let's begin lesson two entitled the Virginia colony so let's start with our teques we are still in unit 2 on colonization we want to always be able to put events in chronological order we're going to look at why the year 16007 is an important one for us to know we're going to be talking about the first elected representatives in the new world uh we need to be able to locate Virginia and Jamestown and finally we're going to be talking about the beginnings of the plantation system and the slave trade in Virginia which is going to be an important throughout our um our year so let's continue so in lesson one we talked about why colonies were important to Europeans the things they wanted we talked about the 3Gs of exploration but we also need to know that establishing these colonies was very expensive it required a number of ships men of course tools and supplies and all these were required for Success so in order to raise money for this particular Colony they founded the joint stock company what we now call the stock market in a joint stocky company investors buy stock in the company and then if that investment makes makes money that business is successful the investors share in the profits but of course if the in if the business fails the investors risk losing the money that they invested so our company the Virginia company was founded to find investors for this new Colony on the east coast of North America now they had to start with a charter now a charter is your legal document that gives you permission from the Monarch meaning the king or queen to establish the colony and the other thing the charter does is that it gives the settlers in that Colony the same rights as the Home Country so in this case they wanted the they needed the charter to to maintain their rights as English citizens in the Virginia colony so here we go to that year 16007 and the founding of Jamestown Jamestown was the first permanent settlement in the new world or in the North America for England they chose as a deep water port on the James River they needed a place to be able to dock their ships uh of course they wanted to be able to defend themselves from rival explorers in this case that meant Spain because Spain was close by in the Caribbean and in Florida what they didn't realize was that they had chosen a spot with with h bad water the land was swampy it was filled with mosquitoes the water was uh was diseased and it was poor land for farming and this is going to have devastating effects on the colony very soon so what did the Jamestown Colony look like now even today uh archaeologists are currently Excavating where the Jamestown Colony was and they are finding out new things all the time about it but we know that generally the Jamestown Colony was built in a triangle that there was a wall around it and that it had defensive posts at Each corner and then a central meeting place so this is a general idea of what the Jamestown Settlement looked like at the beginning okay so these first settlers first the first group of course were all men uh women would come over later uh these men were made up of what were called gentlemen and these were wealthy English men and they brought over their servants and because they were wealthy back home they were not used to the hard work that was going to be necessary for this Colony a much larger group were the indentured servants that's another term we need to know notice that it's underlying and underlying terms you need to make sure you're writing down that you get good definitions for them indentured servants were poor men and they did not have the money to make the trip so they sold themselves as laborers for the passage to Virginia usually their their servitude would last several years until their debt was paid now these first settlers arrived in May of 16007 so it was too late to plant the spring crops for the next year and they also suffered from poor leadership these leaders were more concerned with finding gold than doing the basic things necessary for the survival of the colonies so because of this over half of the colonists die in the first year the next year Captain John Smith arrives John Smith was a 27-year-old Adventurer uh he's got military experience even though he is a relative to the young man but shortly after arriving he was captured by the potin natives and uh the daughter of the potin chief Pocahontas we've heard her name and of course you know her from the Disney movie but uh one of the true things in that movie there's not much that's true but one of the true things is is that she did save John Smith's life from execution so John Smith took over a leadership role in Jamestown and he made the rule that he who doesn't work doesn't eat so what that meant was all of you wealthy gentlemen who are not willing to work uh we need your help and if you're not willing to work you're not going to eat however the next year John Smith was wounded by in a cannon blast and he was forced to return to England so the port leadership resumed uh Jamestown settlers were in conflict with the natives and they ended up being very unprepared for the next winter so the winter of 16009 to 1610 is known as the starving time which they didn't when they did not have enough to eat and by the end of that year only 60 of the 2114 settlers uh were still alive they ate whatever they could and we do have archaeological evidence that they engaged in cannibalism uh they used the Tor down buildings for firewood and at the end of that the settlement was very much near failure however a a uh Expedition led by Governor de Lair arrived the next spring with supplies ships and Men And The Colony survived for another year but they still had a problem and that was that they were losing money they needed something the investors uh were not getting their their return on their investment and they needed something to make money in 1609 a colonist named John rth arrived with Spanish tobacco seeds from the West Indies and he had actually stolen these from the West Indies because it was punishable by death to take these seeds out of Spanish territory but he found that this brand of tobacco grew well in the Virginia soil and the climate so after some experimenting in 1612 he introduced this new tobacco crop to Jamestown and it proved very successful so tobacco was popular in Europe and Jamestown now had a profitable crop to sell and a way to make money in the meantime Pocahontas remember her she's the one who saved John Smith uh back in Europe it was common to use Royal weddings to make peace between countries meaning the the daughter of one Noble might marry the son of another as a way to make peace between them so we get a North American version of a royal wedding in which John Ralph one of the wealthy colonists marries Pocahontas the daughter of Chief pottin and the result is a short period of peace between the natives and colonists at Jamestown in 1619 this is in the year that we also want to remember for two reasons the first of these is that the colonists wanted to establish more independence from the Virginia Company and makes more decisions for themselves so they created the House of Burgesses uh the members who were called Burgesses were elected by the male land owners to make laws for the New Colony Now by male landowners I'm talking about the wealthy men uh poor men and indentured servants did not have the right to vote however the house of burgus is still is a Monumental event in our history because it repres is the first representative government in the colonies the first example of people electing their leaders in the colonies important for us to remember that so why did the colonists establish governments in the first place well first of all obviously they're a long way from home uh the voyage across the Atlantic could take as long as 3 to 6 months and obviously if you need decisions made you can't wait 6 months to a year for every little decision so you need to be able to have a ruling body of your own secondly there's English tradition England at the time was ruled by a monarch but also by Parliament which was an elected body and over time Parliament was actually replacing the Monarch as the true R ruler of Great Britain and finally English practice uh the British at home the British government at home largely left the colonies to solve their own problems without a lot of interference so we're going to talk about this more later on another important thing in 1619 is the arrival of the first Africans and they came to Jamestown as laborers now these first ones arrived really more like indentured servants than slaves but over time these African workers would uh evolve into a system of slavery which is going to become a major part of Virginia's plantation economy and we'll talk more about what Plantation means and the piece ends the settlers continued their expansion onto native land and after Chief poton died the new chief of the uh the natives attacked Jamestown in 1622 resulting in the deaths of 347 settlers because of the violence between the natives and Jamestown the king revoked the Virginia company's Charter and made it a royal colony which means it came directly under his Rule and fighting would continue along the frontier until 1645 when the natives were finally forced to uh to recognize the authority of the king and were forced to give away amount more land to the natives so let's look at our lesson two thoughts number one what was Virginia's purpose for establishing the Virginia colony so go back to that first slide and think about what their goals were for the colony uh how did Jamestown become a successful settlement after almost failing number three what two important events occurred in Virginia in 1619 and finally name at least two reasons why the colonist established governments so that concludes lesson two and when we come back lesson three we'll talk about Colonial religious foundations and we'll see you then