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

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

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
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH
Bl-EuFoLY

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

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. Marys as the first
settlement
Representative govt (like Virginia)
Didnt turn out to be Catholic refuge it
was hoped to be

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

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

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?

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 youd be a
poor farmer with little choice but to sell yourself back
into servitude

Triangular Trade

Bacons 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

Bacons Rebellion
The freemen were moving westward
towards the Indian settlements and were
fighting w/ them on a regular basis
Resented Berkeleys 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

Bacons 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

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 govts to
delineate between servants and slaves
rights

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
Bacons Rebellion had brought a distrust of current
and former servants, as gentry feared future
rebellions