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The colonies exported naval stores, fur, lumber and tobacco to Britain, and food for the British sugar plantations in the Caribbean. The culture of the Southern and Chesapeake Colonies was different from that of the Northern and Middle Colonies and from that of their common origin in the Kingdom of Great Britain.
A new map of Virginia, Maryland, and the improved parts of Pennsylvania & New Jersey, 1685 map of the Chesapeake region by Christopher Browne. The Chesapeake Colonies were the Colony and Dominion of Virginia, later the Commonwealth of Virginia, and Province of Maryland, later Maryland, both colonies located in British America and centered on the Chesapeake Bay.
The name Chesapeake is an anglicization of the Algonquian word, K'che-sepi-ack, which translates as "country on a great river." [1] In 1585, their name was recorded by English colonists as Ehesepiooc. [1] Their name is spelled many different ways and also listed as Chesapians. [1]
The colonies developed prosperous economies based on the cultivation of cash crops, such as tobacco, [3] indigo, [4] and rice. [5] An effect of the cultivation of these crops was the presence of slavery in significantly higher proportions than in other parts of British America.
Virginian culture was spread across the Chesapeake region during colonial times by settlers and strongly influenced the culture of the Lowland South through the transport of slaves. Virginia's coastal areas were heavily plantation based, relying on tobacco production for its economic base.
Most theories of political culture identify New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the South as having formed separate and distinct political cultures. [98] As Bonomi shows, the most distinctive feature of colonial society was the vibrant political culture, which attracted the most talented and ambitious young men into politics. [99]
The customs for courtship in the early colonies varied according to the religious and cultural framework of each colony. In the Chesapeake Colonies, marriages were often arranged by families, while in Delaware Colony, Quakers forbid any marriage to a non-Quaker or to a first or second cousin, and the entire community had to consent to any marriage.
While the majority of colonists were from Great Britain, these were not monolithic in ethnic, political, social, and cultural origins, but rather transplanted different Old World folkways to the New World. The two most significant colonies had been settled by opposing factions in the English Civil War and the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms.