English Colonization of the Chesapeake

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English Colonization of the Chesapeake
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Jamestown Colony (1607)

• Virginia Company of London - 104 gentlemen
  adventurers poor servants
• Joint Stock Colony
• April 1607, land along James River

3
First Colonists - Problems

• Malarial swamp
• There to find riches gold
• No gold economy in shambles
• Did not plant food hoped to trade with Indians

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John Smith

• 38 of the 104 remained nine months later -
  disease or starvation
• John Smith, the colonial leader, begins to make
  changes
• Colonists largely unmotivated
• Smith leaves Jamestown in 1609

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How was Jamestown Saved?

• Tobacco John Rolfe 1616
• Right climate
• Demand in Europe
• How to replace the people?
• Headright System
• Indentured Servants

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Population of the Land

• Plantations
• Spread out along rivers
• Towns did not develop
• Plantations self-sufficient

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Business Booms

• Tobacco production increased
• from 200,000 lbs/yr in 1624
• to 3 million in 1638
• to 10 million in 1660
• Tobacco became the economic engine for the
  Virginia colony
• This plantation economy developed throughout the
  Chesapeake and eventually into the deep south and
  remained the core industry of the south through
  the Civil War.

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Labor Source of the Chesapeake

• Landowners needed someone to perform manual labor
  of planting, tending and harvesting crops
• Indentured servants 1610s late 1600s
• African slaves late 1600s 1865
• First slaves - 1619
• 1650 300 slaves
• 1700 13,000 slaves

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Jamestown Religion Education

• Not a priority in the culture of Virginia
• Lack of towns and widespread population
• Religion Most folks were Anglicans
• Education
• Wealthy hired tutors or sent to Europe
• Poor worked as apprentices

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Jamestown Government

• Colonial legislature - House of Burgesses (est.
  1619)
• First legislative body in North America
• Controlled by aristocracy
• Vote - white, male, landowner

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Maryland - 1632

• Proprietary Colony
• Lord George Calvert debt from Crown
• Haven for Catholics
• Acts of Toleration

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Maryland Economy

• Plantation economy very much like Jamestown
• Produced tobacco
• Practiced slavery

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Southern Colonies

• Single cash crop plantation economies
• Carolinas Proprietary colony
• Rice and indigo