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Defining Documents in World History: The 17th Century (1601-1700)

European Colonies in the Americas: New England

There were religious settlers in the mid-Atlantic colonies; in fact, Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn specifically as a haven for Quakers. Yet all of these colonies had the profit motive as their reason for being; Pennsylvania was open to any colonist who wanted to gamble on an agricultural lifestyle that would pay handsomely in comparison to life back in England, not just Quakers. The New England colonies were a different story. Making enough of a profit to survive was obviously important, but the main reason for migrating to North America as a member of one of these colonists was to pursue perfection and establish the ideal Protestant Christian community that people at home in England—indeed, people all over the world—could regard as a model and aspire towards to transform their world accordingly.

The first New England settlers were “separatists,” people who were somewhat more tolerant than the Puritans and more inclined toward a democratic organization of their churches. They first moved to Leiden in the United Provinces (the Dutch Republic), but tellingly, they felt as if they were losing their identities as independent Englishmen. Therefore they boarded the Mayflower in the summer of 1620 and sailed for the northern section of Virginia with a charter that would afford them crown protection when they arrived. But they missed—they ended up right on the edge of modern-day Cape Cod in a colony they named after their home, Plymouth. This uncharted territory was definitely not a part of Virginia and thus it was not eligible to be protected by the government back home in England. The colonists drew up a new charter, the Mayflower Compact, to provide themselves with some rules for getting along in a dangerous new place—thus becoming the first constitution introduced in the new English colonies.

Plymouth Colony was so successful that it inspired Puritans to try their hand at building a colony to the north, Massachusetts Bay Colony, around the settlement they named Boston. The goal for this colony was written as a lay sermon by a lawyer appointed as the leader of the colony, John Winthrop. Winthrop famously called for the Mayflower separatists to establish a “city on a hill,” a religious community so perfect and so strongly aligned with Protestant values that the rest of the world would want to emulate it. Certainly Massachusetts Bay succeeded as a colony, but its settlers seemed just as interested in purging themselves of religious sects they considered heretical as they were in perfecting their own. Anne Hutchinson was put on trial before Winthrop and other leaders for preaching about “Free Grace”; she and her followers were exiled to Rhode Island. Rhode Island itself was founded by the firebrand preacher Roger Williams, who argued that the local native populations were as much God’s people as anyone else and should be brought into the Christian community and respected as such.

The English Civil War divided all of the English colonies of North America in two. The mid-Atlantic colonies sided with King Charles I, but were largely cut off from supplying his war effort. The New England colonies were full of Puritans and thus sided with Parliament, and were more supportive—they placed a naval blockade on Virginia. It was an odd juxtaposition: Colonies in the north that were founded for religious purposes were economically viable enough to build their own navy, whereas the colonies in the south that were founded for profit had virtually nothing to give to their cause.

In fact, the New England colonists were generally more likely to challenge the authority of the metropole; colonies established for religious purposes were founded by people who wanted to get away from England and its laws. The monarchy of James II threw this attitude into full relief. James tried to combine the New England colonies into a Dominion of New England, governed by Sir Edmund Andros, the governor of James’s personal colony, New York. The results were so offensive to the colonists that they rebelled, declaring their grievances in the Declaration of the Gentlemen Merchants and Inhabitants of Boston and the Country Adjacent. The new administration, headed by William and Mary, sent Andros to Virginia and separated the colonies once again.

New England was a collection of colonies that were well-defined in the seventeenth century—they were literally a “New” England, fueled by the same religious controversies and issues that drove the English seventeenth century. They would continue to prosper in the eighteenth century for the same reasons.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"European Colonies In The Americas: New England." Defining Documents in World History: The 17th Century (1601-1700), edited by David Simonelli, Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=DD17C_0044.
APA 7th
European Colonies in the Americas: New England. Defining Documents in World History: The 17th Century (1601-1700), In D. Simonelli (Ed.), Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=DD17C_0044.
CMOS 17th
"European Colonies In The Americas: New England." Defining Documents in World History: The 17th Century (1601-1700), Edited by David Simonelli. Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=DD17C_0044.