Jump Start:Make sure the following are in your
notebook.Maps, mercantilism outline, Columbian Exchange outline, Slave Trade notes,
Jamestown Essay and Document A or E
Sketch and complete the table in your notebook.
Political Economical Social Religious
List reasons for European Exploration and Colonization
JamestownThe First Successful English
Colony
Jamestown Begins• After Raleigh’s failure with Roanoke,
individual people stopped funding colonies
• Joint stock companies started– a business in which investors combine their
money in order to make a profit• London Company (founded Jamestown)• Plymouth Company (Plymouth…duh…)
• Once a joint stock company got a charter, they could establish a colony– a written contract from a government that
gave the companies permission to create a colony
Jamestown- 1607• First permanent English
settlement with more than 100 colonists
• Began with problem– Bad location- swampy– Disease- malaria- carrying
mosquitoes– Spent more time mining for
gold than building a settlement or planting crops
• Climate– Summer- hot and humid– Winter- bitter cold
Jamestown- 1608• Only 38 of the original 100
were still alive• John Smith takes over in
January– Made physical improvements
• built a protective wall around the colony
– Got colonists working• “He that will not work shall not eat.”
– Improved relations with Powhatan Indians
• Got them to trade corn with the settlers
– Injured in an explosion and had to leave in 1609
– That same year about 500 more settlers arrived
• Growing tensions with Indians– Indians stopped trading
food– Increased attacks on the
settlers• Colonists afraid to leave fort
• Starving Time– Colonists ate rats, mice,
snakes– Only 60 survived in 1610– The next spring they were
saved again• Supply ships brought food,
more settlers, and soldiers• a new governor who imposed
more discipline
Jamestown- 1609-1610
• John Rolfe arrives with a crop that will make Jamestown rich– a high grade version
of tobacco– tobacco became a
cash crop• a crop grown in order to
be sold for money instead of personal use (food, clothes, shelter, etc.)
• Became widespread and popular
Jamestown- 1611-1612
Jamestown Booms• Colony became more of a business than a colony
– Colonists seen as employees– Colonists wanted their share of the profit
• Virginia Company eventually let settlers own land– This caused them to work even harder on harvesting tobacco
• First African American slaves came• Population more than tripled in 2 years• More workers were needed but not many people could
afford the passage• Indentured servitude was also a way to increase the
amount of workers – a person who sold his or her labor in exchange for passage to
America– after they paid the money back they were free to own their own
land
First Representative Government
• Representative Government- a government where voters elect people to make the laws
• Colonists started to get annoyed at how much control the governor had
• They were placed under VERY strict laws– They were still being treated like employees
• The Virginia Company decided that representatives called burgesses would meet once a year to give the colonists more representation
• House of Burgesses- first representative government in the American colonies