American History I
Notes from 9/7/00

We attended Convocation and then reconvened at 1:00.  I want to thank all of you for returning to class so promptly.  TB

In 1607, the English established a settlement in Virginia, and named it Jamestown, after Elizabeth’s successor, James I. The English who settled Jamestown were part of something called the London Company, which was later renamed to the Virginia Company. Perhaps naïvely, they thought they would find huge quantities of gold in Virginia, like the Spanish had found in South America. The first years for the English in Jamestown were terrible. John Smith, one of the captains of the company, referred to this early period as "the starving time." Many died of malnutrition and disease, and many more were killed during conflicts with the Powhatan Indians, the main Native American tribe in the area. Discipline was a major problem: the Jamestown settlers, mostly young males, preferred to go off looking for gold than guarding their settlement or growing crops.  I read briefly from laws of Virginia (1610-11), noting the severity of punishments (most often death) for a variety of offenses.  GO TO EXCERPT

For a while, it looked like the Jamestown settlement would fail, as an earlier attempt to settle the area around Roanoke Virginia had also failed. But the cultivation of tobacco ultimately saved the colony. This Native American crop, which the Europeans had never seen before, became very popular in England during the 1610’s. By 1617, the Virginia Company was directing nearly all its efforts to producing tobacco, and the Jamestown colony began to prosper.

There are two critical events in Jamestown during the year 1619. First, this is the year when the House of Burgesses meets for the first time. The House of Burgesses was a legislative body that would make local laws in the Virginia colony. In other words, it represents the beginning of self-government in colonial America. Over time, colonial assemblies in each of the English colonies will become extremely important in preparing America for independence. The other major event of 1619 in Jamestown is the first recorded sale of slaves in the English colonies. Although the African slave trade had been started during the late 1490’s by the Portuguese, most Africans ended up in places like the Caribbean or Brazil. The importation of slaves to Virginia (because cheap labor was needed to keep up with the demand for tobacco) would obviously have a dramatic effect on subsequent colonial history, and on the history of the United States after independence.

We also talked about the second permanent English settlement, Plymouth Massachusetts. Whereas the Jamestown colony was started by people looking to make money, Plymouth was settled by Puritans, for religious and social reasons. Earlier, many English Puritans had left England, first settling in the more tolerant Netherlands. In 1620, a group left the Netherlands for the New World. They were supposed to end up in the Virginia colony, but went off course and landed much further north. The Pilgrims, as they became known, had little choice but to remain there, and faced with the uncertainties of settling in a new land, the men reconvened aboard their ship and pledged to one another to form a "civil body politic."