People and a nation - chapter 2

The British colonies

Jamestown, Virginia

After 2 disastrous attempts to colonize the region, the first English settlers who came in America successfully founded their first colony in Jamestown, Virginia by the Virginia Company in 1607. Their main motivation being making money, this led number of goldsmiths and jewellers into the sought of gold in the Chesapeake region just like the Spanish successfully did in South America. However, their expectations being deceived by kilometres of dust and farming land, (none of them was fond of farming) they, under the commandment of the Captain John Smith, decided to starve themselves. At the end of the first year, only half of the colonist was left. 3 years later, 400 replacements came but after a gruesome winter called the starving time, the number of colonist was reduced to 65. Of course, nobody in England was keen on going to Virginia anymore with the one-year survival rate of 20%.

In 1618, seeing this evident failure, the Virginia Company started a recruiting strategy called the headright system, which offered fifty acres of land for each head of a household plus fifty additional acres for every adult family member or servant brought into the colony. This settlement led to the creation of a number of large estates, which were mostly worked on and populated by indentured servants. The colony would probably have continued to struggle along if they hadn’t found something that people really loved: tobacco.

Tobacco, which initially grew in Mexico, was a gift from the natives to the Europeans and would of course be cultivated by the Indentured servants.

Indentured servants were kind of temporary slaves who could be bought and sold and had to listen to whatever their master ordered them to. Freedom would be granted to them after 7 to 10 years of service and their freedom dues would be paid which they hoped would allow them to buy a farm of their own. Unfortunately, in most case, they would die before even seeing the end of their years of labour.

The society was also overwhelmingly male; they outnumbered women five to one because they were more useful in the tobacco fields. By 1624 Virginia was producing more than 200,000 pounds of tobacco per year; by the 1680s more than 13 million pounds per year.

Maryland

Maryland was the second successful colony founded in 1632 and belonged to Cecilius Calvert, a catholic, who wanted to turn it into a feudal medieval kingdom to benefit himself and his family. Catholics were therefore welcome in Maryland.

Plymouth colony and the Pilgrims, Massachusetts

The Pilgrims were English men and woman who wanted to part away from the Protestant Church of England. They rounded up investors, financed the new colony in 1620, named it Plymouth and boarded on their ship the Mayflower to Massachusetts 6 weeks before winter. Half of them died of starvation this winter and half of them were saved thanks to the food a local Patuxet Indians led by Squanto gave them. The Indians also taught them how to plant corn and to catch fish. A year later, grateful that they survived, the Pilgrims held a big feast: Thanksgiving.

On 1691, Plymouth colony was subsumed by the larger

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