Columbus and The Economy of The New World

The major motives that prompted the Europeans to move to America are easier travel and religion.  Christopher Columbus, born in Italy, received support from Spain to prove that there was a quicker route to Asia.  Instead, found a new land.  In my opinion, Columbus probably had great book since but no common since.  I say this because he should have noticed that the natives of America did not look like the Indians of India.  He found America by mistake.  He reported his findings back to Spain and other explores wanted “a piece of the action”.  About 2 centuries later, more and more people traveled to America.  This time, the explorations were already done.  The motive behind migrations was religion.  For example, some Puritans were put in jail, and some killed, for defying both the government and Church of England.  Because they wanted to find a place of free worship, the ventured to the New World.

            Newcomers, and old settlers, in America had to take advantage of the physical conditions in order to make money and survive.  In the south, the economy was engineered by the growing of crop.  Around the Chesapeake Region, tobacco was the basis of the Economy.  Because of a large demand on tobacco in Europe, some planters became extremely wealthy.  They expanded their plantations and increased the amount of slaves that were working.  In South Carolina and Georgia, the main source of income was rice.   Due to the high grounds in South Carolina, making rice paddies were relatively easy.  They built damns near rivers that made rice paddies easier to cultivate.  However, reality sat in.  The sun was hot. Laborers were knee deep in mud working in these paddies and refused to do it.  This made the demand on slaves greater in this area.  In the north, growing tobacco and rice was unlikely due to the unfortunate ground conditions.  Instead, their main crop was wheat.  The economy in the north also relied on the colonists’ ability to perform trades such as blacksmiths, carpenters and printers.  It seams that the economy in the north survived on hobbies while in the south, it was all about the dollar.

            As I mentioned earlier, because of the physical demand on cultivating land, growing crop and the laborers unwillingness to do these jobs, the demand on slaves were great in the south.  That is what made the difference in having an indentured servant and a slave.  An indentured servant worked with the understanding that they would be eventually treated as equal and had paid their debt to their home country.  This meant that you would soon need more laborers.  Slaves, on the other hand, worked with the understanding that if they didn’t they would get beat.  It was considered free labor for the plantation owners.  It was a lot cheaper to import slaves from Africa than continue to have indentured servants come to and leave the plantation.