Jamestown

Joint-Stock Companies & Colonial Goals

• Joint-Stock Company: Investors pooled money together to fund colonies, hoping to share profits and reduce risk.
• The Virginia Company of London received a charter from King James I.
• Goals of the Company:
• Find gold and wealth 💰
• Establish trade (especially a route to Asia) 🌏
• Expand English power overseas
• Colonists were expected to make the company profitable.

Motivations for Jamestown Colonization

• Single men wanted to make money and return to England rich.
• Did not intend to stay.
• Wanted to get there before Spanish and French.

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• Key Points:
• Looking for GOLD $$
• Did not want to stay

Jamestown

• England’s King James I grants the Virginia Company a royal charter.
• 100 men arrived in 1607 on the Chesapeake Bay
• They established Jamestown, the first permanent British colony.
• Set out to find gold and land
• Chesapeake Bay
• Good for shipping
• Also good for agriculture (farming)
• However, swamp-land also bred malaria…

Jamestown, 1607

On the Brink of Failure

• Jamestown almost fails in it’s first year, why?:
• Colonists caught diseases (malaria)
• English “Gentlemen” have no intention to work
• Disease and starvation killed a majority of colonists in the first year
• Local Native Americans, led by a chief named Powhatan, gave the colonists some food.

Lack of necessary skills

• Half of settlers were “Gentlemen” with no work experiences
• Gentleman did not want to work – wanted other people to work for them
• Not enough workers and laborers

Settlers starved

• Did not have food stored for winter
• Starvation so severe settlers ate dogs, horses, snakes, rats and even humans
• Lack of food due in part to not trading with Native Americans

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Poor health

• Settlers suffered from drinking salt water – brackish water

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• Settlers suffer from over exhaustion and heat

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• Settlers don’t have the same medical treatment as back in England

Too much time spent on finding gold, riches

• Settlers spent valuable time looked for gold instead of making shelter, finding food

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• Too much emphasis on making money for investors

John Smith and the “Starving Time”

• By 1608, 38 colonists were all that remained
• John Smith is sent from London to take control
• Sets the important rule: “He who works not, eats not.”
• Jamestown prospers, but Smith is sent back to England, initiating the “Starving Time” in the colony 1609 - 1610

Tobacco Saves Jamestown

• Tobacco saves Jamestown and becomes very profitable
• John Rolfe introduces a particular breed of tobacco he somehow found in South America
• Virginia becomes stable enough to create a society with a government