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During the 17th century, England began to stretch out its tentacles and grab hold of the Americas. The latecomers established their colonies in two different regions along the eastern coast of North America. These regions were known as the Chesapeake and New England areas. As extensions of the British Empire, they all had a similar background and shared a common formative experience. However, Britain’s North American colonies were also fragmented and had very separate and unique identities. Their differences arose from the very reason why the settlers came to the New World and affected the colonies’ populations, social developments, and economies. To begin with, the Chesapeake and New England colonies were founded for different purposes: the Virginia Colony of the Chesapeake was established as a business- venture, while Massachusetts of the New England colonies was founded for religious purposes. In the December of 1906, the London Company organized an expedition to establish a colony in Virginia and by 1907 the first English colony in the New World was founded and named Jamestown (Middleton, 52). Jamestown was settled by young, single men, “including some 35 gentlemen, an Anglican minister, a doctor, 40 soldiers, and a variety of artisans and laborers”(Middleton, 52). The men who settled Jamestown were predominately from poor, uneducated backgrounds with nothing to lose. They had high hopes of making a profit but instead, they were confronted with a chaotic, inhabitable landscape, uncertainty, violence, and a high mortality rate. During the first three years of Jamestown, 60 out of 600 men survived. In contrast, the Massachusetts Bay Colony from the northern colonies was founded for religious purposes. The immigrants consisted of “persons whose goals were religious rather than material” (Middleton, 81) and were largely Puritan separatists who sought religious freedom from the Church of England. Many people, including John Winthrop (the first governor of the colony), “believed that Armageddon was not far away” and in order to escape God’s wrath, they must leave England (Middleton, 82).
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