The Planting of
English America
Chapter 2/4
AP U.S. History
England’s Imperial Stirrings
• 1558 – Elizabeth I Queen – England
minor power
• Competition with Spain
– Privateers from Mexico
• Two objectives in WH:
– Find NW Passage (didn’t)
–Raid Spain’s fleets/ports (did!)
Spain and England – now deadly
rivals!
Elizabeth Energizes
England
• Sir Humphrey Gilbert/Sir Walter Raleigh – Roanoke
• Realities from Roanoke:
– If unprepared, even a large-scale, well-financed colonizing effort can
fail
– Colonists did not bring enough provisions for 1st winter and didn’t grow
own food
– Colonizing efforts would need to self-financing
– Conflict with Spain
• 1588 - Defeat of Spanish Armada – naval
dominance over Atlantic
England on the Eve of
Empire
• Overpopulation,
unemployment
• Land practice
(primogeniture)
• Joint-Stock company –
financial means
Beginnings of English Colonization
• 1603 – Elizabeth dies, James I now King
• April 10, 1606 – James I – charter for land in
Virginia
• 2 joint-stock companies – London and
Plymouth
Jamestown
• VA Co. of London
– Guaranteed same rights
– James River
• Crops? 38/105
• GOLD!!!! No
• Leadership?
– John Smith
– Organization/rules/diplomat
• Powhatan
• 1609 – 1610 – “Starving
Time”
• 60 0f 400 survived
• New immigrants/leadership
• First Anglo-Powhatan War (1610-1614)
• Still small population = 1616
• Scientists find evidence of
cannibalism at Jamestown
settlement | Fox News
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TOBACCO
• Economic salvation - “Colony built
on smoke”
• John Rolfe
• VA company poured supplies/settlers
• “headrights”
– Large tracts of land
– mostly men
• House of Burgesses – 1619 – first colonial
parliament
• By 1622 – 3
serious problems:
– Debt
– High death rate
• Malnutrition from?
• Dysentery from?
– Indian relations
• Bankrupt/charter revoked in 1624
• Royal Colony!
Church in VA
• Established church – Church
•
•
•
•
of England
Taxpayers legally obliged to pay fixed rates
Few parishes
Few clergymen
So… 1662 10 ministers served Virginia’s 45
parishes
Maryland
• Lord Baltimore
• Proprietary Colony
• Safe Haven for Catholics
• No Starving Time – why?
• Protestant Majority
– Govt/chapel
• Act of Religious Tolerance
– Liberty of worship
– Did not protect…
– Did not separate…
Tobacco Shapes a Way of
Life
• Few Neighbors
– 3 miles/20 people
• Future – Tobacco $$
• Rivers
• Planters also controlled imports – stunted
growth of towns/merchant class
• More workers, more $$ -
sharp demand for
labor
• 1630 – 1700 – 110,000
English to the Chesapeake
•Indentured
Servants
– 80% males
Mortality, Gender, and
Kinship
• Few women
– Marriage late, women could negotiate favorable
marriages
• Death
– 1600’s – 48 (men), 44 (women) - 20 years LESS
than New England!
– Servants – 40% within 6 years
• Chesapeake women greater property rights
• Low population
Tobacco Troubles
• Importation of servants (b/c??) – gap between
rich/poor
• Servants – horrible
• Bleak future
– No pay/savings
– No chance for land
life
Bacon’s Rebellion
• 1676
• Governor William Berkeley
– Fur trade monopoly
– Not protecting frontier farmers
• Nathaniel Bacon
– Indians
– March on Jamestown
• WHY did this take place????
• Social success in VA depended on??
• This leads to…
Slavery
• 1619 – Dutch
• First phase – 1619 - 1640:
– Not every African sold was a slave for life
• Anthony and Mary Johnson
• Second phase - 1640 – 1660:
– Africans/Indians treated as slaves, children inherit
status
• Third phase – 1660 - :
– Regulated by law
• MD – lifelong/inheritable
– Strict legal codes (1705)
• Replaced Indentured Servants b/c:
– England’s population reduced, wages increased
– Royal African Co lost monopoly
The Caribbean and Carolina
• 1630 – 1642 – 60% of 75,000 English went to
the Caribbean
• After 1660 – large # of these came to Carolina,
introducing habits learned
• SUGAR CANE
– 3 times the labor
• Slaves from Dutch
• Barbados – slave codes, lifelong bondage
• No need for white
labor
– Carolina
• 1663 – King Charles II
• Rice
– Import work force
• 15% had cultivated rice in their homeland
• Immunity to malaria
• 1729 – two royal colonies – North and South
Georgia
• James Oglethorpe
• Buffer between
Carolina/Spanish Florida/French
Louisiana
• Savannah
• Debtors
Questions
• What did England and the English settlers really want
from colonization? Did they get what they wanted?
• How did the reliance on plantation agriculture affect
the southern colonies?
• What circumstances led to the introduction of
slavery into the colonies? How did economic,
geographic and social factors encourage the growth
of slavery as an important part of the economy of
the southern colonies between 1607 and 1775