Summer Assignment
Rishi Tripathy
AP US History
8/24/13
Summer Reading Assignment
Chapter 3: Compare and contrast the government, religion, geography, and economy of the three English colonial regions. Be sure to consider the role of race, gender, and ethnicity.
English colonies in America were, for the most part, successful and fruitful, albeit for starkly different reasons. The three regions of New England, the Carolinas and the Chesapeake Bay had different ways of earning their ways, which translated into gaps in culture, religion, and forms of government. The economy in New England was based off of small food farms owned by families, artisanal products, and trade with Native Americans. Consisting of almost singularly Puritans wishing solace from England’s corrupt monarchy, the region became a series of small, tight-knit communities which were bound together by their hatred of England. The commonwealth nature of New England brought about elected governors and a modern-style two party government, but created a slightly socialist way of distributing wealth throughout the interconnected community. This region contrast heavily with each of the two southern regions, which were much more diverse ethnically and religiously. The Carolinas were filled with all types of European immigrants, treated mostly equally, while the Chesapeake was a refuge for Catholics and a destination for slave labor. Both the Carolinas and the Chesapeake region were based on large plots of land, headed by aristocratic leaders, although the structure differed slightly as the Carolinas fell back onto a pseudo-feudal system while the Chesapeake region had more of a slave-master dynamic. Women had a slightly bigger role in these parts as co-leaders of labor workers. Not surprisingly, the climate and geography of each region dictated what was grown there and consequently the economic systems in each region. The southern, hot, humid, flat, swampy climate gave way to rice and tobacco, grown on hundreds of
AP US History
8/24/13
Summer Reading Assignment
Chapter 3: Compare and contrast the government, religion, geography, and economy of the three English colonial regions. Be sure to consider the role of race, gender, and ethnicity.
English colonies in America were, for the most part, successful and fruitful, albeit for starkly different reasons. The three regions of New England, the Carolinas and the Chesapeake Bay had different ways of earning their ways, which translated into gaps in culture, religion, and forms of government. The economy in New England was based off of small food farms owned by families, artisanal products, and trade with Native Americans. Consisting of almost singularly Puritans wishing solace from England’s corrupt monarchy, the region became a series of small, tight-knit communities which were bound together by their hatred of England. The commonwealth nature of New England brought about elected governors and a modern-style two party government, but created a slightly socialist way of distributing wealth throughout the interconnected community. This region contrast heavily with each of the two southern regions, which were much more diverse ethnically and religiously. The Carolinas were filled with all types of European immigrants, treated mostly equally, while the Chesapeake was a refuge for Catholics and a destination for slave labor. Both the Carolinas and the Chesapeake region were based on large plots of land, headed by aristocratic leaders, although the structure differed slightly as the Carolinas fell back onto a pseudo-feudal system while the Chesapeake region had more of a slave-master dynamic. Women had a slightly bigger role in these parts as co-leaders of labor workers. Not surprisingly, the climate and geography of each region dictated what was grown there and consequently the economic systems in each region. The southern, hot, humid, flat, swampy climate gave way to rice and tobacco, grown on hundreds of