ABSTRACT
British colonization in the tropics presents certain characteristics that are in striking contrast to the settlement of New England or the Middle Colonies. The settlement of these Northern Colonies was often of profound religious significance. In the occupation of the West Indies religion played no part. North Americans sought and, in part at least, realized in the new world political and social reforms which did not interest West Indians, who had no particular desire for changes in prevailing English customs. Local patriotism was established early in the life of North America, while in the West Indies devotion to one’s island was attained slowly and with difficulty. The Northerners, who came largely from the middle and nonconformist class in England, had imbibed democratic and republican ideas. The West India planters, on the contrary, represented the capitalist class, were often connected with the landed gentry, were Anglicans, and championed the social and political conceptions held by the rural aristocracy of England. So far as they made the West Indies their home, they made it as nearly as possible like the England they loved and to which they ever hoped to return. In New England a free peasantry was drilled in habits that promoted frugality and strength of character. Slavery, on the other hand, was fastened to the West Indies and fostered industrial waste 2and ways of living that tended to undermine character intellectually and morally.
