jamestown argumentative essay

Why Jamestown Matters

If the colony had collapsed, England might not have been established as the major colonial power in North America.

Winter 2008

If Jamestown, England’s first permanent colony in the New World, had failed 400 years ago—and it came within a whisker of being abandoned on any number of occasions—then North America as we know it today would probably not exist. Instead of English, we might be speaking French, Spanish, or even Dutch. If Jamestown collapsed, the emergence of British America and eventually the creation of the United States may never have happened.

By the time John Smith and his fellow colonists landed in Virginia in 1607, many European colonies had failed already, owing to harsh winters, rampant disease, hostile Indians (or other Europeans), and difficulties with provisioning. The Spanish lost colonies in Florida, the French at Fort Caroline (Florida) and Port Royal (Nova Scotia) and the English at Baffin Island, Roanoke (North Carolina), and Sagadahoc in Maine. Few colonies lasted more than a year and many hundreds of colonists died, often in terrible conditions. The spread of English settlements along the North Atlantic seaboard in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was far from inevitable.

So, too, the early colonists of Jamestown encountered daunting challenges. Unable to survive solely on their own, they counted on periodic reprovisioning and new infusions of settlers from their sponsors in England, the Virginia Company of London.

In November 1609, two and a half years after Jamestown was first settled (during which the colony had been a total loss to its investors), members of the Company learned that a hurricane had scattered a fleet of eight ships sent out earlier in the year to bring 500 settlers, food, arms, ammunition, and equipment to the beleaguered colony. The principle vessel, the 250-ton Sea Venture , was feared lost. As the Company members filed into their London office, their faces reflected their deep concerns. Should they continue to finance their risky and costly gamble in the New World or just pull the plug and let the colony collapse?

Their decision would change history. Instead of giving up, the members sprang into action to save their investment and calm investors and others who would soon learn the news of the disaster themselves. In December, the Company published A True and Sincere Declaration , a bold defense of the colonization effort that asked why this “great action” of the English should be “shaken and dissolved by one storm?” The carefully reasoned argument restated the colony’s purpose—to take possession of North America, bring Christianity to the Indians, and produce valuable commodities—and outlined why Jamestown would eventually become profitable. If these were the right and proper goals for the colony when the expedition had set out, the Company asserted, why should they be abandoned now?

The treatise worked, enabling the Company to raise money for another fleet, under the command of Lord De La Warr, which set out in April 1610 and arrived just in time. The winter and spring of 1609-1610 had proved particularly deadly to colonists. A combination of Indian attacks, disease, and starvation killed three-quarters of the 400 settlers in six months. When De La Warr’s ships anchored off Jamestown Island in June, the new governor turned around surviving colonists who had just abandoned the site and put the colony on a more secure footing.

Had the Virginia Company pulled out of Jamestown, the English might never have established themselves as the major colonial power on the mainland, leaving the Spanish or Dutch to colonize the mid-Atlantic region, which may well have discouraged the establishment of English settlements in New England. Instead of settling at Plymouth, the Pilgrims might have ended up in Guiana, on the northern coast of South America, an alternative suggested at the time; Massachusetts settlers might have joined other Puritan groups moving to Providence Island, off the coast of Central America, and to sugar-rich islands of the West Indies. The English may well have decided to confine their activities to the Caribbean or abandoned colonizing projects in America altogether, turning their attention to dominating the business of transporting goods, much as the Dutch would do after losing New Netherland (New York) to the English in 1664.

But against the odds Jamestown survived, becoming the first successful English colony in North America, from which the English language, laws, and secular and religious institutions in time spread across North America and the globe. At Jamestown the English learned the hard lessons of how to keep a colony going. By trial and error, they discovered that only with the introduction of stable political and social institutions—representative government, the church, private property, and family and community life, as well as the discovery of profitable commodities—would settlements prosper and grow. All successful English colonies followed in the wake of Jamestown.

English colonization, however, unleashed powerful destructive forces and brought unimaginable misery for Indians and enslaved Africans alike. Hostilities between the English and Powhatan Indians kick-started a destructive cycle of violence, plunder, and exploitation that would spread across the continent over the next three centuries, depriving native peoples of their lives, culture, and lands. The arrival of some two-dozen Angolan slaves at Jamestown in August 1619 presaged a system of exploitation and oppression that would destroy and blight the lives of countless Africans over many generations. At its creation, the new American nation would confront its greatest paradox: how could slavery persist in the midst of freedom?

