American History I Name ________________________________

Ms. Page

Early English Colonization of the Americas

Roots of English Exploration

1497 - John Cabot reached the east coast of North America

1550s - The increased perception and depiction of the Spanish Empire as uniquely brutal among other European nations
- this was termed ​“The Black Legend” ​early in the 20th Century

1580 - Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe

1584 - Richard Hakluyt wrote stirring arguments for English exploration and settlement of the “New World”

1587 - 1590 - Sir Walter Raleigh established Roanoke...and it disappeared (?)

1607 - The Virginia Company, led by John Smith, founded Jamestown

A Settlement at Jamestown​ (​ ‘According to the text…’)

1. What were joint-stock companies, and how did they function?

2. What was the demographic makeup (types of people) of the first settlers at Jamestown?

3. Why was Jamestown unsuccessful at first?

4. What were the effects of the discovery of Tobacco on Jamestown?

5. What was the primary source of labor at Jamestown initially, and how did this change over time?

6. What does your book suggest was the British “pattern of conquest and colonization” of the land and Native
Americans they encountered?
 7. What lead to increased social and economic stability of the colony?

8. When and why was the Virginia Company’s charter for Jamestown revoked, and what did the settlement
become?

Bacon’s Rebellion - 1676

In 1676, friction between backcountry farmers, landless former indentured servants, and coastal planters in Virginia
exploded in violence in an incident known as Bacon’s Rebellion. Convinced that Virginia's colonial government had failed
adequately to protect them against Indians, backcountry rebels, led by Nathaniel Bacon, a wealthy landowner, burned
the capital at Jamestown, plundered their enemy's plantations, and offered freedom to any indentured servants who
joined them. In the midst of the revolt, Bacon died of dysentery. Without his leadership, the uprising collapsed, but fear
of servant unrest encouraged planters to replace white indentured servants with black slaves, set apart by a distinctive
skin color. In 1660, there were fewer than a thousand slaves in Virginia and Maryland. But during the 1680s, their
number tripled, rising from about 4,500 to 12,000.

​ n Account of Bacon’s Rebellion​ - Robert Beverly, 1704

A
The occasion of this rebellion is not easy to be discovered: but `tis certain there were many things that
concurred towards it. For it cannot be imagined, that upon the instigation of two or three traders only,
who aimed at a monopoly of the Indian trade, as some pretend to say, the whole country would have
fallen into so much distraction; in which people did not only hazard their necks by rebellion, but
endeavored to ruin a governor, whom they all entirely loved, and had unanimously chosen; a gentleman
who had devoted his whole life and estate to the service of the country, and against whom in thirty- five
years experience there had never been one single complaint. Neither can it be supposed, that upon so
slight grounds, they would make choice of a leader they hardly knew, to oppose a gentleman that had
been so long and so deservedly the darling of the people. So that in all probability there was something
else in the wind, without which the body of the country had never been engaged in that insurrection.

Four things may be reckoned to have been the main ingredients towards this intestine commotion, viz.,
First, The extreme low price of tobacco, and the ill usage of the planters in the exchange of goods for it,
which the country, with all their earnest endeavors, could not remedy. Secondly, The splitting the colony
into proprieties, contrary to the original charters; and the extravagant taxes they were forced to undergo,
to relieve themselves from those grants. Thirdly, The heavy restraints and burdens laid upon their trade
by act of Parliament in England. Fourthly, The disturbance given by the Indians. Of all which in their order.

1) Summarize the four causes of the rebellion, from Beverly’s perspective.

2) Which cause seems the most significant?

3) What were the long-term ​effects​ of Bacon’s Rebellion?