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When Charles II came to power in England in 1660, the huge tracts of land stretching from Virginia to Spanish Florida were unsettled. It was a semitropical zone with fertile land, also this territory was of great strategic importance – it had to prevent Spanish settlements from spreading northward.
The place was named Carolina in Charles's honor (in Latin his name was Carlus). Carolina was planned as one colony, but due to historical and economic factors in 1729 it split into two separate colonies – North and South Carolinas.
North Carolina was mostly settled by Virginians, who followed their colony's patterns. They developed an economy based on tobacco cultivation and export of forest products. Production of North Carolina was shipped from Virginia's ports, so the two colonies were tightly linked.
South Carolina had a different pattern of development. It was settled mainly by the comers from Barbados – a tiny island that had become English colony in 1627. People coming from Barbados were mainly white planters. They brought to the new colony their slaves who had worked on sugar plantations.
The economies of both colonies were closely tied to slavery. The blacks, who arrived mainly from the west coast of Africa, had necessary skills for planting crops in semi-tropical environment. Their techniques of harvesting rice and indigo made these crops the colony's chief exports and contributed to Carolina's prosperity.
In 1732, British Parliament charted the last of the original thirteen colonies – Georgia, hoping that the territory would prosper by exporting expensive production like wine and silk and provide a buffer against Spanish and French intrusion from the south. It also aimed to provide a second chance for adventurous members of the English under class. Parliament even invested funds into this colony, giving the power in the colony to James Edward Oglethorpe, an English general.
Oglcthorpe hated slavery and tried to ban it from Georgia. He thought that slavery degraded blacks, made whites lazy and presented a terrible risk. He recognized that slavery undermined the economic position of poor whites. At Oglethorpe's insistence Parliament made Georgia the only colony where slavery was forbidden. Georgia had to be populated by white, independent farmer-soldiers, who had no rights to enlarge their holdings.
After some yeais it became clear that Oglethorpe's plans failed – settlements did not expand and the only profitable crop was rice. In 1750, Oglethoipe gave up – slavery was officially legalized in the colony, and restrictions on the market for land were abolished. As a result Georgia boomed.
By 1770, southern states developed black slavery as then chief source of labor. The slaves brought from Africa, had no rights of their own, in most southern colonies the laws saying that the Africans could be bought and sold were passed.
Charleston, founded in 1670, became the leading post and trading center of South Carolina.
Task 2. Fill in the table representing thirteen original colonies. Speak about the colonies using the information from the table.
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