter to all religions that they may practice their faith in a safe community. Religious Freedom made Rhode Island strongly Individualistic and stubbornly independent. Changing economic as well as political aspects, New England also created a different social structure from that of the Old World.