Chaos at Jamestown A Early history of Jamestown under the management of Virginia Company of London 1607 1618 Four vignettes 1 Winter 1609 1610 a time of starvation disease and cannibalism only 60 of 500 survive 2 August 1610 English settlers carry out a military raid against a nearby Indian village 3 Spring 1611 Governor Thomas Dale arrives at Jamestown and finds lazy English colonists who refuse to plant corn 4 Spring 1612 Governor Dale presides over the execution of settlers who have run away to live with the Native Americans B Problems of early Jamestown and the colony of Virginia 1 Absence of effective leadership and government o Captian John Smith 2 Labor problem lazy Englishmen o Not accustomed to hard physical labor o No incentive to work or accomplish quotas 3 Character of the settlers disjunction between original goals and the reality of the Chesapeake o Settlers expected riches as soon as they reached the new land o Raided Indian villages and stole their wealth and used for labor 4 Virginia s Native Americans o Small population o Not wealthy but offered generosity to their guests C From Company to Colony 1618 1624 1 Reforms of Sir Edwin Sandys headrights tenantry end martial law self government o Tries to save Jamestown with reforms o Needed new investors interested in Jamestown o Introduces tenents servitude received 50 acres of land for their labor o Headrights system an inventive to acquire land by bringing in some form of labor o 1611 Governor Dale enforced martial law Harsh system of penalties o Sir Edwin ends martial law 2 Continuing problems high mortality among settlers Indian attack of 1622 o Over 200 Englishmen killed o Virginia Company of London loses charter to colony 3 Revocation of charter Virginia becomes a royal colony D Tobacco Boom 1 Need for white servant labor to work the fields o Labor is valued more than land o Rivers were key points to farm and trade tobacco 2 Impact of tobacco on Virginia society E Settling Down 1630 s and 1640 s 1 Death rate declines 2 Pastoral agriculture takes hold o Less labor required with little yield as possible o Girdling kill trees to plant crops around the dying tree o English introduce livestock to the Americas o English begin to plant orchards of many fruit o Alcohol is safer to drink than water due to waters lack of sanitation 3 Living with impermanence o Lots of orphans due to parents dying early
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