ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND

1
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND

• Geography of New England
• Rocky soil
• Short growing season
• Natural harbors (Merchant class emerges)
• Few inland navigable rivers

2

• Subsistence farming was the main way of life for
  most New Englanders (and most colonists)
• Coastal towns in New England established trade
  with Europe and the Caribbean
• Leading exports were fish and timber
• Shipbuilding became an important industry

3
New England Population Growth

• 1640 14,000
• 1670 33,000
• 1700 93,000
• 7X as many went to the Chesapeake yet the
  population there (88,000) was less than New
  Englands in 1700

4
New England Population Growth

• High rate of natural increase
• Safe and plentiful drinking water
• Cold climate destroyed some deadly organisms

5
New England Population Growth

• Other contributing factors
• Most came in family groups
• Balanced sex ratio
• Marriage almost universal
• Avg. female lived long enough to give birth to
  eight or nine children

6
Conclusion

• Colonial New England was a relatively stable
  society with order existing among towns and
  families.

7
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE COLONIAL
CHESAPEAKE

• Short life expectancy
• Climate was a breeding ground for malarial
  mosquitoes
• Large indentured servant class
• Literally worked to death at times
• Marriages took place after freedom therefore
  later in life

8
Family Life in the Colonial Chesapeake

• Imbalanced sex ratio
• 1630s 6-1 men to women
• 1704 3-2
• One half of marriages broke up w/in 7 years
• One third of children orphaned by age 18
• Numerous step parents, step siblings, etc

9
Family Life in the Colonial Chesapeake

• Families were small
• Typical Chesapeake woman had 2-3 children live
  beyond infancy (7 or 8 in New England)
• In most years deaths outnumbered births

10
Economics

• Most people were subsistence farmers (may grow
  tobacco as well)
• People of wealth invested in land, indentured
  servants, slaves, and tobacco
• Numerous inland navigable rivers so ocean going
  vessels sailed inland and traded directly with
  tobacco planters
• Tobacco exhausts the nutrients in the soil

11
CONCLUSION

• The Colonial Chesapeake was a very unstable
  society
• Class tensions between
• Tobacco planters (of the east) and farmers on the
  frontier (Bacons Rebellion)