Essay On What Was Colonial America A Land Of Opportunity

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The vast unknown and uncharted land across the Atlantic Ocean was bound to entice many people hoping to start a new life and build a dream. Regardless of their dream, settlers in the new world had to find a way to support themselves once they arrived. According to colonial population estimates, by the mid-1700s the thirteen British colonies had a population of about 1.2 million. That’s 1.2 million people who left their homes in England for America, a country now considered “a land of opportunity”. However, how much opportunity truly did exist almost three centuries ago in colonial America? In the colonial “land of opportunity”, the colonists had many chances to build a dream through higher wages, land, and most importantly, tobacco. In America, colonists were being paid much higher than they had been in England. In an excerpt from An Account of Pennsylvania… by Gabriel Thomas, it is stated that “…poor people (both men and women) of all kinds, can here [in America] get three times the wages for their labor they can in England or Wales.” Both men and women were being paid more in the colonies than in Europe because there was a high demand for laborers. Also, many of the people coming to America were poor so they could not benefit themselves immediately but they…show more content…
There was an abundance of land in America available for farming. According to an excerpt from Letters From An American Farmer by St. Jean de Crèvecoeur, unlike Europe, America was not overcrowded; “There is room for every body in America…” This land was available for them to build and grow on. However, technology was not very advanced and the environment was different in the new world. This meant that weather and other factors such as the type of crops they grew affected colonists’ ability to succeed through agriculture. Nevertheless, it was an opportunity not offered in Europe that could give many a better

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