University:
Arizona State University
Course:
HST 200 | Historical Themes
Academic year:

2024
Views:

187

Pages:

1
Author:

Thuyoul US

Plymouth: The Original Puritan Settlement A tiny group known as the Pilgrims was the first group of Puritans to cross the Atlantic. They were distinct from other Puritans in that they had first moved to the Dutch Republic in Europe in search of religious freedom and insisted on a total break from the Church of England. They discovered they could worship freely there, but as their children started picking up Dutch and learning the language, they started to worry that they were becoming less English. The English Pilgrims and other Europeans also feared another Spanish invasion on the Dutch Republic. They so proceeded to create the Plymouth Colony in modern-day Massachusetts in 1620. William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth, supported total secession from the official church in England as a Separatist. An integrated English national church and empire was the prevalent ideal, but Bradford and the other Pilgrim Separatists posed a serious threat to it. Bradford signed the Mayflower Compact (Figure 3.11), which offered a theological justification for colonization rather than an economic one, along with forty other adult males while on board the Mayflower, a ship that was headed for Virginia but ended up on the point of Cape Cod. The compact articulated a collaborative community vision. The Pilgrims in Plymouth welcomed a wider Puritan migration that founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s, and the two colonies collaborated with one another. Early Puritan New England was distinguishable from the Chesapeake colonies by distinct labor arrangements. The majority of the labor required to maintain houses, farms, and enterprises was performed by all members of the large Puritan households, including the children, and they expected young people to work hard at their vocation. Few immigrants arrived in New England in search of work; in fact, the communities there safeguarded their well-trained native labor force by denying entry to outsiders, guaranteeing their sons and daughters of stable jobs. The labor system in New England had impressive outcomes, chief among them being a robust maritime industry supported by a large number of oceangoing ships and the workers required to operate them. West Indian sugar and Virginia tobacco were shipped around the Atlantic world by New England seamen using ships built in the region.