England

• England defeats the Spanish Armada in 1588

• English Colonization

  • England was a Protestant country

• Different types of colonies (how paid for and how they are run)

  • Joint Stock Company: stockholders invest in a company and share in the potential profits or lossed from the colony; Corporate colony

  • Proprietorship: land is given by the king to an individual or group

  • Royal: paid for and ruled directly by the monarchy

• Colony of Roanoke (Walter Releigh, 1597) fails (Lost Colony)

Chesapeake colonies:

Virginia and Maryland (upper southern region

• 1st permanent English colony in North America established at Jamestown in 1607-motive was wealth S

• Setup under a joint stock company Virginia Company

• Starving Period: many of the original settlers die of disease. starvation, etc.

• John Smith established military discipline and saved the colony

• John Rolfe introduced the cultivation of tobacco

Colonial Virginia:

• Tobacco provided the colony with a “cash crop” and led to the rise of plantation system

• Needed a cheap labor supply

• Indentured Servants served as the early labor force of Virginia

  • Worked for a period of time (4-7 years) in exchange for passage to colony

• Headright System: get land if you paid for somebody's journey to the colony

• House of Burgesses established in 1619

  • Form of early representative government (the 1st in future U.S.)

• Problems begin to develop:

  • Tobacco destroyed the land

  • Demand for labor and land goes up

  • Tensions increase with the natives as colonist move west

  • NATIVE AMERICANS AND SLAVERY

Relations with the Natives:

• Very hostile relationship developed between the colonists and the Powhatan tribe

• Tensions increased as the settlers moved west

• Anglo-Powhatan Wars 1610-1646

• 1st war ends in 1614 with marriage between Pocahontas & John Rolfe

• Massacre of 1622 begins 2nd war

• By 1624 Jamestown becomes a royal colony

• Powhatan Confederacy largely defeated by 1646

• Powhatan Confederacy defeated by a variety of factors:

  • Disease, Disorganization, Disposability

Labor Relations & the Transition to Slavery

• Early period the primary labor source was indentured servants

• 1st Africans arrive in the colony 1619

• Bacon’s Rebellion (1676)

• Background: Growing frustration with:

  • lack of land (Gov. Berkeley did not allow land hungry settlers to move too far west)

  • Lack of political power (House of Burgesses dominated by plantation elite)

  • Wanted govt in Jamestown to do something about Native American attacks

• Nathaniel Bacon leads a rebellion against Indians on the frontier & burned Jamestown

• Impact: Leads to transition to AFRICAN CHATTEL SLAVE LABOR

  • Demonstrates tension in colonial society between social classes and regions (backcountry vs. east)

Another Chesapeake Colony: Maryland

• Proprietorship: Lord Balitmore given land by the king

• Act of Toleration (1649): religious freedom for all Christians (Intended especially to protect Catholics)

  • Sorry Jews, Muslims, etc. (other groups that were not Christian)

Southern Colonies

• South Carolina: cash crop (rice) plantation economy, wealthy aristocratic elite, African slave labor

  • North Carolina- different: small tobacco farmers, less reliance on slavery

• Caribbean (Barbados & Jamaica): cash crop (sugar cane), strict slave labor system from the start

• Georgia: served as a buffer colony against Spanish & French threat, penal colony for debtors, and originally banned slavery