English Settlements: Investors and Indentured Servants

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English Settlements Investors and Indentured
Servants
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If you chose to invest
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Virginia Company Joint Stock Company

• More than 50 businesses and 600 individuals from
  London bought shares

Virginia Company of London Seal, 1606-1624
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• It was 10 years before the company made any
  money, let alone profit!

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The Costs of Settlement was Enormous!
(Just like this cat)
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No income made on settlement until1620
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• Tobacco brought in SOME
• Income, but still, no profit!

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• By 1623, the Virginia Company
• was on the verge of bankruptcy.

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• 1623 a Royal Commission found the Virginia
  Company guilty of mismanagement (including
  corruption) and in danger of a complete collapse.

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• By 1624, investors had plunged
• 100,000 into Jamestown and hadnt made back
  even a small portion of their investment.

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1624

• King James I revoked the Virginia Company
  Charter.
• King made Virginia a Royal Colony and appointed a
  governor.

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If you were one of the original investors..
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Things you should have considered before
investing.

• Disease
• Swampy, full of mosquitoes with no fresh water
  supply.
• Typhoid and dysentery
• Passage to America left colonists weak,
  susceptible to scurvy and bloody flux.

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• Starvation
• Colonists did not have enough food to last the
  year.
• Severe drought in the area.
• Most focused on trying to find gold rather than
  planting crops.

• Nay, so great was our famine, that a Salvage we
  slew, and buried, the poorer sort tooke him up
  againe and eat him, and so did divers one another
  boyled and stewed with roots and herbs And one
  amongst the rest did kill his wife, powdered her,
  and had eaten part of her before it was knowne,
  for which hee was executednow whether shee was
  better roasted, boyled or carbonadod, I know
  not
• John Smith The Starving Time

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• Dissent
• Leaders were constantly arguing.
• Divisions between gentlemen and poor colonists.
• Ship captain reported colony was doing poorly
  because its leaders were striving to rule over
  one another.

Jamestown Gentlemen
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• Poor Company Structure
• Company leaders in London could not understand
  how difficult it was for the colonists
• Leaders in Virginia could not understand the
  pressure for profits in London

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• Fire
• 1608 fire destroyed all the buildings in
  Jamestown except three
• Colonists exposed to cold winter temps. Without
  shelter.
• Fire also destroyed all their supplies.

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• Native American Attacks
• Fear of attacks were constant.
• Most attacks took place outside of fort area,
  making it difficult to tend to crops.

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• Desertion
• Leaders of colony were afraid colonists would
  leave to go live with Natives.
• Attacks by Spanish
• Jamestown was 50 miles upriver from Spanish
  ships.

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If you chose to become an indentured servant.
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First decade of settlement.

• 95 of the colonists were tenants or servants.
• Almost died within the first year.
• Out of 900 sent to
• Jamestown, only 60 survived
• By 1610.

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• Of the more than 5,000 settlers who migrated to
  Virginia in the first 17 years, only 1, 132 were
  alive in 1624.
• ¾ of all indentured servants died within one year
  of moving to Jamestown between 1607 and 1624.

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• By the 1620s, conditions improved.
• As tobacco became more profitable, servants
  became more valuable.
• Conditions in England also improved, so fewer
  people came as indentured servants.