differences between the Spanish settlements in the Southwest and the English colonies in New England

1. Analyze the differences between the Spanish settlements in the Southwest and the English colonies in New England in the seventeenth century in terms of TWO of the following. During the seventeenth century, there were many differences between the Spanish settlements in the Southwest and the English colonies in New England.

In religious aspects, the Spanish were catholic. They wanted to gain numbers and support Catholicism and show that it is the true religion. Because of this, they forced the Native Americans to become catholic themselves. They set up convents and brought missionaries to help convert the Indians to Catholicism. The Spanish were mostly interested in taking gold from their settlements. Their settlements didn’t last as long as Britain’s colonies because they did not have anything else to do economically after they ran out of gold.

On the other hand, the English were mostly Puritans and pilgrims. The middle colonists were a mixture of religions, including Quakers (led by William Penn), Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, and others. The southern colonists had a mixture of religions as well, including Baptists and Anglicans. The pilgrims wanted to separate from Protestantism, so they came over to the New World. The puritans wanted to change ideas within the Anglican Church because they felt it was too similar to Catholicism. The puritans came to the New World and had a huge influence. Unlike the Spanish, the English never forced their religious beliefs onto the Indians. The English colonies had abundant natural resources. Their economy prospered in the fur trade, fishing, lumbering, farming and other industries that produced raw materials. Their abundance of natural resources stimulated trade into the colonies, as developed industries in Europe, required new materials to convert into refined goods. At first, they made a lot of money off of tobacco. Also they got into farming and fishing.

Their colonies were mostly trading so they had lumberyards to create big ships for trading. Economically, New Mexico’s land was unfertile and resulted in very little agricultural success. The Spanish colonies developed economically by using the Encomienda system. In this system, Spanish lords exploited and manipulated Native Americans, using them to do manual labor on the land. The lands were also too far away from the Pacific coast to be of any real use to. The Spanish colonies lacked natural resources, thus resulting in slow economic development. The Spanish settlements and the English colonies held many differences due to their differing religious beliefs and economic views during the seventeenth century.