Unit 2: Colonial America Chapter 3: Founding the English Mainland Colonies 1585-1732

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Unit 2 Colonial America Chapter 3 Founding the
English Mainland Colonies 1585-1732
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Why Migrate to America?
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Englands First Attempt at Colonization - Roanoke

• Sir Walter Raleigh - Roanoke Island (1585, then
  1587) off the coast of NC
• Settlement failed for unknown reasons

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Four Distinct Regions
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Settling the Chesapeake VA MD

• Joint-stock companies were used to finance trips
  to the New World
• Purpose - make money
• Plymouth Company - failed
• Virginia Company (London Company)

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Virginia
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Jamestown - The First Settlement

• Three ships set sail from England Dec. 1606
• Settled at Jamestown (in honor of King James I)
  on May 24, 1607

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Jamestown The First Settlement
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Jamestown - The First Settlement

• Easy to defend but mosquito-infested very
  unhealthy
• Settlers died by the dozens from disease,
  malnutrition, starvation
• Spent time looking for gold instead of hunting or
  farming

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Jamestown High Mortality Rates

• The Starving Time

• 1607 104 colonists
• By spring, 1608 38 survived
• 1609 300 more immigrants
• By spring, 1610 60 survived
• 1610 1624 10,000 immigrants
• 1624 population 1,200
• Adult life expectancy 40 years
• Death of children before age 5 80

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Jamestown - The First Settlement

• Captain John Smith took over the settlement in
  1608 helped make it successful
• no work, no food policy
• Discipline order collapsed after he left in 1609

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The Powhatan Confederacy

• Dominated small tribes in the James River area
  when the English arrived

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The Powhatan Confederacy

• Two groups cooperated at first, but the English
  exhibited a sense of superiority entitlement
  that alienated the confederacy
• Relations grew worse - English raided Indian food
  supplies during the starving times

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War in the Chesapeake

• 1610-1614 - First Anglo-Powhatan War
• 1614-1622 - Peace
• 1622-1644 - Periodic attacks between Indians
  settlers

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War in the Chesapeake

• Powhatan Uprising of 1622
• Indians attacked the English, killing 347
• 1644-1646 - Second Anglo-Powhatan War
• Last effort of natives to defeat the English
• Indians defeated again

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War in the Chesapeake

• Peace Treaty of 1646
• Removed the Powhatans from their original land
• Formally separated the Indian English
  settlement areas
• English considered the Powhatan peoples extinct
  by 1685

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Tobacco

• Tobacco saved the colony!
• Englishmen were a steady market for this brown
  gold

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Tobacco

• Young planter named John Rolfe transplanted a
  milder strain of West Indies tobacco to the
  colony (1612)

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Tobacco

• 1618 Virginia produces 20,000 pounds of
  tobacco.
• 1622 Despite losing nearly one-third of
  its colonists in an Indian attack,
  Virginia produces 60,000 pounds of
  tobacco.
• 1627 Virginia produces 500,000
  pounds of tobacco.
• 1629 Virginia produces 1,500,000
  pounds of tobacco.

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Tobacco

• Played a vital role to putting VA on firm,
  economic footing
• Lives revolved around tobacco
• Quickly exhausted the soil
• Growing tobacco required much land, thereby
  promoting the plantation system
• Increased demand for more land cheap labor

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Indentured Servitude

• V.C. set up the head right system
• Granted each male colonist 50 acres of land for
  each settler he brought to VA
• Poor immigrants came to the New World worked
  for several years

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Indentured Servitude

• Indenture Contract
• 4-7 years
• Promised freedom dues
• Forbidden to marry
• Life was short brutal

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Frustrated Freemen - Bacons Rebellion

• Late 1600s - large number of young, poor,
  discontented men in the Chesapeake area
• Little access to land
• Few women to marry
• 1670 The Virginia Assembly disenfranchised most
  landless men

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Frustrated Freemen - Bacons Rebellion

• 1676 - 1,000 Virginians, led by planter Nathaniel
  Bacon, revolted
• Gov. of VA, William Berkeley, wouldnt do
  anything about the Indian attacks on frontier
  settlements
• Berkeley monopolized the fur trade with the
  Indians

Nathaniel Bacon
GovernorWilliam Berkeley
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Frustrated Freemen - Bacons Rebellion

• Rebels attacked Indians, drove Berkeley from
  Jamestown, burned the capital
• Bacon suddenly died of disease Berkeley put
  down the rebellion

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Frustrated Freemen - Bacons Rebellion

• Results
• Exposed the unhappiness of landless former
  servants
• Pitted poor, backcountry frontiersmen against the
  plantation owners (gentry)
• Planters searched for laborers less likely to
  rebel - black slaves!

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House of Burgesses

• Small measure of self-govt. began in 1619 with
  the first meeting of the House of Burgesses
• Royal Governor appointed a council consisting of
  6 leading planters
• 15 members were elected by the colony

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House of Burgesses

• 1624 James I revoked the charter of the bankrupt
  V.C.
• VA became a royal colony under the kings direct
  control
• Powers of the H of B were restricted