Middle and Southern Colonies in British America 

When England expanded their Southern Colonies, Virginia was the very first of the Southern Colonies to be settled. The Southern Colonies of Maryland, North and South Carolina, and Georgia were established during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by England. The Church of England was the dominated the religious force in southern colonies. In the Southern Colonies, tobacco and cotton were two of the most dominant crops that ended up fueling their economy and promoting slavery. Instead of doing what the Middle Colonies did, they established a plantation system that produced many crops and was a huge part of the history between international trade. They created trading networks that went all the way back to England and to other parts of the world. The networks became so profitable that the Southern colonists came up with slavery that would soon become an institutions in America till the Civil War. In these colonies, many people did not have communities although family was very important to their culture. They were also more prone to diseases and death because of the warm climate and mosquitos that cared malaria.

The middle colonies included Dutch, Sweden, Finns, French Protestants, Germans, Norwegians, and Scots as well as English. A group called the Quakers who are members of a Christian movement devoted to peaceful principles and do not believe in having ministers controlled the Middle colonies. Quakers were usually tradespeople, shopkeepers, and small farmers who suspected wealthy men which caused most of England to despise them. In the Middle Colonies, market towns and villages were formed where goods and food of all sorts could be traded. Here they produced food in large amounts and lands were also used for mining activities. Middle Colonies never established trade networks even though they had products traded to other colonies including Britain. Meanwhile, people in the middle colonies had close, bonded communities which came from New England. Behavioral laws and just laws in general were a lot stricter in the middle colonies than the south.

The New England had mostly religious dissenters who never agreed with the established church. The Puritans wanted to purify the church and although it was mostly protestant, it retained too many ceremonies from the Catholic Church. In New England, their beliefs were different. They thought that they could prepare for God’s saving grace by leading moral lives, always praying, and reading the bible. They also focused a lot on their education. Education was a strong part of the culture in New England. Their most valued good for trading was fishing and often shipped their trades. Unlike the Middle and Southern colonies, New England had poor, rocky soil so they didn’t have that good of crops so that’s why fishing was their biggest trading good.

Both the Middle and Southern colonies had Christian dominance present and both were also given the freedom of worship. In the Middle colonies, although the Quakers had the most powerful religious group, they agreed that completely taking over society in the region was not the way they wanted to do things. Again, people in the south could worship whomever or whatever they wanted because religion wasn’t a huge part of their culture. Agriculture was also a huge part of both of these regions. Both regions had governments for each community that helped keep them under control.

After reading through Topic 2 and comparing and contrasting between the MIddle and Southern colonies i believe that the Middle Colonies was the most successful because although they didn’t have the tobacco and cotton that the south did, but they did have better bonded communities which was always a good thing. They also didn’t have a dominant religious group, everyone was free to believe in what they wanted. The middle colonies were as prone to diseases as death as the southern either. And instead of the plantation system and slavery outbreak, they had markets and villages for trading their goods.

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