Jamestown
A joint-stock company's colony, which nearly starved
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Jamestown in Virginia was the first English settlement in North America that lasted, founded in 1607 by a trading company with shareholders in London. Jamestown is the origin of three features that became permanent in British America: colonisation as a private investment scheme, an export crop that organised the whole society around itself, and a representative assembly — the House of Burgesses from 1619. That same year the first Africans sold in the colony arrived. The two institutions therefore began in the same season, and American history has had to reckon ever since with the fact that they grew up together.
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The first lasting English settlement in America was started by a trading company hoping for gold. They found no gold, and in the winter of 1609–10 three in four colonists starved to death. What eventually saved the colony was tobacco.
Sources
- Taylor, American Colonies (2001)
- Jamestown Rediscovery / Preservation Virginia: utgravningene
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