Life in the Colonies

Life in the Colonies

1.     In New England families used to do subsistence farming; they produced just enough to satisfy their own needs, with a little left over to sell or exchange.

The triangular trade was a trade by sea whose route formed a triangle; sugar and molasses were brought from West Indies to New England, rum and other goods were shipped from New England to West Africa and there traded for enslaved Africans who were brought in West Indies.

In Middle Colonies farmers grew large quantity of cash crops, crops that could be sold easily in colonies and oversea.

2.     In Middle Colonies they cultivated large areas of land, producing big harvests which were also sold overseas and whose trade made colonies there very busy ports. They have home-based crafts too, such as carpentry and flour making, and larger businesses, such as lumbering, mining and small-scale manufacturing.

3.     New England colonists used natural resources to help their economy. They used waterpower from streams to run mils for grinding grain or sawing lumber, for shipbuilding they used woods form the forest that was transported down by rivers, and they had a good sea to fish in.

4.	Similarities	Differences
New England	Cultured of crops, use of slaves to labor fields	Long winter, thin and rocky soil, subsistence farming_________
Southern Colonies		Warm climate, rich soil, production of big harvests to be traded

5.     Plantation owners justified their uses of enslaved Africans saying they needed to use those slaves to work fields because without them they couldn’t produced a sufficient quantity of products and the economy of the colony, they belonged to, would have fallen.

6.     Rice, tobacco indigo and furs were traded from British Colonies to Great Britain and goods and molasses were brought from West Indies to British Colonies.