Few other places in America so richly symbolize both the good and bad of our shared past. Jamestown matters because it is about coming to terms with that past; a past at times painful and conflicted but which eventually laid the foundations of modern America. At Jamestown, Indians, the English, and Africans first encountered one another, lived and worked alongside one another, survived and persisted, and in so doing began the long drawn out process—often contentious, sometimes tragic, but ultimately successful—by which together they shaped a new world and forged a new people.

Virginia Company
Colonial America
Jamestown VA

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What Was Life Like in Jamestown?

By: Annette McDermott

Updated: August 23, 2023 | Original: July 25, 2018

The first settlers at the English settlement in Jamestown , Virginia hoped to forge new lives away from England―but life in the early 1600s at Jamestown consisted mainly of danger, hardship, disease and death.

All of the early settlers in 1607 were men and boys, including laborers, carpenters, bricklayers, a blacksmith, a barber, a tailor, a mason and a preacher. Within weeks, they built a basic fortification to protect themselves against attacks from the local Powhatan tribe. The Powhatan’s reception of the settlers was mixed―some welcomed them, while others assaulted them.

“Since there were often several different tribes in a given area, it was not strange for different native groups to view the Europeans as potential allies against enemies,” says Stephen Leccese, a historian and Ph.D. candidate at Fordham University . “Great diversity among native groups meant that rarely was there widespread cooperation against European settlements.

As the roughly 100 colonists settled in, they soon realized angry natives were the least of their problems: They were pathetically unprepared for forging a new colony. Daily life soon revolved around survival as starvation and disease ravaged them; only about 38 settlers survived the first year.

The winter of 1609 was disastrous―and crude health care didn’t help.

In January 1608, more settlers arrived―including the first two women and the first physician. According to Leccese, “The English government at the time had a vested interest in settlers traveling to the Americas because this was a rough time in English history … the government concluded that England was overpopulated and wanted a way to get rid of the excess population.”

During the winter of 1609, relations between the colonists and the Indians worsened and the Indians laid siege to Jamestown during a terrible famine. To survive, the colonists ate anything and everything they could including, according to recently discovered (and disputed) archaeological evidence , some dead corpses of other settlers. Only 60 colonists survived this “starving time.”

There’s not much written about specific remedies physicians used in Jamestown to treat their sick and dying patients. Bloodletting is documented as well as the use of herbal remedies. Local Native American medicinal practitioners likely had an influence on treatments used. But as evidenced by the massive number of settlers who died, these early medicines were only marginally successful at best.

The marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas created stability.

Despite the arrival of more colonists and attempts to improve conditions at Jamestown, it wasn’t until 1612, when colonist John Rolfe introduced tobacco to the settlement, that the colony became profitable.

In 1613, English colonists captured the Powhatan princess Pocahontas . In 1614, she converted to Christianity and married John Rolfe, which led to a period of peace between the Powhatan and the Jamestown settlers.

In 1619, a representative General Assembly was established to make laws and help maintain order in the fledging colony.

Women showed real grit in the early Jamestown colony.

Between 1620 and 1622, well over one hundred women arrived in Jamestown. Some were purchased by unwed colonists as wives. Others were indentured servants who endured harsh conditions working the tobacco fields―as well as physical and sexual abuse.

England hoped the women would help men create ties to the community and make them less likely to abandon the colony.

Once an indentured woman paid her debt, she’d likely marry, but many were still responsible for working the fields as well as handling domestic household duties. Women were much less submissive in Jamestown than in England, however, and often fought for their rights and those of their children.

At first, some men appreciated their wives’ contributions so much that they requested the women be given land of their own. This generosity didn’t last, however. By the mid-17th century, as the men’s primary concern turned from mere survival to consolidating wealth and land, the General Assembly passed a law in 1662 stating that argumentative wives could be dunked under water.

In 1619, the Dutch introduced the first captured Africans to America, planting the seeds of a slavery system that evolved into a nightmare of abuse and cruelty that would ultimately divide the nation.

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Africans arrived in Jamestown as indentured servants.

By 1619, tobacco was king and daily life for almost everyone in Jamestown revolved around producing and selling tobacco.

