In the late Middle Age era, Europe, including England, suffered from a severe plague epidemic known as the “Black Death”. The Black Death curbed population increases initially, but as the British people gradually began to build-up immunity to the disease, the island’s population immediately soared upward. Though there were numerous reasons as to why the English looked at the North American colonies as a solution, the primary reason was the necessity to relieve the island of the heavy population stress. Additionally, however, the country was also suffering from a strong economic depression and the repression of religious freedoms.
Initially, there was a large influx of people from England who sported specific trade skills and were considered artisans or were alternatively members of British gentry families. However, the colonies also experienced heavy immigration (approximately 75%) from indentured servants who signed contracts agreeing to serve their “sponsors,” in exchange for passage to the colonies, among other things. Indentured servants typically served four to seven year terms, and once they fulfilled their term, they would be released from their contract and service obligations. Non-indentured servants who immigrated to the colonies often looked down-upon the servants; by one person’s account, the indentured servants were “lazy, idle, and simple-minded people”.
In reality, the majority of indentured servants were young, m idle-class Englishmen, who fled their country in search of new economic opportunities outside the stagnant English economy. Upon their arrival in the New World, it was their sponsor’s intent for them to cultivate the chief Chesapeake staple crop, which was tobacco.
Unfortunately for the indentured servants, in the seventeenth century, only approximately sixty percent of those in indentured servitude survived the full-length of their contract and thus weren’t given the opportunity to reap the fruits of their labor. Additionally, indentured servants had to be shipped from overseas, because Chesapeake had low reproduction rates, attributed to the small population of women and the dwindling population of former indentured servants. Upon the fulfillment of their contract, the surviving servants were entitled to their “freedom dues,” which usually consisted of an ax and hoe, clothing, and some corn to plant.
As life expectancy increased within the colony, so in turn, did the number of indentured servants who survived the length of their contract. Gradually, former indentured servants began acquiring their own farmland to cultivate, though their opportunities sharply declined after 1660. In 1666, London suffered an incredible fire, in which a bulk of the city had to be rebuilt, thus creating numerous job opportunities domestically. With a steep decline of indentured servants, colonial farmers had to look into alternative labor sources, which ultimately led to the mass-introduction of financially lucrative black slaves.
From 1629 to 1642, the Massachusetts Bay Colony experienced the mass-immigration of approximately twenty thousand Puritans. An economic recession had resurged in England and King Charles I was becoming increasingly intolerant of their religious beliefs, which caused them to flee persecution to the New World.
Unlike the previous indentured servants who migrated to the Americas, the Puritans arrived in families, and thus whole communities were settled in America. Most Puritan communities were thriving farming communities, though some towns were intended to specialize in one field, thus there was the birth of American fishing villages. Other distinct communities specialized in textile manufacturing; one such case was Rowley, Massachusetts.
The Puritan immigrants often brought their political traditions to the New World, and their governing methods varied depending on the community’s English background. Some communities had governments that ruled with an iron fish, whereas others entailed more competitive elections. The New England Puritan colonies prided themselves on their independence and it was such pride that would inevitably lead to the conflict known as the American Revolution.
