2. English Settlement in the South
1606: James I granted a charter creating 2 branches of the Virginia Company of London:
The Plymouth Company
London Company
Motives for settlement:
Gold
Passage to Asia
Converting Indians to Christianity
April 1607: London Company settles Jamestown
100 settlers led by Capt. Christopher Newport
Selected the peninsula on the James River out of the concern for effective defense
Area was ridden with malaria

3. Jamestown Initial poor leadership
John Smith eventually provides effective leadership
John Rolfe establishes tobacco crops
Tobacco
1616: 2500 lbs produced
1618: 30,000 lbs produced
1627: 500,000 lbs produced
Tobacco profits off-set the fruitless search for gold

4. Jamestown
The charter is an important document in that it guaranteed the overseas settlers the same rights of Englishmen who were still in the homeland.
Relationship of John Smith and Pocahontas

5. Virginia The first slaves came in the late 1600s
Initially, the headright system provided labor force
Settlers arranged their own transportation and that of dependents in return for 50 acres per “head” transported
Initially preferred indentured servants
1622: massive Indian attack reduces population by 250
1624: James I sees Virginia as a bad investment and revokes the charter
Creation of the House of Burgesses
By 1670, there were 30,000 inhabitants

6. Maryland
Lord Baltimore (Sir George Calvert) wanted his own colony for the personal advantage of his family and for the benefit of Roman Catholics (who were encouraged to settle there)
Selected St. Mary’s as the first settlement
Representative gov’t (like Virginia)
Didn’t turn out to be Catholic refuge it was hoped to be

7. Carolinas Chartered in 1663 Representative assembly Largely Protestant
Settled by some French Huguenots
Also settled by some West Indian planters (who brought slavery to the South Carolina region)
Wanted pine trees for ship building
Rice became a major crop in Carolina

8. Georgia Established in 1713
Founded by Gen. James Oglethorpe as a buffer between the British and Spanish (in Florida)
Also used as a debtor’s colony (criminals and convicts from GBR)

9. Life in the Chesapeake
Ridden with malaria, dysentery, typhoid, and other diseases
High death rate
Difficult to start families and create solid settlements
Tobacco Economy
The climate/soil was hospitable to tobacco cultivation
More tobacco means more labor, but where will this labor source come from?

10. Life in the Chesapeake Headright System
To encourage the importation of servant workers
Whoever paid the passage of a laborer received the right to acquire 50 acres of land
Masters (not the servants) reaped the benefits of landownership from the headright system
 the beginning of the rich planter class with extensive land holdings
As land became more scarce, masters became more reluctant to have land allowances in the “freedom dues”
More harsh treatment of servants
You would be free after 7 years, but then you’d be a poor farmer with little choice but to sell yourself back into servitude

11. Triangular Trade

12. Bacon’s Rebellion
There were an increasing number of poor freemen in the Chesapeake region
Frustrated by their broken hopes of acquiring land and getting rich
This growing class of “freemen” made the rich planter class nervous
Gov. Berkeley- governor of VA colony
Was growing increasingly agitated with the large number of rowdy poor throughout the colony

13. Bacon’s Rebellion
The freemen were moving westward towards the Indian settlements and were fighting w/ them on a regular basis
Resented Berkeley’s friendly Indian policies
Berkeley had refused to avenge several brutal Indian attacks on the frontiersmen
So Bacon and his men disobeyed Berkeley and attack/murder the Indians
1676: Nathaniel Bacon leads about 1,000 men on a raid of Jamestown (the colonial capital of VA)
Torches the town; Berkeley flees and returns w/ English troops

14. Bacon’s Rebellion Bacon suddenly dies (illness)
Berkeley brutally crushes all Bacon supporters
Results of the Rebellion
Awakened the latent unhappiness of the landless former servants
Pitted the backcountry frontiersmen against the gentry plantation owners
The lordly planters now looked for a different source for plantation labor

17. Slave Trade The Royal African Company lost its charter in 1698
 enterprising colonists rushed to cash in on the lucrative slave trade (especially Rhode Islanders)
By 1750, the slave trade had ground to a halt
By the 1660s, specific “slave codes” had been drawn up by the colonial gov’ts to delineate between servants’ and slaves’ rights

18. Colonial Slavery
About 10 million Africans were carried over the course of 3 centuries
First Africans came to Jamestown in 1619 (about 2,000)
Slaves were too expensive for struggling colonists
But in the 1680s, rising wages in England shrank the pool of servants coming over
Bacon’s Rebellion had brought a distrust of current and former servants, as gentry feared future rebellions