Answer:
Answer by Scott Bade, studied history at Stanford University, international security analyst:
In short, the British treated their colonies in vastly different ways, both across different regions and within the same colonies over time.
The British Empire was never a consistent empire. Across various colonies, there were different raisons d’être and methods of organization for each one. Even within America, different Colonies were founded for entirely different reasons. Virginia started out as a mercantile colony run by a company; Massachusetts was originally a Puritan theocracy; New York was a crown colony taken over from the Dutch; and Maryland and Pennsylvania were religiously tolerant colonies governed by (relatively) benign hereditary feudal rulers (called proprietors), the Barons Calvert and the Penn family. South Carolina, with its rice and indigo plantations, was more akin to a Caribbean colony than its continental neighbors.* At the same time that the American Colonies were emerging, the East India Company established outposts in India, and the Royal African Company did much the same in Africa. None of them were uniformly governed or similar in character; the British government occasionally took notice but generally was not involved in their governance.
