Social Sciences and History / Unit 1 SSH 0010 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Classifying a Colony by Its Founding Purpose
The idea
The exam asks why a colony was founded far more often than when. The anchor supplies five purposes: profit for investors, a religious community, a proprietary grant to a favored individual, a trading post for furs, and a military or mission outpost. To classify a colony, ask who paid for it and what they expected back.
In practice
Take four cases. A settlement chartered to a London company that sends young men to grow a cash crop: profit, the Jamestown pattern. A settlement of families who crossed the ocean to build a church community and who bar dissenters: religious, the Plymouth and Massachusetts pattern. A tract granted by the king to one family who names it after themselves and sells land: proprietary, the Pennsylvania and Carolina pattern. A river fort with a few hundred traders, no farms, and native partners bringing pelts: a trading post, the New Netherland and New France pattern. St. Augustine and Santa Fe fit the fifth: Spanish outposts for conversion and control that never found gold.
Where people slip
Purposes changed. Georgia was founded on Enlightenment principles and turned to slavery within a generation, and Pennsylvania's proprietor also sought religious freedom. Classify by the founding, then note the drift.
Your place on the trail
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