ABSTRACT
In Chapters 4-6 we have seen that the Anglo-American world entered a fresh phase of expansion during the latter half of the seventeenth century, as previously small colonies grew and prospered, and new territories were brought under English rule in North America and the Caribbean. We have also seen that, for all their variety, the lands peopled by English settlers entered upon two broadly different paths of social and economic development. On the continental mainland, English migrants created colonies of settlement which, though they formed regions with distinctive socio-econornic and cultural characteristics, were dearly distinguishable from the colonies of exploitation in the Caribbean. Whereas the West Indies depended on sugar prodution for overseas markcts and were peopled mainly by Africans carried into slavery, the mainland colonies were more economically self-reliant and predominantly European in their demographie and cultural composition. But, though the social and economic development of the Anglo-American colonies fol1owed different paths, their institutional development conformed to a broadly similar pattem.
