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=IHBl-EuFo

LY

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. Mary’s as the first settlement• Representative gov’t (like Virginia)• Didn’t 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 debtor’s 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 you’d be a poor farmer

with little choice but to sell yourself back into servitude

Triangular Trade

Bacon’s 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

Bacon’s Rebellion• The freemen were moving westward towards the

Indian settlements and were fighting w/ them on a regular basis– Resented Berkeley’s 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

Bacon’s 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 gov’ts 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– Bacon’s Rebellion had brought a distrust of current and

former servants, as gentry feared future rebellions