In August, the first Africans arrived as indentured servants. Although they were not officially slaves and might eventually gain their freedom, they’d been kidnapped from their homeland and forced to live a hard life of servitude. Their presence opened the door for Virginia to accept the institution of slavery and eventually replace African indentured servants with enslaved Africans.

The next decades in Jamestown brought periods of war and peace with the Indians. More and more colonists arrived, spread out and created new towns and plantations. In 1624, Virginia became a royal colony.

Fire, disease, famine and Indian attacks remained, but according to Leccese, “One other important problem was the increasingly stratified society. As time went on, original settlers had snatched up all the quality land and new settlers were finding less opportunity to become independent farmers on their own land. This resulted in a small class of rich landowners and a large class of landless or small farmers.”

By 1699 there were around 60,000 people in the Virginia colony, including about 6,000 enslaved peoples. Jamestown had started a tradition of slavery that would endure in America for generations.

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How Jamestown Abandoned a Utopian Vision and Embraced Slavery

In 1619, wealthy investors overthrew the charter that guaranteed land for everyone.

Burley tobacco is placed on sticks to wilt after cutting before being taken into the barn for drying and curing. Courtesy of the Library of Congress .

by Paul Musselwhite | August 15, 2019

In the summer of 1619, some of England’s first American colonists were carving up land seized from the Powhatan empire along the James River in Virginia. While the first settlers had arrived back in 1607, they had only recently discovered that they could turn a profit growing tobacco. Tobacco production had increased 20-fold over the past two years, and agricultural land was suddenly at a premium.

Yet the surveyors, instead of laying out private estates for upwardly mobile colonists, were mostly tracing the bounds of thousands of acres of common land. These vast tracts of public land were intended to accommodate hundreds of new colonists and their families, who would serve as tenants, raising crops and paying rents to support infrastructure while learning agricultural skills.

This symbiotic vision of common land and public institutions was one of the most dramatic innovations in the history of English colonialism to that point. But we have lost sight of that original vision and how it was undermined.

In late July of 1619, delegates gathered at the colony’s first representative government for white men. Just a few weeks later, two ships arrived in the colony and traded away a cargo of African prisoners seized from a Portuguese slaving vessel, inaugurating a bitter history of slavery and racism in English North America.

This confluence of events happened seemingly by chance. But slavery and exploitation were not unforeseen by-products of an American drive for free land and free enterprise. They were bound up with a conscious decision to turn away from public land and public institutions in early Virginia. The full story of 1619 is the tragedy of how early English Americans’ desire for private land and individual freedom, which we have long celebrated, went hand in hand with their determination to exploit and enslave. Virginia’s leaders made a conscious choice to abandon the commons by privatizing land and purchasing laborers, choices that would reverberate for centuries.

Because Virginia had been settled by a company, all profits were supposed to be shared between investors and settlers. By 1617, though, colonists were reporting that acting governor Samuel Argall had seized company property and was forcing them to grow tobacco for his own private gain.

This news enraged the most idealistic shareholders. These men, led by veteran politician Sir Edwin Sandys , envisioned Virginia as an ideal new English society. Sandys seized control of the Virginia Company in 1618 and dispatched a new governor, Sir George Yeardley , with instructions for comprehensive reforms that became known as the colony’s Great Charter—a Magna Carta for English America.

This is perhaps one of the most misunderstood events in early American history. The instructions have long been remembered for establishing a system of private grants on the land the English had seized from indigenous people, and for establishing the 1619 General Assembly as a representative body for the new class of private landowning individuals. Yet Sandys’s charter mandated not the distribution of private land but rather the division of Powhatan land into large commons—an aspect that has been all but lost to public memory.

The Great Charter actually organized Virginia colonists into “four Cities or Boroughs”; anyone wanting to receive private land had to be a member of one of these communities. Rather than focusing on the private grants, the charter carefully outlined the allocation of thousands of acres of conquered land to each of these new communities to hold in common. Each borough’s public lands were to be farmed by new tenant families that the company would ship to Virginia. The new families would pay rent, with the revenues used to fund infrastructure, capitalize new industries, and pay public officials, and all the while they would gain the experience necessary to become independent farmers.

This was a public version of the American dream, albeit one limited to white men. All English male colonists would have access to land while also having a stake in common resources and a shared sense of identity. Public servants would be able to count on a reliable income that would “take away all occasion of oppression and corruption” and encourage evenhanded regulation of trade.

