America Compared: Plantation Colonies Versus Neo-Europes

The prospects for Europeans who traveled to tropical plantations like Barbados differed dramatically from those traveling to neo-European colonies like Massachusetts Bay. In the former, planters employed small armies of servants and slaves; in the latter, the first generation of colonists worked hard, often in cold climates and rocky soils, to eke out a living.

Henry Whistler’s Journal, 1655

This Island [Barbados] is one of the Richest Spots of ground in the world and fully inhabited. … The gentry here doth Hue [appear] far better than ours do in England : they have most of them 100 or 2 or 3 of slaves[,] apes who they command as they please. … This Island is inhabited with all sorts : with English, French, Dutch, Scots, Irish, Spaniards they being Jews : with Indians and miserable Negroes borne to perpetual slavery they and their seed : these Negroes they do allow as many wives as they will have, some will have 3 or 4, according as they find their body able : our English here doth think a negro child the first day it is born to be worth £5, they cost them nothing the bringing up, they go all ways naked : some planters will have 30 more or les about 4 or 5 years old : they sell them from one to the other as we do sheep. This Island is the Dunghill whereon England doth cast forth its rubbish. … A rogue in England will hardly make a cheater here : a Bawd brought over puts on a demure comportment, a whore if handsome makes a wife for some rich planter.

Source: The Narrative of General Venables (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1900), 145–146.

William Wood, New England’s Prospect, 1634

But it may be objected that it is too cold a country for our English men, who have been accustomed to a warmer climate. To which it may be answered …, there is wood good store and better cheap to build warm houses and make good fires, which makes the winter less tedious. … [T]rue it is that some venturing too nakedly in extremity of cold, being more foolhardy than wise, have for a time lost the use of their feet, others the use of their fingers; but time and surgery afterwards recovered them. Some have had their overgrown beards so frozen together that they could not get their strong-water bottles into their mouths. … [W]hereas many do disparage the land, saying a man cannot live without labor, in that they more disparage and discredit themselves in giving the world occasion to take notice of their dronish disposition that would live off the sweat of another man’s brows. … For all in New England must be workers of some kind. … And howsoever they are accounted poor, they are well contented and look not so much at abundance as at competency.

Source: William Wood, New England’s Prospect (Boston: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), 28–29, 68.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS

  1. Question

    fqxsao+0m0x9rXhmQcSHk3ctzCLcgqbOldlSMPq2uUmJu7pqlnA9PAkCxulJvIKY4sNvdRmjNvmsjxriQ2XP6gLQB65Fj++Fw0S7JTbyjrmNwVAFenLXXTS67VezIOYlGpLxRrmXkz9b1qb7fVJZx6mvj9sPcoFVh/7zbOVviAL3nGAr7AFW/Ia/0GRmCtcNBToa500f2EPeE5cng/S+WeifUOpp/9UvgW/SFYgzKThR6Q3/FOqq632jVkzJnOc1OyMpwD9RHeNlQEkvhZzXulsRIYM5bIypP4G5s1PP1VdbV241/arjrXKFS/4SjwBHMRfWfSBC+BZElsTi
  2. Question

    fHPkhfWdTt9xCC6yEyMUrKJMfGzrMBMja2l2fkT8cOfONLguTCgwcNsQCeYSw9iBQxfd4r0SlV8qSFRer7dho7gnFXv+CqTuyjd9AxXQyCzHybpIyGTiIHV50OLY/E4+BV7rzyNMFYEeGoSqAcOcFmbJRp9FO03pSrIDYOIy3rAhjKOPtoPG1U0fzuDpSPQ9/kYVF/s11f/page+Jiv25hTkeBukA5Z7