Early Colonization of England - England’s First Attempts at Colonization

Zayda Andrade

Professor Smith

History 1301

27 January 2017

England’s First Attempts at Colonization

After seeing how successful the Spanish were at colonizing parts of the new world the English didn’t want to fall behind and decided to try to colonize as well. England first turned to the sea dogs, a bunch of explorers or better considered “pirates”. The sea dogs are the ones that would take the lead in trying to settle the new world. Almost as a practice for colonization the English first started with Ireland. The English looking down on the Irish by considering them “savages” would attack Irish villages. After attacking the Irish villages the English would then settle in these villages, make plantation homes and take control of the Irish people. This wouldn’t be the first nor last colonization attempt by the English.

Shortly after, England would send Humphrey Gilbert to the new world, where he would try to settle a permanent home in what he called Newfoundland. On his way home to England, Humphrey Gilbert would die due to turbulence at sea and ultimately fail to settle a permanent colony for England. Walter Raleigh (Humphrey Gilbert’s half-brother) would then step up and get the chance to settle a permanent home in the new world. Walter would send about 100 men to search for a place to colonize. These first set of men would find what they called Roanoke Island. While they managed to find land it was technically a horrible place to settle down and have a colony due to its swampy conditions. Most of the men died due to lack of food and poor conditions, the men that did survive thanks to the natives help would decide to go back to England. Two years later, Walter Raleigh would send another group but this time it would include women and children rather than just men. About 107 people would go to Roanoke Island with John White as their leader. Due to lack of supplies, John White would be sent back to England by the people to stock up and get more supplies. When John White returns to England he comes to find the England is at war with Spain and spends three years fighting the Spanish. Finally after all that time, John White returns to Roanoke Island only to find that all the people had vanished. No one would ever find out what happened to the people of Roanoke and it remains a mystery to this day.

 Even after many failed attempts England still didn’t give up and thus the Virginia Company came into play. The Virginia Company would send 144 men to find some type of wealth in the new world. They would then find and settle a colony by the name of Jamestown. The problem was that the Virginia Company had sent gentlemen that had never worked a day in their life and were slowly starting to die off due to lack of food and other essentials. They would have died if it weren’t for Captain John Smith, a soldier that had been imprisoned by the same people he was now helping. John Smith would take leadership after being imprisoned and would make the remaining settlers work to start up the colony. A major part that would help John Smith and the settlers was establishing trade with the Powhatan people. This relationship would save the colony and hearing of this success more people were sent to Jamestown including women and children. The colony would go from 38 men to more than 500 people.

One day while exploring, John Smith and his men were ambushed by natives and John Smith was taken captive. John Smith being the smart man that he was lied to the natives and told them he had magic powers in order to survive. He managed to impress the men enough that they would take him to the chief of chiefs Powhatan. Powhatan would then decide to kill John Smith despite taking a liking for him. As he was on his death bed Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas saved John Smith and then his life was spared and was considered part of the tribes group. Pocahontas became like a safety valve at Jamestown and was very much intrigued by the English people and their ways. Pocahontas eventually got married to an Englishmen and got baptized. She was very much like a celebrity in England and while visiting England with her husband and child she would get all the attention and even meet the King. Unfortunately, she got sick while in England and she would die there.

Back in Jamestown things seemed to be going great but slowly they would take a turn for the worse. It all started when John Smith got injured in a gunpowder incident and had to return to England to get medical treatment. While John Smith is away the people of Jamestown stop working completely which resulted in the people going into starvation. This period of time is called “starving time” and resulted in the decrease in population from more than 500 people to just 50-60 people. The few people that were left took to cannibalism and would dig up and eat dead corpses. Just when it seemed that things would end, something happened that would turn Jamestown around. That thing would be tobacco, it became a cash crop and would save Jamestown. Tobacco thrived because of the good soil in Virginia and the growth of tobacco got the people working once again. By shipping tobacco back to England they would gain a profit and the economy and people started to prosper. Naturally, along with more work came the need for more people to perform labor. Therefore the Virginia Company created the headright system. They would advertise to people in England how they could get free land in the new world. All the people would have to do was pay a fee for the voyage to the new world and they would receive 50 acres of land. Even better was the fact that 50 acres were given per head so would lure people to the new world. This caused Jamestown to grow to 1000+ people and with more people came more responsibility. The people of Virginia set up a stable government in which they called The House of Burgesses. The Virginia Company were the ones that selected the governor and the people of Virginia would elect their representatives. In order to elect these representatives the qualifications to vote were to:

• be 17 years and older  
• own land
• be a man
• and had to be white

These qualifications at the time were considered to be great and gave many people the opportunity to vote. The people of Virginia had more rights than what they would get in England and would set up the first representative government in the colonies. Everything, unfortunately, comes to a halt again when they run into problems with the natives. These problems would result and be called The Powhatan Uprising. These issues arise when Powhatan dies and his brother (King O) becomes the new king and unlike Powhatan, King O really hates the English.  With so much conflict going on and the natives wanting their land back from the English, King O decides to kill all the Englishmen. The Powhatan ambush the English in a surprise attack early in the morning. They use a lie and approach the English by going up to them in a false trading offer and once they got close enough they would kill the English with whatever they had close to them. 347 English people were killed in just a couple hours. War then broke out between the English and the Powhatan’s. Due to the war economic activity in Virginia would cease and the Virginia Company would go bankrupt. Even through this war continued and although the natives had the upper hand at first the English ultimately prevailed. One way they did this was by setting up a peace meeting to “end the war”. Both would show up unarmed and the English proceeded to serve the natives wine. Little did the natives know that the wine had been poisoned and 200 natives resulted dead due to this incident. Most did not drink it all so they didn’t die and so the war would continue. King James would then step in and take direct control of the colony. The colony would then become a royal colony and King James would start sending more soldiers and basically, would wipe out most of the natives.