History of the Americas

¶ … New England Town

One of the most distinct facets of early settlement life in the New England of Dedham, Massachusetts, in contrast to the Portuguese colonization efforts in the New World, was the role religion played in the ethos of the New England settlers. In contrast to the mainly mercantilist approach of the Portuguese settlers, whom were mainly interested in settling to mine the colonies for the goods the lands could provide for their mother country and expanding empire, the New England settlers took a far different approach. They were not seeking out merely new economic opportunities in an untouched land. Rather, many of the New England settlers were fleeing religious persecution at home. Thus, rather than exploit the new land for resources, they wished to use the land of New England as best as they could for the purposes of providing their evolving religious community with a stable economic base. Rather than to enrich the mother country, the residents of Dedham wished to produce a society superior to that of the land they had left.

The settlements of the British Caribbean were different from the settlements of Dedham in that they were not founded upon religious, ideological principles designed to contrast with those religious and ideological principles common to England. These colonies were thus far more similar in social impetus to that of the Spanish settlements. As distinct from the Portuguese settlements, the settlers of the British Caribbean did make at least some effort to establish long-standing colonial ties to the area, rather than simply mine the area for wealth. However, like the Spanish, they were not interested in providing a reformist example to other lands. They also wished to make as much money from the territory as they possibly could by exploiting the land's unique facets. In the case of the British Caribbean settlements, as with the Spanish settlements, this required the use of slave labor to make maximum capital use of the region's potential to produce warm weather products for the continent, including sugar cane. They settlers intended to remain like the Spanish on the land for an extended period of time, and did not leave frequently for the homeland, as did the Portuguese. But though they did create a new society because of their permanence, the British Caribbean settlers remained relatively unconflicted about the moral tenor of their life in contrast with the life they had known in their home land, in distinct contrast to the settlers of New England.