It is hard to imagine that at one point the thirteen American colonies were much different than they are widely known today. On page 136 of American Horizons, the authors describe that it was not until after the English Civil War that British America truly began to take shape as the thirteen colonies. The civil war pressured the colonists to diversify labor which shaped the colonies into three distinct groups, New England, Middle, and Southern. These colonies were characterized by their major crops and economic makeup, religious practices and customs, demography and settlement structure, and labor regimes. The New England colonies included New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The British Atlantic lecture describes these colonies and what they were like. There were not …show more content…
The British Atlantic lecture lists the main crops in this area as tobacco, indigo, and rice. The majority of the population in this area was made up of slaves unlike the other colonies in British America. Since the south consisted of a large amount of plantations, the population was spread out instead of being concentrated in towns. The only cities that were important were places like Charleston and Savannah. The work in the Southern colonies was related to agriculture and there was pretty much no manufacturing. The labor force in this area was made up of planters. British America was extremely different depending on the area. It is interesting to see that even though these were all British colonies, there were more differences than similarities. The New England and Middle colonies were the most similar due to their exports and settlement structure. The Southern colonies were almost completely different since they were mainly composed of slave populations and were much more spread out. It is incredible how these colonies united and became one nation despite all their