New England Confederation
The New England Confederation (officially United Colonies of New England ) was founded in Boston in 1643 as a military alliance to establish "security and prosperity" between the English colonies of Massachusetts Bay Colony , Plymouth Colony , Colony of Connecticut and New Haven Colony . The main purpose of the alliance was to defend the Puritan colonies against the Indians (here in particular against the Mohegan and Narraganset ), against the French and Dutch living in the neighborhood, and to settle border conflicts between the colonies. Internal affairs, however, were left to the colonies themselves. The founders gave the Confederation its own constitution , which they headed "The United Colonies of New England ". The Anglican -influenced Maine and the settled settlements on Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island also wanted to join the alliance, but this was rejected for political and religious reasons.
background
The alliance was the first experiment of a federal America and built on a variety of compromises. It was not a central government, which is why the main weaknesses of the concept consisted, among other things, in the fact that the elected representatives only had an advisory function and in the fact that there was considerable rivalry between the colonies. The Massachusetts Bay Colony , which had the most residents, had to pay the most taxes to the alliance and provide the most soldiers by comparison, but had no more influence on upcoming decisions than any of the other colonies.
stability
The alliance was on the verge of collapse 10 years after its inception when the Massachusetts Bay Colony refused to join the Anglo-Dutch War in 1653 . Shortly before the state of Connecticut annexed the New Haven Colony , the regulations of the alliance were changed to the effect that the representatives should only meet once every three years, so that the alliance steadily lost its importance. In 1676 it gained importance again during the King Philip's War , only to be more and more neglected afterwards.
End of the alliance
With the revocation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter in 1684, the alliance was finally dissolved. Later preliminary stages in the United States of America included the Dominion of New England and the Albany Congress .
literature
- John Andrew Doyle: English colonies in America . Holt, New York 1889, OCLC 8606936 ( online in Google Book Search).
- Herbert L. Osgood: The American colonies in the seventeenth century . Peter Smith, Gloucester, MA 1957, OCLC 1188207 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c New England Confederation. In: United States HISTORY. Retrieved July 16, 2012 .
- ↑ a b c d New England Confederation. In: infoplease.com. Retrieved July 16, 2012 .