Jamestownquiz tomorrow (includes ch.

2 video notes and crash course)

Comes 20 years after the failing of Roanoke
Two separate joint-stock companies were set up to found settlements on the Atlantic
seaboard. One to the Virginia Company of Plymouth (Maine to North Carolina); a second to
the Virginia Company of London
VC of Plymouth landed in Maine and failed
VC of London lands in Jamestown
105 original colonists were men in this business venture (the goal to fulfill English virtues)
all land belonged to the company: settlers eventually were allowed to obtain tracks of land as
tenant farmers, then later on allowed to own larger tracts individually
these were middle-class Englishmen who desired to become gentlemen
There was a lure to it all:
a Virginian could earn in a day what an Englishmen earned in a week

and with the headright system, one could get 50 acres of land for every person brought over
and as long as white indentured servants remained in the principal source of labor (until 1700)
there was no racial barrier to the rise of fortunate and industrious workmen

until 1670, there were no property qualifications to vote

by 1699, however, to have a voice one must have owned 100 unsettled acres or 25 settled
with a house
1619 - House of Burgesses formed (1st representative government in the New World)

The power of the Virginia aristocracy (landed gentry) took its political duties seriously - a duty
to govern (yes there developed a restrictive suffrage, but it also had compulsory voting) . . . .
civic virtue of the Founding Fathers
The small farmer was squeezed out in the mid-1600s by the Navigation Acts.
By 1700, about 100 families owned all the wealth and controlled the government in Virginia. It
had become an aristocracy
Virginia was a business enterprise:
1) Once they established themselves as the wealthy they continually bought up more land tobacco exhausted the soil to a point that it was then left to corn and wheat
2) Geography: the lack of large towns and the rivers allowing ships (economic life) to go up and
down. No large ports. Each individual landowner could have a dock.
And this farm (soon plantation) was like a company town: a business enterprise based on
tobacco, grown for profit

 This tradition led to the men of the Virginia Dynasty - the leaders of the Revolution
Voting was public, and only by freeholders (and they could vote in every county in which he
owned property)

The Burgesses held the keys to Westward expansion. Land speculation was common, and
legal. Washington
The citizens of Virginia were rooted in traditionalism (they were transplanterstransplanting
the English system of manorial system; to continue the hierarchy for the landowning
aristocracy).
They felt betrayed in the Revolutionary Era that their Rights as Englishmen were being denied.
They cared about the local, just like their English brethren (ex: Thomas Jeffersons tombstone)
Jamestown:
More than 1/2 die of malnutrition or starvation in the first year; 38 remained in 1608
Captain John Smith organized work gangs to ensure food and shelter, and rules to control
sanitation and hygiene
Smith kept good relations with the Powhatan Confederacy: ordered colonists to stop stealing
food from them
When Smith went back to England for a year the colony almost failed. Relations with the
Indians deteriorated and 400 of 500 colonists died in 1610 (1st Anglo-Powhatan War).
West Indian Tobacco was introduced by John Rolfe (who married Pocahontas)
With its cultivation came the indentured servants
1619 - first slaves brought to Virginia (they worked as indentured servants)
1622 - 2nd Anglo-Powhatan War (natives attack the growing colony); tobacco price drops; jointstock company fails (James I revokes its charter and Virginia becomes a royal colony in 1624)
Trade amongst the natives and colonists:
English give up iron utensils, tools, guns, woven cloth
Natives give food and furs
Natives hunt more and this alters Native society; leads to less furs available, so tribes fight for
furs; hunting also altered the gender balance in society (more hunting, less ag)

English put up fences and let their animals roam free