Our Story Begins;Jamestown and theColonization of the South

The Major Players in North America:

• France had explored and claimed much of Northern North American as well as the interior along the Mississippi- financed by the King

• Spain had explored and conquered South America and Latin America- financed by the King

• England’s King was too poor to pay for any such quests…But there was a solution!

The Joint Stock Company:• Investors pooled their

money to finance colonization

• Goal was to make profit• King granted charters

to operate• Company was

responsible for running own colony

• King benefited from taxes and trade

This is the seal for the

Virginia Company of

London, granted by

King James I.

Virginia and other Southern Colonies were founded by people seeking economic

opportunities!• To Find Gold• To establish large farms

• To escape poverty in Britain

Jamestown: the first permanent English

settlement• Established in 1607 by

the Virginia Company of London as a business venture (Joint Stock Company)

• Men were looking for GOLD

• Nearly failed during the “Starving Time”…But saved by John Smith

• No gold in Virginia

• Colony was about bankrupt

• John Rolfe introduced TOBACCO farming, which made Virginia very profitable!!!

John Rolfe Saves Virginia

Virginia and the SouthThese colonies

were settled by people seeking economic opportunities.

The early Virginia “cavaliers” were English nobility who received large land grants in eastern Virginia from the King of England.

Poor English immigrants also

came seeking better lives as small farmers

or artisans and settled in the Shenandoah

Valley or western Virginia.

Indentured servants agreed to work on tobacco plantations for a period of time to pay for passage to the New World.

This would populate the colony as well as provide cheap labor.

Indentured Servants:

The First African Slaves:

The first Africans were brought against their will to Jamestown in 1619 and worked on tobacco plantations.

The growth of an agricultural economy based on large landholdings in the Southern colonies and in the Caribbean led to the introduction of slavery in the New World.

►The Virginia House of Burgesses, began in 1619

►By the 1640s, was the established as the first elected assembly in the New World.

►It has operated continuously and is today known as the General Assembly of Virginia.

Virginia and the South establish Self-Government

Exploration and colonization initiated worldwide commercial expansion as agricultural products were exchanged between the Americas and Europe.

The Triangle Trade shows the flow of goods and people across the Atlantic.