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Southern colonies

BARBADOS. The southern most colonies, and the ones that did not join the other 13 colonies in open revolt in 1776, were located in the West Indies, such as Barbados. Barbados was established in order to make money through the production of sugar. Sugar was even more labor intensive than tobacco. The weather was oppressively hot and humid, which meant England decided to import and use slaves. Sugar was one part of the triangular trade: Finished goods (such as rum) from England to Africa; slaves from Africa to the West Indies; sugar from the West Indies to England. Due to ever-growing number of slaves in English territories in the Caribbean, in 1662, England created the Barbados Slave Code. The Code provided the legal basis for slavery. It also stated that slaves had no rights and were totally under the control of their owners, imperturbably. Now Barbados made a lot of money for the crown, but as the island colony only produced sugar, its inhabitants needed everything else and so Parliament created the colony of the Carolinas in 1653. The Carolinas existed to grow all the food that the people on Barbados would need. Some Carolina farmers discovered that if you plant three crops, they can be harvested at different times of the year, thus farmers could make even greater profits than if they just grew a single crop. The combination was rice, tobacco, and indigo. Indigo was a tuber used in the dying of cloth purple or dark blue. Very shortly, Carolina planters were making more money than the sugar planters on Barbados, thus Barbados' colonists migrated to the Carolinas, and brought their slaves with them. Eventually the Carolinas would be split into North and South Carolina. SO many Barbadian slaves were brought into what became South Carolina, than in South Carolina black people outnumbered white people. Colonists of the Carolinas first tried to use local Indians as slaves, however Indians had no experience in growing rice but West Africans did know how to cultivate rice. They also knew how to tend cattle and plant sugar, so Africans quickly replaced Indians as the choice for slaves in the Carolinas.GEORGIA. England made a lot of money from the Carolinas. English leaders feared that the Spanish would try to invade the British colonies and seize the Carolinas (much in the same way that England supplanted the Spanish in the Caribbean). Spain had sent raiding parties into the Carolinas already. So Parliament decided to create a colony with the purpose of slowing down the inevitable Spanish attack from Florida. They called that new colony Georgia, which was established by James Ogelthorpe in 1733. Georgia would be populated by people let out of debtor's prison. In England it was against the law to be unable to pay your debts. Men, when they did not pay their debts, would be thrown into Debtor's Prison. Parliament decided to give these criminals a second chance by allowing them to start their lives over again this time in the colony of Georgia. Because these colonists were inherently poor, Parliament wanted them to find jobs and thus Parliament initially forbade slavery in Georgia thus white landowners would hire white debtor's prisoners. Georgia had always been a "melting pot," welcoming the persecuted and prosecuted of Europe including large groups of Puritans, Lutherans, and Quakers (Wrightsboro). The only group not welcome in Georgia were Catholics, which is not surprising considering the religious wars that were fought a century earlier in England. The diversity of religion brought Georgia an unexpected strength - an willingness to accept others regardless of religion.The first test of the new colony came in 1739 during the War of Jenkins Ear. Southern Georgia and Florida were battlegrounds over the next four years, most notably the siege of St. Augustine (1740) and the Battle of Bloody Marsh (1742). When peace finally settled on the colony Oglethorpe was gone, never to return, and William Stevens was president.The War of Jenkins Ear was a minor war that fueled a much larger conflict known as the War of Austrian Succession (1742-1748). Because of the cost involved in fighting the war the English Parliament had little money to support the colonies it helped fund over the past 80 years. Georgia came under increasing pressure in the late 1740's to become self-sufficient. Georgia was not prosperous under the trustee system. In 1749, 16 years into the trustee system, the colony exported goods for the first time. James Habersham petitioned for slavery to be allowed and the request was granted the following year (http://ourgeorgiahistory.com/history101/gahistory03.html).

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Source:  OpenStax, Us history to 1877. OpenStax CNX. Jan 20, 2013 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11483/1.1
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