There were many reasons for the settlers why the settlers to choose to leave their home and go to a strange new land to form colonies. Among them are religious freedom, opportunity to prosper financially, the chance to start a new nation with principles they believe in, and even as simple as the thrill of a challenge of a new land.
Religious freedom and the opportunity to prosper financially seem to be the biggest reason the settlers found and those are the two causes that will be looked at here.Economic reasons seem to be one of the most prominent reasons the settlers came to the New World. A countries worth was determined by how much gold and silver they had. The Spanish settlers were there only to mine the gold and silver from the land (Brinkley, 2014).
The Virginia Company had planned to come to the New World and search for gold and silver along with searching for a new river route that would lead to the Pacific Ocean that could be used to develop a trade with the Orient (Jamestown Colony, 2013) (Jamestown Settlement and the "Starving Time", 2013).The people that settled in the south saw it as a chance to get rich in the New World and felt that mining and growing and selling tobacco would be their chance (Rosmanitz). The settlers that chose to settle in the south did so more for economic reasons but the northern settlers did so more for religious reasons. In Europe, the kings and queens were forcing the people to follow there same religion as they had (Rosmanitz).
When Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church, the Church of England was formed with the approval of the English Parliament.There were many people in England who did not want to accept the new Church and their followers who were called Anglicans. Pilgrims, were called Separatists because of their desire to separate from the church, were persecuted as were the Puritans (called so because they desired to purify the Church of England). The colonists in the north wanted to be able to freely follow their own faith without the fear of being persecuted (The New England Colonies, 2013).
The land in the north was not the ideal farming land but the northern settlers learned from the Native Americans how to survive in the north and about new crops that are better suited for the new land they occupied to feed their families. Many of the northern colonists became ship builders, fisherman, loggers and even tradesmen like blacksmiths for example. It was the settlers in the middle colonies that prospered the most from farming. They grew wheat, barley, oats, rye, and corn.Economically the middle colonies were prosperous for farming and provided the food for much of the colonies while they were still developing. “The presence of Quakers, Mennonites, Lutherans, Dutch Calvinists, and Presbyterians made the dominance of one faith next to impossible” (The Middle Colonies, 2013).
The Quakers also fled the restrictions of their homeland in hopes of being able to worship freely in the New World and settled in Pennsylvania. Like the northern colonies, the settlers here were above all, seeking the freedom of religion.Religion freedom, to all the settlers was a factor in deciding to travel to the New World. It was an underlying force that moved the southern settlers and a more prominent force with the northern and middle settlers.
Religion and the freedom to worship the religion of their choice without being prosecuted was always a factor in all the settlers when deciding to head to the New World. The opportunity to prosper economically was the incentive they needed to actually make the biggest decision they probably had to ever make. The northern and southern colonists each found different ways for prosper economically.
