• Neglected by the Spanish and French, the Atlantic coast of North America remained open to English colonization during the 1580s–Maryland, North Carolina, South

Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia

England’s First American Colonies

• SOCIAL: First promoters of English colonies were wealthy gentlemen from southwestern England–Sir Walter Raleigh;–English Patriots;–Devout Protestants

• ECONOMICS: England wealth from new colonies:–Mining gold and silver;–Raising plantation crops.

England’s First American Colonies

Roanoke Colony Fails• Charter: a certificate of permission• ECONOMICS:• Joint-stock company: a business

venture founded and run by a group of investors who were to share in the company’s profits and losses.• Almost impossible to grow crops in

Roanoke (small island on the North Carolina coast)

Chesapeake Bay Virginia• Chesapeake offered good harbors and navigable rivers;• Social: Colonists had to deal with powerful Native

Americans:– SOCIAL: Led by Powhatan – he hoped to contain the

colonists and to use them against his own enemies; he especially wanted to trade with the colonists for their metal weapons;– SOCIAL: Colonists want Native American land and

refuse to recognize that the Native Americans occupied, used, and had ancestral ties to the land

Jamestown Overcomes Hardships• Surrounding swamps bred mosquitoes that

carried deadly diseases;• Colonists suffered from hunger, because they

were often too weak by disease to tend to their crops;• Between 1607 and 1622, the Virginia Company

would send some 10,000 people to the colony, but only 20% would still be alive in 1622

• The Tobacco Crop Saves the Colony:–ECONOMICS: The Virginia Company saved the

Jamestown colony by allowing the colonists to own and work land as their private property;–ECONOMICS: As farmer-owners, rather than

company employees, the colonists worked harder to grow the corn, squash, and beans that ensured their survival

• The Tobacco Crop Saves the Colony:• ECONOMICS–Led by John Rolfe, who married Pocahontas,

the colonists learned how to cultivate tobacco in 1616;–Indian tobacco was greatly desired in Europe;–Because tobacco needed a long, hot, and

humid growing season, the tobacco crop thrived in Virginia but not England–Virginia made it’s profits by selling tobacco

• House of Burgesses:• POLITICAL:–The first representative body in colonial

America;–House of Burgesses had the power to make laws

and raise taxes–It began a strong tradition of representative

government in the English colonies.–Male landowners over 17 years of age could vote

for two Burgesses to represent their settlement

• Effects of Expansion in Virginia:• ECONOMICS: As colonists

expanded their tobacco plantations, SOCIAL: they took more land from the Native Americans, who became enraged

• Bacon’s Rebellion: SOCIAL• farmers who moved were moving onto less

fertile land where it cost more to transport their crops to the market,–The royal governor of Virginia, William

Berkeley, worsened the growing crisis, by levying taxes on the planters and used the proceeds to reward a few favorites from the wealthiest class, which dominated the House of Burgesses ; and Berkeley expressed contempt for free press and public education

• Bacon’s Rebellion:•William Berkeley told settlers not

to create war with the Native Americans in the Potomac Valley, the settlers rebelled under the leadership of Nathaniel Bacon;

• EFFECTS OF BACON’S REBELLION:• Bacon’s Rebellion showed that poor

farmers would not tolerate a government that catered only to the wealthiest colonists;• The colony’s leaders reduced the taxes

paid by the farmers and improved their access to frontier, new, land• Berkeley eventually regained power

but his credibility was ruined

• Other Southern Colonies:–Virginia was the first of the

Southern Colonies to be settled;–During the 17th and 18th

centuries, England established Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia

• Other Southern Colonies:–Maryland:• Lord Baltimore, owned and governed

Maryland• RELIGION: He founded Maryland as a colonial

refuge for Catholics who were discriminated against in England by the Protestant majority;•However, more Protestants than Catholics

immigrated to Maryland;• Relations between Catholics and Protestants

deteriorated into armed conflicts later on

• Other Southern Colonies:• The Carolinas:–Includes present-day North and South

Carolina–POLITICAL: Carolinas belonged to a

group of aristocrats – the Lords Proprietor – who remained in England, entrusting the colony’s leadership to ambitious men from the West Indies

• Other Southern Colonies:• Georgia:– ECONOMICS: Proprietary colony intended

to protect South Carolina from Spanish Florida;–Was a safe place for English debtors, who

had been jailed because they could not pay their debts;–Most of Georgia’s first colonists were poor

English traders and artisans, or religious refugees.

• Other Southern Colonies:• Georgia:–James Oglethorpe, who led the

Carolinas, had strict rules for the colonists:•NO ALCHOHOL;•COULD NOT OWN SLAVES