INTRODUCTION TO US HISTORY
LECTURER:GEOFFREY PLOURDE
THE EARLY COLONIES

Good Morning and welcome to Week 3 of Introduction to US History. I hope that you are enjoying this course and the interesting instructional method of writing the textbook. This week we focus on the early colonies in North America. This section covers their foundation and important information about them.

As was previously mentioned, everyone wanted a piece of America. Most European nations focused on North America, because Spain had already taken over most of South and Central America. Colonists came from the Netherlands, Sweden, France, and England.

English colonialization started in 1585 when Sir Walter Raleigh sent 100 men. He called the area where they landed Virginia after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen of England. This colony only lasted a year before the colonists returned to England. This may have been because the entire colony was filled with men, leaving no incentive to put down roots. In 1587, Sir Raleigh sent more colonists to Roanoke Island. This time, there were both men and women. He went back to England for supplies and when ships arrived in 1590, the entire colony had disappeared. The only clue was the word Croatian scratched on a nearby tree. The disappearance of this colony continues to be one of history's biggest mysteries and many explanations have been put forward.

Despite their early failures, the English eventually succeeded in colonizing America. The first English colony to take off was Jamestown in 1607. The main reason for Jamestown taking off was tobacco, a crop that would become on of the bases of the Southern economy. The beginning of the colony was rocky, because settlers were aristocrats who did not want to work and did not understand the peculiarities of America. The local natives, led by Powhatan, assisted the colonists in adapting to the New World. While this made it a bit better, there was a systematic problem that still needed to be addressed. In one of the earliest instances of socialism, the Virginia Colony had adopted a common store system where food was taken by the community and distributed out to everyone equally. Many of the colonists decided not work, leading to food shortages. The system demoralized those who did work because the food they produced was being distributed to nonworkers. Captain John Smith abolished common store in 1608 with a famous new policy, "He who does not work shall not eat." This policy provided an incentive to work by placing responsibility on the individual.

Despite the success of Jamestown, it was not self sufficient and depended on what is known as a triangle trade with the Caribbean and Africa. Plantation owners quickly discovered that indentured servants (white servants for a period of year) were unreliable and rebellious. Without extremely cheap labor, they would have to stop production, which is the reason why slavery became prevalent in the South.