Societal Structures: Similarities Between The Chesapeake And New England Colonies

Both the Chesapeake and New England colonies originated from England to alleviate their past oppressions. However, Chesapeake’s economy and societal structures deviate from the New England colony due to varied skill sets of settlers and their diverse motives. Although they bear some minor similarities between the two, the Chesapeake and the New England colonies have very profound differences.

The Chesapeake colony and the New England colony both migrated from England due to oppression. The Chesapeake colony consisted of second sons who could not inherit family heir-looms or money; it also consisted of indentured servants who did not have the proper skills to sustain a job in England. The New England colony consisted of Puritans who left England after Charles I took the throne and ordered England a strictly Anglican society. Although they were oppressed and both fled England, the two colonies came out to be vastly different from one another.

The Chesapeake colony was an agricultural, cash-crop based economy, whereas New England was a diverse economy, established by many “hands-on” and labor induced trades. In the Chesapeake colony tobacco was introduced to the region by John Rolfe in 1612, it would soon be the colonies central profit-making business. In “1620 a total of 119.0 thousand was marketed, bringing in 12.00 sterling per pound (Tobacco
The Chesapeake colony was an agriculturally based economy that used tobacco as their main source of profit and eventually went on to replace indentured servants with African slaves on plantations; they adopted the southern culture of the confederate south, whereas the New England colony used their hands-on labor to industrialize and adopt the northern culture of the union