Between 1607 and 1732, thirteen diverse colonies were established along America’s eastern coast. The British Parliament granted rights and privileges to the charter colonies.

The colonies could elect governors and members of a legislature. In the proprietary colonies, individuals or groups granted land by Great Britain ruled. They had the power to appoint the governor and certain members of the legislature. Great Britain directly ruled the royal colonies.

The British Parliament appointed the governor and the upper house of the legislature, which usually followed the wishes of the king. The people of the colonies elected the lower house.

The colonies also were characterized by their different sources of food and income. New England terrain was rougher than other areas and its long winters made farming difficult.

Hardier crops like corn were cultivated, but the primary source of food was fishing. The mid-Atlantic Colonies, from New York to Maryland, became the colonial breadbasket, producing wheat, corn, oats, rye, and barley used domestically or exported from ports such as New York and Philadelphia.

Southern Colonies like Virginia and North Carolina became dotted with tobacco farms after Jamestown settler John Rolfe perfected a tobacco hybrid suitable for American soil. Farmers in South Carolina and Georgia also grew indigo and rice.

These labor-intensive crops demanded a constant and plentiful labor source - supplied by the Atlantic slave trade.

Europ

e

Africa

Am

eri

cas

British laws affecting the colonies were part of an economic policy called mercantilism - a belief that the colonies existed for the financial good of the mother country.

The Navigation Acts attempted to control the trans-Atlantic trade of British and colonial goods, including a duty, or tax, paid to the British government on itemsof trade. Eventually, well established and overlapping triangular trade routes took goods to and from British colonies in the Americas, Great Britain, and the coast of Africa.

The transport of enslaved people from African across the Atlantic to the Americas was called the Middle Passage. Unknown thousands died under the horrible conditions of the trip.

The trade of enslaved Africans primarily involved the British islands in the West Indies, where most enslaved Africans were traded to work in the region’s sugar cane fields. Most of the remaining human cargo was taken to the thirteen colonies. Once traded, the enslaved Africans toiled from sun-up to sundown, most of them in southern plantation fields.

Congress banned the Atlantic slave trade in 1808. Slavery itself had been banned in the northern states. Great Britain and France also banned slavery. Yet, by that time millions of Africans had been captured, first from Africa’s coastal regions and later form its interior.

Though torn from their homelands, they brought with them their rich traditions, songs, languages, and religions. Enslaved Africans were a large percentage of the population in the southern states and even outnumbered whites in South Carolina and the West Indies.

The southern states became more and more dependent on slavery for their economic success. The practice of slavery continued long after the Atlantic slave trade was banned.