As the colonies along the Atlantic coast took shape in the mid-eighteenth century, they became grouped by region: New England, middle, Chesapeake, and southern colonies. Among these regions there were some general similarities, including temperate climates and more than adequate average rainfall, which are critical factors for maximizing agricultural production.
Surplus crops provided the most important exports in all regions except in New England, although what colonists grew depended on a variety of factors such as climate, topography, and soil types. All of the regions depended heavily on Britain for manufactured goods. Most colonies enjoyed easy access to the Atlantic Ocean both along their coasts and via river systems navigable for miles inland. However, provinces like North Carolina, whose Outer Banks blocked the passage of larger ocean-going vessels, and New Jersey, which had no major river system, became dependent on their neighbors for transporting their products. Despite these similarities, the colonies displayed regional differences.
The area known as New England was comprised of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. This region was highly English, with scatterings of Scotch-Irish population. With its proximity to the ocean, this area’s major commodity was fish. Other major exports included whale products and timber. Major imports included sugar from the West Indies, wheat from the Chesapeake region, and manufactured items from Britain.
The middle, or mid-Atlantic, colonies included New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. This region was known for being the most ethnically diverse during the colonial period. Large concentrations of Dutch, Scots, and Scotch-Irish settled in New York, along with some Germans and a few Huguenots, or French Protestants. New York also had the largest concentration of Africans in the middle colonies. New Jersey had a similar ethnic makeup, with a handful of Swedes in the Delaware River Valley. Delaware was heavily English, while Pennsylvania was predominantly German and Scotch-Irish.
The middle colonies had a greater population of slaves than New England. These slaves were necessary for the wheat harvests of New York. As a result of their bountiful harvests, New York’s major exports were wheat and wheat products. Like New England, the middle region relied upon Britain for manufactured goods and upon the West Indies for sugar imports.
The Chesapeake region of Maryland and Virginia, also known as the Upper South, was the wealthiest of the eastern regions. A heavily English region, this area was also populous with Germans and Scotch-Irish. The Chesapeake also had a great deal of racial diversity, with a population of 60 percent white, 40 percent black.
Not surprisingly, then, slaves were common on both large and small farms. Tobacco served as the major crop of this region, although wheat also became a popular crop. The Chesapeake exported both tobacco and wheat, along with some food to the West Indies, and imported manufactured goods from Britain and slaves from the West Indies and Africa.
The final region along the eastern coast was the southern colonies, or Lower South, which included North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. This region was the most racially diverse, with South Carolina being the only colony with a black majority. In addition to the multitude of Africans, this region was populated mainly by the English, with Scots, Scotch-Irish, Germans, and Huegenots figuring into the mix.
Like the Chesapeake, the Africans were necessary in the Lower South as a labor source for the plantations, and were commonly seen on smaller family farms as well. In addition to tobacco, major exports included rice and indigo. Cultivation practices for rice and indigo were extremely brutal and labor-intensive, and many slaves died from the brutal conditions. As a result, slaves from the West Indies and Africa were a major import to the area to replenish the supply and sustain productivity. Other major imports included manufactured goods from Britain and sugar and rum from the West Indies.