English Colonization of North America

England’s Imperial Stirrings  Impact of Columbus 100 years later  Spain controls southern half of the New World  Little interest English interest in colonization / why?  Impact of Protestant Reformation?

Elizabeth Energizes England  Elizabeth / English Sea Dogs  Goals?  1585 – Walter Raleigh attempt at Roanoke Colony / Result?  1588 – England defeats the Spanish Armada / Impact?  England now the most powerful navy in the world

“We found no man or sign that any had been there lately…We sounded with a trumpet a call, and afterwards many familiar English tunes of songs, and called to them friendly, but we had no answer…In all this we saw in the sand the print of savages’ feet of two or three sorts trodden at night, and as we entered up the sandy bank, upon a tree, in the very brow thereof, were curiously carved these fair Roman letters C R O …We then passed toward the place where they were left in sundry houses, but we found the houses taken down, and the place very strongly enclosed with a high palisades of great trees….and one of the chief trees or posts at the right side of the entrance had the bark taken off, and five foot from the ground in fair capital letters was graven CROATON without any cross or sign of distress.”

Why England Will Be Successful  Unified nation state under popular monarch  Religious unity  Nationalism

England on the Eve of Empire  Growing population  Laws of primogeniture / impact?  Formation of joint-stock companies  Peace with Spain

English Interest in Colonization 1.Base for English ships 2.Northwest Passage 3.New markets 4.Overpopulation/crowding in England 5.Spread Protestant faith / weaken Catholic influence 6.Laws of primogeniture 7.New sources of funding (joint-stock companies)

Jamestown

The Settling of Jamestown  Virginia Company receives charter from King for settlement in New World  Main attractions for VA Company?  Significance of VA Company’s charter?  Settled 1607

The Problems of Jamestown

False Advertising  Many in England describe Jamestown as “paradise”  Reality: 4,000 of first 5,000 settlers die

Dreams of Riches “I tell thee, gold is more plentiful there than copper is with us….all their dripping pans and their chamber pots are pure gold….and for rubies and diamonds, they go forth on holidays and gather them by the sea-shore to hang on their children's coates and stick in their caps.”

Realities of Jamestown “Of five hundred within 6 months after Captain Smith’s departure, there remained not past sixty men, women, and children, most miserable and poor creatures… So great was our famine, that a Savage (Native American) we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up againe and eat him……It were too vile to day, and scarce to believed, what we endure.”

John Smith  Role in Jamestown?  “He who shall not work shall not eat”  Interaction with Powhatan / Pocahontas

“You must obey this now for a law, that he that will not work shall not eat….for the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a hundred and fifty idle loiterers.” – John Smith

Cultural Clash in the Chesapeake  Problems between Powhatan and English colonists  Periodic wars erupt  Natives victim to the three “D’s” 1.Disease 2.Disorganization 3.Disposability

Brown Gold  John Rolfe introduces tobacco to Jamestown  High demand in Europe  Virginia’s prosperity built upon tobacco  Problems?

Need for Workers  Planters need laborers to produce tobacco  Headright System  Indentured Servants 1.Terms 2.Freedom Dues 3.African Americans (1619)

Forms of Government in Virginia  Representative gov’t was born in Jamestown  1619 – London Company authorized the settlers to summon an assembly known as the House of Burgesses  1624 James I revokes the charter and made Virginia a royal colony

The Other Southern Colonies (Chart)

“The negroes are so willful and loath to leave their own country, that they often leaped out of the canoes, boat, and ship, into the sea, and kept under water till they were drowned, to avoid being taken up and saved by our boats, which pursued them: they having a more dreadful apprehension of Barbados than we can have of hell.” – English sailor aboard slave ship

The Barbados Slave Code “If any slave shall offer any violence to any Christian by striking or the like, such slave shall for their first offense be severely whipped. For his second offense of that nature he shall be severely whipped, his nose slit, and be burned in some part of his face with a hot iron. And being brutish slaves, they deserve not to be tried by the legal trial of 12 men of their peers, as the English are.”