Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 46, New England Confederation.

My apologies that this week is a week delayed.

I wasn't too well last week and needed to take a week off to recuperate,

but now I'm back and ready to go.

Special thanks to our newest pioneers, listeners Paul and

Patricia. Thank you. I couldn't do the show without you. In our last episode, we got back to

New England after spending some time with the Dutch and the Swedes. We looked at Plymouth as it

underwent radical transformations in the 1630s and 16 Swedes. We looked at Plymouth as it underwent radical transformations in the

1630s and 1640s, both domestically to become Plymouth Republic and externally, as it was

subject to immense pressure from its larger neighbour to the north, the colony of Massachusetts Bay.

It is to Massachusetts that we turn today, along with the other colonies of the region.

We last dealt with Massachusetts in episode 33, so it's worth giving the topic a bit of a refresh.

We dealt with the process of founding a New England town and the Massachusetts economy,

and also gave some analysis of the political system.

You see, while New England was deeply Puritan, Puritan was a bit of a catch-all term. There were many different variants of Puritanism,

which each gave the New England colonies a distinctive character. Plymouth was founded by separatists,

which gave it the deeply democratic organisation that we discussed at length in the previous episode.

In stark contrast to this, Massachusetts was more oligarchical.

It viewed government as sacred and a god-given institution, rather than something that had anything to do with the people.

It took until the mid-1640s for political pressure to build up to the degree that popular reform was made.

And finally, the general court became a bicameral legislature, a lower house of deputies, and an upper house

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