Colonial America
The colonial period of America was a time of great change to the New World. People of the colonial period had very traditional thoughts and traditions. These different ideas influenced the unique society that America is today. The people of this time period had very different political, economic, and social values than we have today. Political life during colonial America was much different than it is now. They were broken up into three types of colonies, proprietary, royal charter, and self-governing. A proprietary colony is a colony that is owned by one person, the proprietor, who can run the colony however they want. An example of this is William Penn and Province or Pennsylvania. The opposite of a proprietary colony would be a royal charter colony, where the colony is under direct control of the mother country, and has no role in running the colony. The Province of North Carolina is an example of a royal chart colony. The final type of colony is the self-governing colony, which as the name states, is more self-governing than the other two. The government of these colonies is elected and makes most decisions for the colony. An example of this would be the Colony of Massachusetts. There would also be a colonial legislature in every colony. They would be elected by property holding males and would be in control of the salary of the governor. They could use this influence to keep governors thoughts in line with those of the colony. However, the governor would be appointed by the king. This was just one way for the mother country to control their colonies. Another way was through the policy of mercantilism, or the belief in the benefits of profitable trading. All this along with the freedom that everyone sought served as stepping stones towards the American Revolution. Much like the political life, the economy was much different during colonial America than it is today. In the New England Colonies the growing season was much shorter than