U.S. History IColonial America (1607 to 1754)D2.His.1.9-12
Jamestown and the Chesapeake
Jamestown (1607) survived hard early years and grew rich on tobacco; Virginia set up the House of Burgesses in 1619, the same year the first recorded Africans arrived in the colony.
Spain had built an empire in the Americas (The Spanish Empire in the Americas). England came later. Its first lasting colony was Jamestown, founded in May 1607 on the James River in Virginia by the Virginia Company of London, a joint-stock company whose investors hoped for gold and quick profits.
🔑 Key idea
Jamestown nearly failed, then grew rich on tobacco. In 1619 Virginia held the first meeting of the House of Burgesses, the first elected assembly in English America, and the first recorded Africans arrived in the colony.
💡 Why it works
The settlers chose a swampy site that was easy to defend but had bad water and disease. Many were gentlemen unused to farming, and they depended on corn traded from the Powhatan Confederacy, whose lands they had entered. Hunger, disease and conflict killed most early colonists. In the "starving time" (winter 1609 to 1610), only about 60 of some 500 people survived. Two changes saved the colony. John Rolfe began growing a sweet tobacco about 1612 that sold well in England. And under the headright system (from 1618), anyone who paid for a person's passage got 50 acres, which drew thousands of indentured servants to work the tobacco fields.
✏️ Worked example: Why tobacco mattered
How did tobacco change who came to Virginia?
Tobacco sold for good prices in England, so planters wanted more land and more workers.
The headright system gave 50 acres for each person whose passage a planter paid.
Planters paid the passage of poor English men and women, who worked as indentured servants for several years.
Answer: Tobacco and headrights drew thousands of young indentured servants and made land the road to wealth.
✏️ Worked example: Read the year 1619
Two events of 1619 point toward later American history. What are they?
July 30, 1619: the House of Burgesses meets, with burgesses chosen by the colonists.
August 1619: "20 and odd" Africans, captured in Angola, are brought to Point Comfort and sold.
Answer: Self-government and African bondage began in English America in the same year.
Conflict with the Powhatan peoples grew as tobacco farms spread over their lands. In 1622, under Opechancanough, they attacked the English settlements and killed 347 colonists, between a quarter and a third of them; the English answered with years of war. In 1624 the king took over the struggling company, and Virginia became a royal colony.
⚠️ Common mistake
Jamestown did not thrive from the start. Most early settlers died, and the colony was nearly abandoned in 1610. It lasted because of tobacco, headrights and new supplies of people. A second error: the Africans of 1619 are sometimes described as free servants and sometimes as enslaved. They had been captured and sold; their exact legal status in Virginia's early years is debated, and laws making slavery lifelong and inherited came later, in the 1660s.
Practice
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