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New England

As the colonies of New England grew they developed trade with each other and Great Britain. With the growth of trade the ways of colonial life were changing – big cities as Boston and Salem developed.

Puritans valued education highly – they started schools and in 1636, Harvard College was founded near Boston. It was the first college in the thirteen colonies. Later it grew into Harvard University.

In New England, where soil was rocky and thin, the farms were worked mainly by family members, so there were few hired laborers. Instead, there were many merchants, whose income was drawn from overseas trade, and sailors, who served the ships.

The settlements of the colonies quickly grew – for example, the Massachusetts Bay Colony had more than one hundred towns by 1717. A legal preconditioning for founding these towns was signing a governing compact (like the Mayflower Compact), in which the settlers agreed to obey society's laws and church's ordinances.

The New England towns were ruled by a unique institution – the town meeting. The political assembly was open to all free men – people, who owned a minimum amount of property. Town meetings assembled at regular intervals and discussed such important issues as dividing common land fencing fields against stray animals, erecting bridges and building roads. The meeting elected a moderator and seven selectmen to serve as an executive committee. Town meetings were the initial stage of the future American democracy, as they made settlements really independent, though colonial legislatures had to answer to a governor appointed by the British King.

The development of self-government in New England could not remain unnoticed by British officials. The Massachusetts colony, for example, ignored the King's acts and declared its citizens exempt from all laws and royal decrees from England except for a declaration of war.

In 1686, King James II approved a proposal to create a Dominion of New England, which limited self-government and deeply affected the Puritan idea of "a city upon the hill". The creation of Dominion was opposed in the colonies and led to growing tension until in 1688 the Glorious Revolution in England changed the situation in dominions. New English rulers King William and Queen Mary reestablished colonial legislative government and ensured religious freedom for Protestants.

Gradually New England colonies were becoming more and more independent, but British foreign policy had great impact on the economy of New England, because the latter's participated in the wars on the side of mother country. In 1739, the War of Austrian Succession undermined Boston's economy, and the effect of that war could be felt for a decade after it had been finished. The taxes rose, shipbuilding declined, and the city experienced a severe blow.