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The southern colonies
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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