AMSCO 2.3 The Regions of the British Colonies Notes

Overview

AMSCO Topic 2.3, The Regions of British Colonies (AMSCO p. 38-48), covers how 13 distinct English colonies developed along the Atlantic coast between Jamestown in 1607 and Georgia in 1733, and why geography, religion, and settler backgrounds pushed New England, the Middle Colonies, and the Southern colonies in such different directions. It also explains the three types of colonial charters and the early self-governing institutions, like the House of Burgesses and the Mayflower Compact, that made the colonies unusually democratic for their era. This is the backbone chapter of Period 2 (1607-1754), and it builds directly on the European motives covered in AMSCO 2.2.

Every colony operated under a charter from the monarch, and three types developed:

• Corporate colonies were run by joint-stock companies (Jamestown in its early years).
• Royal colonies were under the direct authority of the king's government (Virginia after 1624).
• Proprietary colonies were owned by individuals granted charters by the king (Maryland, Pennsylvania).

Unlike the French and Spanish colonists, the English brought a tradition of representative government, electing representatives who spoke for property owners on questions like taxes. That habit of self-rule matters enormously later in the course.

Early English Settlements: Jamestown, Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay

The earliest English colonies were founded for very different reasons, hundreds of miles apart. Virginia was about profit. New England was about religion.

Jamestown (1607)

• King James I chartered the Virginia Company, a joint-stock company, which founded the first permanent English colony in America at Jamestown in 1607.
• Early problems were mostly self-inflicted. The swampy location along the James River caused fatal outbreaks of dysentery and malaria, and many settlers were gentlemen or gold hunters who refused to farm. When conflict with American Indians cut off trade, settlers starved.
• Captain John Smith's leadership got the colony through its first five years. John Rolfe and his wife Pocahontas developed a strain of tobacco that sold well in Europe, finally giving Virginia a profitable crop.
• The headright system offered 50 acres to any settler, or to anyone who paid for a settler's passage. In practice it mostly enriched landowners who sponsored indentured servants. Planters relied on White laborers for decades, then shifted toward enslaved Africans by the end of the 17th century (more on that in AMSCO 2.6).
• By 1624, despite tobacco, the colony was near collapse. Over 5,000 people had settled there, but disease and conflict had cut the population to 1,300, and the Virginia Company was nearly bankrupt. James I revoked the charter and made Virginia England's first royal colony.

Plymouth (1620)

• The Separatists were radical dissenters from the Anglican Church who wanted a church completely independent of royal control. Their travels (first to Holland, then to America) earned them the name Pilgrims.
• In 1620 about 100 passengers sailed on the Mayflower. Fewer than half were Separatists; the rest came for economic reasons. Instead of landing in Virginia as planned, they settled at Plymouth, 600 miles north.
• Half the settlers died the first winter. Local American Indians helped survivors adapt, leading to the 1621 thanksgiving feast. Under Captain Miles Standish and Governor William Bradford, Plymouth grew slowly on fish, furs, and lumber.

Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630)

• The Puritans were moderate dissenters who believed the Church of England could be reformed, or "purified," rather than abandoned. Persecution intensified under King Charles I after 1625.
• A group of Puritans secured a royal charter for the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629. In 1630, a thousand Puritans led by John Winthrop founded Boston.
• Religious and political conflict in England drove roughly 15,000 settlers to Massachusetts Bay in the 1630s, a movement called the Great Migration.
• Unlike Virginia's plantations, New England developed small towns and family farms with a mixed economy of commerce and agriculture. That contrast between regions is exactly what the AP exam loves to test.

Maryland and Religious Toleration

Maryland, created in 1632 when Charles I split off part of Virginia, was the first proprietary colony. The king granted it to George Calvert (Lord Baltimore), a Catholic noble.

• After George Calvert died, his son Cecil Calvert carried out the plan starting in 1634: make Maryland a haven for Catholics facing persecution in Protestant Britain.
• Wealthy Catholic plantation owners were quickly outnumbered by Protestant farmers, who held a majority in the assembly.
• In 1649 Calvert persuaded the assembly to pass the Act of Toleration, the first colonial statute granting religious freedom to all Christians. The catch: it called for the death of anyone who denied the divinity of Jesus.
• In the late 1600s, Protestants angered by a Catholic proprietor ignited a civil war. They won, repealed the Act of Toleration, and stripped Catholics of the right to vote. By the 18th century, Maryland's economy and society looked much like Virginia's, just with more diversity among Protestant sects.

Development of New England: Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire

Puritan leaders did not extend religious freedom to people who disagreed with them. They banished dissidents, and those dissidents founded new colonies.

Rhode Island

• Roger Williams, a respected Puritan minister who arrived in Boston in 1631, taught that an individual's conscience was beyond the control of any civil or church authority. Banished, he founded Providence in 1636 and started one of the first Baptist churches in America.
• Providence let Catholics, Quakers, and Jews worship freely, and it was unique in recognizing American Indians' land rights and paying for the use of their land.
• Anne Hutchinson believed in antinomianism, the idea that people who receive salvation through faith alone are not bound by traditional moral laws. Banished from Massachusetts Bay, she and her followers founded Portsmouth in 1638. She later moved to Long Island and was killed in an American Indian uprising.
• In 1644, Williams received a charter from Parliament joining Providence and Portsmouth into Rhode Island, which became a refuge for diverse beliefs.

