Early English Colonies

OBJECTIVES: Chapter 2: Early English Colonies

o We will examine the early

attempts of the British Empire in

establishing a colony in the New

World.

o We will examine how the British

established these colonies and

what was the motive of

establishing these colonies.

o Heb_11:16 But now they desire

a better country, that is, an

heavenly: wherefore God is not

ashamed to be called their God:

for he hath prepared for them a

city.

• In 1606, James I issued Charters to the London and Plymouth Companies.

• The Plymouth group tried to establish a colony in Maine and failed.

• The London Company moved quickly, sending a colonization expedition for Virginia with a party of 144 men and three ships.

• 104 men survived out of 144, the

journey and reached the American

coast in the spring of 1607.

• The ships sailed into the

Chesapeake Bay and up a river they

named James.

• They set up their colony on a

peninsula extending from the river’s

northern bank.

• They called it Jamestown.

o It was a poor site, a swamp with

humidity with outbreaks of Malaria.

o It was near powerful confederation

of Indians led by Chief Powhatan.

o Many died from Malaria.

o The investors of the colonies wanted

profit so the colonists made a vain

effort to find gold.

o They neglected agriculture thinking

they could get food from the Indians.

o They were wrong.

• No women were sent to

Jamestown at first and there

was no sense of community or

family.

• No personal motive to make

the colony work.

• Disease and the failure to

grow food led only to 38

survivor in the colony.

Smith to the Rescue: • In January of 1608 27 year old Captain John

Smith arrived.

• His leadership saved the colony.

• He imposed work and order into the community.

• He also organized raids of Indian villages to steal food that insured survival.

• By the summer of 1609, Smith was deposed from the council and returned to England, the colony was showing promise of survival.

Reorganization:

• The London Company renamed itself the Virginia Company.

• King Charles I gave the company a new charter from the king, who increased the company’s power over the colony and enlarged the area of land it had title to.

• It attracted new settlers by offering shares of stock to “planters” willing to migrate at their own expense.

• It also attracted poorer people who agreed to serve the company for seven years.

Not Everything Goes To Plan: • In 1609 it sent a grand fleet of nine

ships with about 600 including women and children.

• But disaster struck.

• One ship was lost in a hurricane.

• One ran aground on one of the Bermuda Islands.

• Many arrived weak, and suffered a harsh winter.

• They met hostile Indians still sore over John Smith who killed their livestock.

Not Everything Goes To Plan:

• They had to resort to eating dogs cats, rats, horsehides and even dead corpses to survive.

• The following May the ship from Bermuda finally arrived.

• They found only 60 out of the 500 residents survived.

• The new settlers and the survivors decided to return home.

Giving it a Second try:

• But while returning down the James River, they met an English ship coming up the river part of a fleet bringing supplies that also had the colonies first governor. Lord De La Warr.

• They decided to return to Jamestown.

Giving it a Second try: • De la war and his successors imposed harsh and

rigid discipline to the colonists.

• They Organized settlers into work gangs and communal system of labor.

• But colonists began to not work hard.

• Governor Dale, De La War’s successor realized that if the colonists had to have a personal incentive to work.

• He began to permit the private ownership and cultivation of land.

• Landowners would repay the company with part-time work and contributions of grain to its storehouses.

Tobacco

• Europeans became aware of

tobacco soon after Columbus’s

first return from the West Indies

where he had seen the Cuban

natives smoking small cigars they

inserted in their nostrils.

Tobacco

• By the 17th century it was already in wide use in Europe.

• Critics including King James denounced it as a poisonous weed.

• Still the demand of tobacco grew.

• In 1612, Jamestown Planter John Rolfe began to experiment in Virginia with a harsh strain of tobacco that the Indians long grew.

Tobacco • Tobacco cultivation spread

quickly throughout the James River.

• The need for large farmland to grow the crop and the way tobacco exhausted the soil after a few years increased the need for settlers to expand beyond its original settlements.

Encroaching on the territories of the Natives.

• The Virginia Company still was in

debt even with tobacco

cultivation.

• But held hope that tobacco would

ultimately turn a profit.

ATTEMPTED TO DRAW NEW SETTLERS

• Head right System. Head-rights were fifty-acre grants of land, which new settlers could acquire in a variety of ways.

• Those who already lived in the colony received 100 acres a piece.

• This system encouraged family groups to migrate together, since the more family members traveled to America, the larger the landholding the family would receive.

• In addition, new or old settlers who paid for the passage of immigrants to Virginia would receive an additional head right for each new arrival.

ATTEMPTED TO DRAW NEW SETTLERS

• It also attempted to recruit

skilled craftsmen

• and 100 Englishwomen

were purchased for 120

pounds of Tobacco to be

wives to the male

dominated colonists.

ATTEMPTED TO DRAW NEW SETTLERS

• The company also promised the colonists full rights of Englishmen, an end to strict arbitrary rule and a share in self-government.

• On July 30, 1619, in the Jamestown Church, delegates from the various communities met in at the House of Burgesses.

• It was the first meeting of an elected legislature within what was to become the U.S.

ATTEMPTED TO DRAW NEW SETTLERS

• Two months later, the first African American slaves about 20 arrived from a Dutch ship to Jamestown.

• Although at first European indenture servants were preferred, the stage was set for African slavery in the American colonies.

Jamestown

The Real Story of Pocahontas:

• Sir Thomas Dale led unrelenting assaults against Powhatan Indians and in the process, kidnapped the great chief Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas.

• When her father refused to ransom her, she converted to Christianity and in 1614 married John Rolfe.

• Pocahontas accompanied her husband back to England where as a Christian convert stirred interest to “civilize” the Indians.

