English Colonies of North America

By: Toni Gonzales

American Colonies 6-Virginia

During the sixteenth century, Spanish and French mariners explored the coast of Florida and south of Acadia deemed little value for colonies.

Neglected by the Spanish and French, the mid-Atlantic seaboard maintained open to English colonization during the 1580’s.

English colonizers pursued get-rich-quick schemes, a search for gold mines on land and for Spanish treasure ships by sea.

American Colonies 6- Promoters

The English queen lacked the means to finance and govern an overseas colony, especially after a full scale war that took place in Spain in 1585.

Sixteenth-century England concentrated wealth and power at the narrow top of the steep social pyramid, in the hands of a monarch, an aristocracy, and a lesser aristocracy known as the gentry.

The elite displayed their power in elaborate city palaces.

American Colonies 6-Roanoke

In 1585 Sir Walter Ralegh sent about one hundred colonies across the Atlantic to settle on Roanoke, a small island on the North Carolina coast.

After retreating to Croatoan and failing to contact a passing ship the surviving colonists headed north to Chesapeake Bay to execute their original plan.

The English colonial promoters had insisted that the diverse attractions of colonization work together in perfect harmony.

American Colonies 6-Powhatan

The English tried again at Chesapeake Bay which offered better harbors, navigable rivers, and more fertile land.

The broad coastal plain sustained about 24,000 Indians divided into thrity tribes but united by an Algonquian language and the rule of paramount chief named Powhatan. They lived by fishing, hunting, and gathering.

American Colonies 7- Chesapeake Colonies

The Chesapeake’s leading men lacked the mystique of a traditional ruling class. They were touchy about their origins, qualifications, and conduct.

The colonists grudgingly accepted such leaders as prosperity prevailed, during the tobacco boom of the 1640’s and 1650’s.

The boom benefited planters and further servants.

American Colonies 7-Commonwealths

The wealthiest planters also dominated the county system of local government because tobacco cultivation and the river system encouraged dispersed plantations.

The political culture assumed that the health and survival of the larger commonwealths of country, colony, and realm all depended upon the order, morality, and allegiance maintained in the many little commonwealths.

American Colonies 7-Labor

Chesapeake demanded too much labor from too few colonies.

Tobacco required attention and diligence to sow, transplant, weed, trim, eliminate worms, cut, cure, pack, and ship.

The planters also needed regularly to clear new fields with axes, for after three years of cropping, the lands lost their fertility.

American Colonies 7-Prosperity

The Chesapeake became a bit healthier and many more servants lived long enough to claim their freedom and farms. In 1648, a Virginian marveled that only one in nine immigrants died during their first year.

Health improved as many new plantations expanded upstream into locales with fresh running streams, away from the lowlands, which were polluted with malaria.