Connecticut

• Reverend Thomas Hooker led Boston Puritans into the Connecticut River Valley and founded Hartford in 1636.
• Hartford settlers wrote the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639), the first written constitution in American history. It set up a representative government with a legislature elected by popular vote and a governor chosen by that legislature.
• John Davenport founded New Haven in 1637; it merged with Hartford in 1665 to form Connecticut, whose royal charter allowed limited self-government, including electing the governor.

New Hampshire and the Halfway Covenant

• New Hampshire was the last New England colony. In 1679, King Charles II separated it from Massachusetts Bay and made it a royal colony with an appointed governor, hoping to increase royal control.
• Full Puritan church membership required a conversion experience, which fewer native-born colonists were having. The halfway covenant let people become partial members without one. Over time, strict Puritan practices weakened across New England to keep church membership up.

Restoration Colonies: The Carolinas and the Middle Colonies

The Restoration colonies were founded after the monarchy was restored under Charles II in 1660, following republican rule under Oliver Cromwell.

The Carolinas

• In 1663, Charles II rewarded eight nobles who helped him gain the throne with the land between Virginia and Spanish Florida. In 1729 the grant became two royal colonies, North and South Carolina.
• South Carolina: Colonists from England and Barbados founded Charleston in 1670. The economy began with fur trading and food exports to the West Indies, then shifted to large rice-growing plantations worked by enslaved Africans, resembling the West Indies in economy and culture.
• North Carolina: Few good harbors and poor transportation meant few large plantations and less reliance on slavery. Small, self-sufficient tobacco farms run by migrants from Virginia and New England gave it a reputation for democratic views and autonomy from British control.

The Middle Colonies

New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware had fertile land, good harbors where cities grew, religious tolerance, and a diverse mix of European immigrants.

• New York: In 1664, Charles II granted his brother the Duke of York (future James II) the land between Connecticut and Delaware Bay. James's forces easily took New Amsterdam from Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant. Dutch settlers kept their language and freedom of worship, but James imposed taxes without a representative assembly. Taxation without representation met strong opposition, and in 1683 James yielded, allowing broad civil and political rights including an assembly.
• New Jersey: James split off the land between the Hudson River and Delaware Bay in 1664 for Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, which became East and West New Jersey in 1674. Both offered generous land, religious freedom, and an assembly, and both were eventually sold to Quakers. Constant ownership changes and messy property lines led the crown to combine them into one royal colony, New Jersey, in 1702.
• Pennsylvania, the "Holy Experiment": The royal family gave the land to William Penn to pay a debt; his son William Penn the younger, a Quaker, inherited it. Quakers believed religious authority lived within each person, not in the Bible or any outside source, so they supported equality of men and women and rejected violence. Penn's Frame of Government (1682-1683) guaranteed a representative assembly elected by landowners, and his Charter of Liberties (1701) guaranteed freedom of worship for all and unrestricted immigration. Penn personally supervised the founding of Philadelphia (with a grid street plan other cities later copied), advertised across Europe to attract settlers, and tried to treat American Indians fairly when buying land.
• Delaware: In 1702, Penn granted Pennsylvania's lower three counties their own assembly. Delaware effectively became a separate colony, though it shared Pennsylvania's governor until the American Revolution.

Georgia, the Last Mainland Colony

Georgia, chartered in 1732, was the thirteenth and final British colony and the only one to receive direct financial support from the government. Britain had two goals:

• Create a defensive buffer protecting South Carolina plantations from Spanish Florida.
• Provide a fresh start for English debtors crowding the prisons.

James Oglethorpe led the philanthropists who founded Savannah in 1733 and served as first governor. His strict rules included bans on rum and slavery, but the colony failed to prosper, partly because of the constant Spanish threat. In 1752 the trustees gave up, Georgia became a royal colony, the bans were dropped, and it adopted South Carolina's plantation system. In 1776 it was the smallest of the 13 colonies that rebelled.

Early Political Institutions and the Limits of Colonial Democracy

Self-rule began early because Britain struggled to control the colonies. The Atlantic made communication slow, and Britain was distracted by domestic upheavals and wars with France.

• House of Burgesses (1619): Virginia's colonists organized the first representative assembly in America, dominated by elite planters. The Virginia Company had promised settlers the same rights as residents of England.
• Mayflower Compact (1620): Aboard the Mayflower, the Pilgrims pledged to make decisions by the will of the majority. It was an early form of self-government and a rudimentary written constitution.
• Town meetings: New England communities debated local decisions and elected members to colonial legislatures. In Massachusetts Bay, all freemen (male members of the Puritan Church) could elect the governor and assembly. Voting rights were broad for the era.
• The limits: Females and landless males had few rights, indentured servants had practically none, and enslaved people had none. Many governors ruled with autocratic powers, answering only to the king or financial backers. Democratic ideas grew alongside antidemocratic practices like slavery and widespread mistreatment of American Indians.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Pair these notes with Fiveable's Topic 2.3 The Regions of the British Colonies study guide for the course-aligned version of this material, then continue to AMSCO 2.4 Transatlantic Trade to see how these regional economies plugged into the Atlantic world. The full chapter list lives on the AMSCO Notes page.

To check your recall, run regional-comparison questions in APUSH guided practice. Comparing New England, Middle, and Southern colonies is a classic SAQ and LEQ setup, so try a Period 2 prompt with FRQ practice and instant scoring once the regions feel solid.