The Real Story of Pocahontas:

• Pohwathan ceased to attack the English but after his death, several years later, his brother Opechancanough took over, and he resumed efforts to defend tail lands from native encouragements.

• The new chief in the guise of land sale in March 1622 killed 347 White settlers including women and the English avenged their death mercilessly.

• By then the Virginia Company was defunct and Jamestown ultimately was in direct control by the Crown until 1776.

Exchanges of Agricultural Technology.

• At first the English looked on the Indians as backwards because of superior technology,

• however the survival of Jamestown was dependent on learning Indian agricultural practices.

• In particular they recognized the great value of growing corn which proved easier to cultivate and higher yields than European grains.

• Corn stalks could also be used as a source of sugar.

• The English learned the advantages of growing beans alongside corn to enrich the soil

Maryland and the Calverts:

• Maryland was a colony that was established because of the dream of George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, a recent convert to Catholicism who saw a great venture for real estate and also a retreat for English Catholics who he saw were oppressed by the Anglican establishment at home.

• He died before he could receive a charter from the King.

• But in 1632 his son Cecilius (Baltimore II) gained the charter of territory that reached parts of current Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia in addition to present day Maryland.

Maryland and the Calverts:

• The Calverts were granted absolute control of the colonies and were to acknowledge the sovereignty of the king only by paying an annual fee to the crown.

• Unlike Virginia, the first settlers who arrived in 1634 experienced no Indian assaults, in fact the Indians helped and befriended them and were more worried about rival tribes.

• No plagues and no starvation.

• Lord Baltimore II appointed his brother Leonard Calvert as governor.

Maryland and the Calverts:

• Because English Catholics were few in number he also encouraged Protestant settlers mostly Anglicans.

• Catholics were minorities from the start.

• They adopted a policy of religious toleration.

• A year later, he sent from England the draft of an “Act Concerning Religion,” which assured freedom of worship to all Christians.

Maryland and the Calverts:

• Yet there were tensions between Catholic minority and Protestant Majority.

• Zealous Jesuits and crusading Puritans frightened and antagonized their opponents with their efforts to establish the dominance of their own religion.

• At one point, the Protestant majority barred Catholics from voting and repealed the toleration act.

• There was in 1655 a temporary Civil War that overthrew the Catholic proprietary government and replaced it with one dominated with Protestants.

• By 1640 a labor shortage forced Maryland to resort to a headright system for tobacco cultivation but the reliance in indentured servants gave way to importing African Slaves like Virginia.

Turbulent Virginia:

• As English settlements spread west more conflicts with natives continued.

• Sir William Berkeley arrived in Virginia in 1642 at the age of thirty-six, having been appointed governor by King Charles I.

• He helped put down an Indian uprising in 1644, where the defeated Indians ceded a large area of land to the English.

• In return, Berkeley agreed to prohibit white settlement west of a line he negotiated with tribes.

Turbulent Virginia:

• Berkeley attempted to keep the

agreement.

• However the English Civil War

with Oliver Cromwell in power as

an ultra-conservative Puritan

caused the population of Virginia

double twice forcing the need to

encroach in Indian lands.

Turbulent Virginia:

• By 1660s Berkeley became a virtual autocrat in the colony.

• When the first burgesses were elected in 1619, all men under the age of seventeen or older were entitled to vote.

• By 1670 the vote was restricted to landowners and elections were rare.

• Those loyal or submitting to the governor remained in office year after year and the new settlers were severely underrepresented.

Bacons Rebellion:

• In 1676, backcountry unrest and political rivalries combined to create major conflict.

• Nathaniel Bacon a wealthy graduate of Cambridge arrived in Virginia in 1673.

• He had a substantial farm holdings in the Western frontier.

• The backcountry settlements were in constant threat of attack from Indians and they resented the governor restricting settlement to prevent the natives from being upset.

Bacons Rebellion:

• Bacon was also upset that he

was not placed in the inner

political circle of the governor

and allowing him a cut of the

profits from the Indian fur

trade.

Bacons Rebellion:

• When in 1675, some Doeg Indians angry with European incursion killed a white servant.

• This began attacks from both settlers and Indians on each other.

• The settlers also attacked the powerful Susquehannock tribe.

• Indians raided White settlements.

Bacons Rebellion:

• Bacon unhappy with the governor’s slow response to help set out in his own against the Indians challenging the colonial government.

• It was the largest and most powerful insurrection against established authority in the history of the colonies.

• One that would not be surpassed until the Revolution.

Bacons Rebellion:

• Bacon was in verge of taking over Virginia as a leader of this revolt when he suddenly died of dysentery.

• Berkeley gained control with the help of British soldiers who arrived to help him.

• In 1677, Indians realizing that they could not defend their land against white forces; signed a new treaty opening additional lands to White settlement.

Significance of Bacon’s Rebellion:

• It was part of the continuing struggle between Indian and White lands in Virginia.

• It showed how unwilling the English settlers were to abide by earlier agreements with the natives

• And how unwilling natives were in tolerating white movement to their territory.

Significance of Bacon’s Rebellion:

• It revealed the bitterness of competition between eastern and western land owners.

• Bacon also unleased the potential instability in the colonies of a large population of landless men.

• These men most of them former indentured servants, property-less and unemployed made up most of Bacon’s supporters.

Significance of Bacon’s Rebellion:

• These were former indentured servants that were eager for access to land that would lead towards animosity towards land gentry.

• Recognizing the common interest in preventing these former indentures from causing social unrest, land owners resorted to preferring African slaves seeing it as a lesser threat than the perils of importing a large white subordinate class.