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● A
New Land
● Europe
in the 16th and 17th Centuries
● The
Settlement in Virginia
● Puritan
New England
● Catholic
Maryland
● Quaker Pennsylvania
● The
American Revolution
The Settlement in Virginia
 The
first English permanent settlement was founded in 1607 in Virginia.
This was organized by the London Company with a charter
from the English king James I. The company sent three small ships
with 144 English men to Virginia. During the long voyage across
the Atlantic
Ocean, 44 people died and 100 survivors landed by the side of a
river, the James River, which they named after their king and began
to build a town called Jamestown. Most of the 100 colonists were
adventurous
English gentlemen including some business people who refused to
do any manual labour, and very few of them were willing laborers.
Yet the London Company had wished to have a quick return
for its investment and had instructed them to hunt for gold and
other wealth as soon as they landed in Virginia. When the colonists
settled down, they did not grow food. Instead, a few laborers among
them started to dig for gold and look for other riches while those
English gentlemen were idle, doing nothing. Unfortunately, nothing
was found. Soon they ran into the shortage of food. When the second
group of men were sent by the London Company with supplies, all
but 38 of the first arrivals were dead. Jamestown was in a great
crisis. Then Captain
John Smith
took the leadership. He imposed
discipline by making everyone work. A few years later, another colonist,
John Rolfe began to experiment with the West Indian Tobacco
and this plant grew well in Virginia soil. Tobacco cultivation
quickly spread up and down the settlement and yielded
profits by selling tobacco to Europe. Meanwhile, John Rolfe married
the princess of an Indian tribe chief. This marriage led to the
ending of hostility
between the white people and Indians for some time. The plantation
of tobacco saved the settlers and the marriage gave time to the
colonists for development.
In
1619, two events took place in Virginia, which would influence the
shaping of American culture a great deal. On July 30, 1619, in the
Jamestown church, the delegates elected from various communities
in
Virginia met as the House of Burgesses
to
discuss, along with the governor and his council members who were
appointed, the enactment
of
laws for the colony. This was the first example for the
future United States, the first meeting of an elected legislature,
a representative assembly, in North America. It was thought to be
the brilliant example of self-government of Americans although white
servants did not have their representatives. A month later there
occurred in Virginia another event. A Dutch ship brought in over
20 Negroes, who were bought to be held as servants for a term of
years. Thus
a start had been made toward the enslavement
of
Africans within what was to be the American republic. The two events
combined constituted
a unique American phenomenon. On the one hand, the English
and other Europeans went to North America for seeking freedom. But
on the other hand, these very white people who were seeking and
fighting for their own freedom deprived
black Africans of their freedom. George Washington was a
great fighter for American freedom, and Thomas
Jefferson was a chief author of the Declaration of Independence
and yet both of them were slave owners, each with over 200 black
slaves.
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Thomas Jefferson
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The Declaration of Independence |
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