The Three Colonial Regions

The Three Colonial Regions

The thirteen colonies were British colonies in North America founded between 1607 and 1732. The colonists who came to the New World were not alike, they came from a variety of different social and religious groups who settled in different locations along the Atlantic coast. They were divided up into the New England, Middle, and Southern colonies. Each group came to the new continent for different reasons and created colonies with distinct social, political, and economic structures.

Each colonial region had similar social structures. For example, the majority of the colonies wanted to keep their families together and practice their own religion. They were also all out to make money. However, the New England colonists were used to doing many things themselves and not needing anyone else for help. In contrast, many of the Middles colonists didn't bring their families with them from England and were the perfect workers for the hard work required in ironworks and shipyards. Just as the New England Colonies, the Southern Colonies brought their families and kept them together on the plantations. Their main goal was to make money.

The thirteen colonies along with their goal to make money, wanted to form governments and become independent. When settling New England, the Puritans created self-governing communities of religious congregations. Every white man had a voice in there town meetings. The town meeting discussed items such as taxes, built roads, and elected officials that would manage town affairs. The Middle Colonies were slightly less organized. Each family was more on their own due to William Penn's policies of religious liberty and freehold ownership, which basically allowed farmers to own their land free and clear of leases. And even more unorganized were the Southern Colonies. They did not necessarily have towns, so it was hard for them to conduct town meetings. The wealthy slave-owning planters basically dominated the different Southern Colonies.

Forms of economy were very different throughout the thirteen colonies. The New England Colonies were a majority of farming and fishing communities. They grew much of their own food. Foods that didn't grow in the New World were shipped from England. Boston was the major New England port. The Middle Colonies were part agriculture, and part industrial. Farms in Pennsylvania and New York grew wheat and