English Settlements: Investors and Indentured Servants

If you chose to invest…

Virginia Company: Joint Stock Company

• More than 50 businesses and 600 individuals from London bought shares

Virginia Company of London Seal, 1606-1624

• It was 10 years before the company made any money, let alone profit!

The Costs of Settlement was Enormous!

(Just like this cat)

No income made on settlement until1620

Tobacco brought in SOME

Income, but still, no profit!

By 1623, the Virginia Company

was on the verge of bankruptcy.

1623 a Royal Commission found the Virginia Company guilty of mismanagement (including corruption) and in danger of a complete collapse.

By 1624, investors had plunged

£100,000 into Jamestown and hadn’t made back even a small portion of their investment.

1624

• King James I revoked the Virginia Company Charter.

• King made Virginia a Royal Colony and appointed a governor.

If you were one of the original investors…..

Things you should have considered before investing….

• Disease:– Swampy, full of

mosquitoes with no fresh water supply.

– Typhoid and dysentery– Passage to America

left colonists weak, susceptible to scurvy and bloody flux.

• Starvation:– Colonists did not

have enough food to last the year.

– Severe drought in the area.

– Most focused on trying to find gold rather than planting crops.

“Nay, so great was our famine, that a Salvage we slew, and buried, the poorer sort tooke him up againe and eat him, and so did divers one another boyled and stewed with roots and herbs: And one amongst the rest did kill his wife, powdered her, and had eaten part of her before it was knowne, for which hee was executed…now whether shee was better roasted, boyled or carbonado’d, I know not” – John Smith The Starving

Time

• Dissent:– Leaders were

constantly arguing.– Divisions between

gentlemen and poor colonists.

– Ship captain reported colony was doing poorly because its leaders were striving to rule over one another.

Jamestown Gentlemen

• Poor Company Structure:– Company leaders in

London could not understand how difficult it was for the colonists

– Leaders in Virginia could not understand the pressure for profits in London

• Fire:– 1608 fire destroyed all

the buildings in Jamestown except three

– Colonists exposed to cold winter temps. Without shelter.

– Fire also destroyed all their supplies.

• Native American Attacks: – Fear of attacks were

constant.– Most attacks took

place outside of fort area, making it difficult to tend to crops.

• Desertion:– Leaders of colony

were afraid colonists would leave to go live with Natives.

• Attacks by Spanish:– Jamestown was 50

miles upriver from Spanish ships.

If you chose to become an indentured servant….

First decade of settlement….

• 95% of the colonists were tenants or servants.

• Almost died within the first year.

• Out of 900 sent to

Jamestown, only 60 survived

By 1610.

• Of the more than 5,000 settlers who migrated to Virginia in the first 17 years, only 1, 132 were alive in 1624.

• ¾ of all indentured servants died within one year of moving to Jamestown between 1607 and 1624.

• By the 1620s, conditions improved.– As tobacco became

more profitable, servants became more valuable.

– Conditions in England also improved, so fewer people came as indentured servants.