SSUH1 Power Point
The student will describe European
settlement in North America during the
17th century
a. Explain Virginia’s development; include the
Virginia Company, tobacco cultivation, relationships
with Native Americans such as Powhatan,
development of the House of Burgesses, Bacon’s
Rebellion, and the development of slavery.
The Virginia Company
• The King of England
granted a charter to
the Virginia Company
which established
Jamestown as their
settlement in 1607
IN your notes under the section Jamestown (under colonialism): write down as things
you see in this picture and why you think they are that way.
Settlement of Jamestown
• The Virginia Company offered people willing to move to
Jamestown a headright.
Headright – 50 acres of land given to each person who could
pay their own way to Virginia
Official seal of
the Virginia
Company
Cheerio, mates, how about
working for the Virginia
Company in the beautiful
settlement of Jamestown!
After all, only 66% of the
people have died, so you have
a 1 in 3 chance of surviving!
Also, everyone that can pay
for their own journey to
Virginia will receive 50
acres of land, free!
And if we
go, I will
have to
work!
Yuck!
It sounds tempting,
but we have a good
life in England.
Why should we
give up the good
life?
Sounds great! Sign me up! After I receive
my headright, I’ll finally have land of my
own! Umm…I only have one problem. I’m
broke and can’t pay for my own journey. Too
bad, you say? Darn!!
Tobacco
• At first the Virginia Company failed to
produce a cash crop and the Jamestown
colony nearly failed
• John Rolfe established a blend of tobacco
that was sold in England and produced a
cash crop that made the colony prosper
(1614)
• The Virginia Company
began to hire
indentured servants.
indentured servants –
an individual who worked
without wages for a
specified number of years
(usually 4 - 7) in
exchange for
transportation to the
colonies.
The House of Burgesses
• The Virginia Company established a
representative body to help run the colony in
1619
• The House of Burgesses was made up of a
governor and 20 representatives, or burgesses,
from the colony’s 10 towns
Bacon’s Rebellion
• Nathaniel Bacon:
-a frontier farmer who was upset with the
way the Governor was ruling the Virginia
colony
-Governor took away many voting rights
and failed to protect frontier farmers, who
wanted more western land, from Native
attacks.
Bacon’s Rebellion
Bacon raised a militia
and took over
Jamestown in 1676
The Governor retook the
colony later that year
after Bacon became ill
and died
Relations with the Natives
• The local natives, the Powhatan, had an
uneasy peace with the Virginia Company
settlers and traded them food, helping the
colony to survive for the first few years
• Relations eventually deteriorated and in
1622 the Powhatan attack Jamestown,
killing many settlers
• The uprising is put down, but causes the
King to revoke the Virginia Company’s
Charter, turning Virginia into a Royal colony
led by a governor appointed by the King
The slave ship Brookes with 482 people packed onto the decks. The
drawing of the slave ship Brookes was distributed by the Abolitionist
Society in England as part of their campaign against the slave trade,
and dates from 1789.
Interior of a Slave Ship, a woodcut illustration from the
publication, A History of the Amistad Captives, reveals how
hundreds of slaves could be held within a slave ship. Tightly
packed and confined in an area with just barely enough
room to sit up, slaves were known to die from a lack of
breathable air.
• Africans were crowded and chained cruelly aboard
slave ships.
Heading for Jamaica in 1781, the ship Zong was nearing the
end of its voyage. It had been twelve weeks since it had sailed
from the west African coast with its cargo of 417 slaves. Water
was running out. Then, compounding the problem, there was
an outbreak of disease. The ship's captain, reasoning that the
slaves were going to die anyway, made a decision. In order to
reduce the owner's losses he would throw overboard the slaves
thought to be too sick to recover. The voyage was insured, but
the insurance would not pay for sick slaves or even those killed
by illness. However, it would cover slaves lost through
drowning.
The captain gave the order; 54 Africans were chained together,
then thrown overboard. Another 78 were drowned over the next
two days. By the time the ship had reached the Caribbean,132
persons had been murdered.
• In 1619, the
Virginia
Company
brought the first
Africans to
Jamestown as
indentured
servants.
* Soon
afterwards,
Africans were
used as
slaves.
This engraving, entitled An African man being inspected for
sale into slavery while a white man talks with African slave
traders, appeared in the detailed account of a former slave
ship captain and was published in 1854.
Middle Passage – passage across the Atlantic Ocean from
West Africa to the Americas the was the route of the African
American slave trade
• Diseases, such as dysentery, malaria, and smallpox
killed thousands of Africans.
• From 13% - 20% of the Africans aboard slave ships
died during the Middle Passage.
• Between 1699 and
1845 there were 55
successful African
uprisings on slave
ships.
William Snelgrave,
from A New Account
of Some Parts of
Guinea, and the Slave
Trade
Questions?????
• What role did the Virginia Company and tobacco
have in saving the Virginia colony?
• What type of government did the House of
Burgesses form?
• What was the relationship between the
Powhatan and the colonists? How did it change
and why?
• Why did Nathaniel Bacon lead a revolt in
Virginia?
• What role did the first Africans play in the
development of Virginia?