From the outset there were practical problems. For the system to work, large numbers of new migrants needed tools and supplies to clear and cultivate land, so they could pay rents. Although company leaders dispatched throngs of new migrants to Virginia, the people they sent were poorly provisioned, and many arrived at the wrong time of year to begin planting. Thousands of these new migrants died. Although as many as 4,000 new colonists had arrived by 1624, the total English population of Virginia only grew by a few hundred.

These practical problems, though, were vastly compounded by the actions of those who opposed the vision of the Great Charter. Some investors in England actively worked to undermine the public structure and replace it with a more hierarchical system of large private estates controlled by aristocrats. A faction including two former Virginia governors sabotaged the plan by withholding investment until the communal structure was revoked and the colony’s governance was placed in the hands of men recognized for their “Eminence, or Nobility.”

Meanwhile, in Virginia, some colonists went even further to stymie the realization of a communal vision. When asked to contribute labor to their communities, colonists protested “as much as if all their goods had been taken from them,” one commentator said. Such reports—true or not—helped to justify the argument that the whole communal enterprise was failing, inaugurating a myth about the “tragedy of the commons” that perpetuates to this day.

Delegates at the much-celebrated 1619 General Assembly neglected to take any action to shore up the colony’s common land or protect new tenants. Instead, individual planters petitioned company officials in London to send not tenants, but bound servants who could be “let out” to them—forced to labor for five to seven years on private estates. Ready access to easily exploitable labor, one planter claimed, was the only way to “restore the fire in the hearts of the Adventurers.” These proposals set out a privatized vision of the colony’s economy and society, in which individual gain was the only effective motive.

Over the next few years, Virginia’s leaders used the pretext of limited supplies and facilities to commandeer new immigrants. The system of indentured servitude would soon result in men and women being traded and even gambled away.

It was into this context, with Sandys’s vision of public land and the common good under attack, that the privateering vessels White Lion and Treasurer (well-known to many of the colony’s leaders) landed on Virginia’s shores with their African prisoners in the late summer of 1619. Given their knowledge of enslavement in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, English colonists almost certainly assumed that, unlike white migrants, the Africans would be held in perpetual bondage. More important than the precise legal terms of their exploitation, though, was the fact that the Africans arrived outside the company’s framework of tenants and common lands that still controlled the arriving English immigrants. Not coincidentally, then, just as colonists were appealing for the chance to convert company tenants into servants, these ships, crewed by their friends and fellow Englishmen, brought laborers who could be even more easily commodified for private purposes.

This was precisely what happened. The prisoners were commandeered by a small group of planters. John Rolfe, who first reported the arrival of the so-called “20 and odd” Africans, cagily noted that they were purchased by the “Governor and Cape Merchant,” the company’s official trade coordinator in the colony. This official involvement implies that the men and women were exchanged for public supplies.

When this group of prisoners next appeared in the records, however, most of them were laboring on the private estates of the colony’s leading figures, where they would remain for the rest of their lives. Although it would take years for African slavery to be formalized in Virginia law, the experience of these first Africans set an important precedent. Their vulnerability to sale played into the hands of English colonists who were eager to overturn the system of common land that America’s Magna Carta had stipulated.

Within a few years, the English Crown revoked the Virginia Company’s control over the colony. The Great Charter and its vision of shared public infrastructure nurturing colonial opportunity was abandoned. Virginia became a place where bound and coerced workers satiated planters’ abstract demand for cheap labor to cultivate isolated private estates.

The effort to balance public and private interests was crushed by a race to both privatize land and commodify labor. The fate of the African arrivals in 1619 and the future of representative government in English America were ultimately driven by the undermining of the commons.

Americans have begun to absorb some of the lessons of 1619, from the horrors of the theft of land from indigenous peoples to the bitter legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But the critical insight we have missed from that year is that the weakening of public institutions leaves vulnerable groups exposed to exploitation. As we grapple with the legacies of racism and abuse from 17th-century Virginia, we would do well to remind ourselves of Sandys’s observation that “the maintaining of the public in all estates” is “of no less importance, even for the benefit of the Private, then the root and body of a Tree are to the particular branches.”

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Home / Essay Samples / History / Jamestown / The Importance and Significance of Jamestown as an American Colony

The Importance and Significance of Jamestown as an American Colony

Category: History
Topic: American Colonies , Jamestown

Pages: 4 (1670 words)

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