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This chapter examines early British settlements in North America roughly from 1588 to 1701.

Spain and its competitors

The Western Hemisphere was quickly being gobbled up by European powers in the fifteenth century. Spain controlled the largest empire that covered nearly all of South America, Central America, Mexico (New Spain), and Florida to California (New Mexico). France controlled the northern reaches of the hemisphere and called their dominion New France. And finally the Dutch controlled the upper eastern seaboard (centered on what is today New York and New Jersey) and called their territory New Netherlands. The Dutch were the only Protestant nation in the Americas. The first British colony in the Americas was Roanoke, which was an utter failure. The first successful British colony in North America was called Jamestown. Founded in May of 1607 on an island off the coast of present-day Virginia, Jamestown was a Joint Stock colony. There were three types of British colonies: Joint Stock, Royal, and Proprietary. All three had the goal of making money. The Royal colony existed to make money for the British crown Most of the British colonies in the Caribbean were royal charter colonies. The Proprietary colony was owned by a single person or family and thus was designed to make money for the person or family that owned the colony (such as Pennsylvania). And, the Joint Stock colony was owned by the investors, designed to make money for the investors. It was expensive to start a colony: you needed ships, people, equipment, security forces, building supplies, tools, weapons, and food. So a Joint Stock colony would sell shares (a percentage of the total). Once the colony sold enough shares, the settlers would head off to the Americas. They would find natural resources, ship them back to England, and thus make money for the colony, money that would be returned to the shareholders. Initially there was just one natural resource that English settlers were interested in finding: gold! As you'll see, there was no gold.

Jamestown

The colony of Jamestown had several objectives. First, find gold. Second, find a direct route to the South Seas, and third, find the lost colony of Roanoke. The initial wave of colonists were adventurers/explorers. Young men who sought to find their fortune by bending over and picking up gold, then heading back to England where they would purchase a house and some farmland, and live comfortably the rest of their lives. The English inheritance system was primogeniture, which means that all wealth goes to the eldest son. Good news if you were son number one. The other sons had to find their own fortune, and many of the Jamestown colonists were the sons that would not inherit anything from their fathers. After a rough ocean crossing (45 men died), 101 men and four boys arrived at what they called Jamestown (after King James of England) along the Powhatten River they renamed the James. Powhatten was the title of a local Indian chief a well as the name of a local Indian tribe. Powhatten had a daughter, Pocahontas. The first set of colonists found no gold, although the Powhatten seemed friendly enough. Due to disease and insect infestation, two-thirds of the settlers died within the first seven months. In 1609, the crown published a recruitment pamphlet called Nova Britannia (New Britain). The pamphlet was designed to attract new investors and new colonists. The pamphlet promised plentiful food, beautiful mountains, lots of gold, and excellent weather. The pamphlet promised the good life without lots of work. In fact, the pamphlet said that the "savages are ready and willing" to be converted to God and would do the basic chores of cooking and cleaning for the colonists. In a nutshell, Nova Britannia promised wealth for the monarch, lumber to strengthen the English navy, and promised individual and national wealth. Now not everyone was allowed to become a colonist in Virgina. Parliament prohibited "con men," Catholics, and "evil politicians" from going to Virginia. When the first group failed to find the gold, they realized that their stay in Jamestown was to be longer than expected and that they would have to begin farming in order to provide for their own food. The Powhatten Indians initially brought the starving colonists food and tried to teach them to farm in the Indian tradition. Colonists responded by raiding the tribe's food warehouses so the chief, Powhatten, stopped giving or selling food to the colonists. Tensions rose. The winter of 1609-1610 was particularly long, cold, and deadly. Of the 500 colonists who began the winter, only sixty made it through. Famine was rampant. And the survivors turned to cannibalism. The survivors built rudimentary boats and tried to make it back to England. They were intercepted by several boats of new colonists (and supplies). In 1614, the Jamestown colonists finally discovered the gold -in the form of tobacco. It turns out that the soil, temperature, and weather in Virginia is perfect for growing tobacco. Although tobacco harvesting is labor intensive, it yielded high returns. The colonists were making money, but they needed more bodies in order to grow their colony and therefore make even more money, so Parliament created the Headright System; an effort to get settlers to go to Virgiania by offering fifty acres of land to each settler. The Headright System was not as effective in raising the number of colonists as the English government initially had hoped for,

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Source:  OpenStax, Us history to 1877. OpenStax CNX. Jan 20, 2013 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11483/1.1
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