Essay On The Legacy Of Jamestown

628 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: American literature part 2

America is a strong nation, however, it had a very rough beginning. It all began with the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent settlement in America. The settlers had a tough time and overcame many of the adversities that they were confronted with such as cold, natives, lack of motive, and many other factors. Though, through their struggles, they shaped America and its literature as it is today. The legacy that Jamestown left is one that would help found the United States of America as we know it today.
In 1606 under the rule of King James I and the sponsorship of the "Virginia Company of London" the voyagers set out looking to turn a profit for the company("A History of Jamestown "). The 105 passengers were carried by three ships, the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery. In May of 1607 the voyagers, led by Captain Christopher Newport, first set foot on what would soon be their colony. Chief Powhatan controlled the area they landed in, which coupled with the unfamiliar climate drastically impacted the settler’s start of their new colony. Without John White the settlers fate with the Indians is not certain. John White was an English explorer and soldier. When the settlers needed leadership to save them from food shortages, winter, poor leadership, White came to the need of the people by determining responsibility and motivating the settlers to work, not as their leader but as an equal. His relationship with Pocahontas, the young daughter of Chief Powhatan, is something no one can be certain of as in his own work such as books and plays their relationship is not said to be romantic, however, it is in the Disney movie Pocahontas . Pocahontas married John Rolfe, not Smith, and Smith's accounts leave no ...

... middle of paper ...

...e it wrong or not, it helped Jamestown get the wealth that it needed to prosper.
In 1624 the King got rid of the Virginia Company, making Virginia a royal colony. 1619 however was when the first representative government in all of British America began. The settlers wanted input on what laws they were living by. Some leaders of the Virginia Company caused a stir and the war with the Powhatan in 1622 ultimately led the King to dissolve the company. These events set the bar for all of the colonies to come, how to treat the Natives, how to be governed, and so on. Though Jamestown ceased to be a Royal Colony in the mid 1700’s, its legacy carried not just into the other colonies but the creation of the United States of America.
Jamestown today still stands a historical landmark. Tours can be taken throughout the town and there are many shops selling antique items.

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of The Documentary The Early Settlement Of Jamestown: Against All Odds

    552 Words  | 2 Pages

    Against all Odds is a very interesting Documentary that follows the early settlement of Jamestown in the 17th century .With endless against the odds situations thrown out in from of the people of Jamestown left and right things seemed bleak. But a lot of perseverance from the early settlers including the Documentaries depiction of the original leader John Smith things seemed to resolve themselves. In Documentary there were several parts where it conceited with what is in chapter three of the Textbook the American Promise. For example, In the Documentary when the subject of the Tobacco business came up it was exampled in the same way as the first page of chapter three. With examples of how the product was grown and distributed out into the world. Making it a very valuable trade to be doing although very labor intensive, which is why it would soon lead into the slave trade. Something that was briefly shown in the documentary mainly to show what lengths the people of Jamestown were willing to go to make things work out in their new home.

    Read More

  • Comparing and Contrasting the New England and Southern Settlements

    547 Words  | 2 Pages

    A fundamental difference between the New England and Southern colonies was the motives of the founders. In 1606, the Virginia Company was formed, motivated primarily by the promise ...

    Read More

  • What Happened To Nathaniel Bacon's Rebellion Of Jamestown?

    151 Words  | 1 Pages

    Things in Jamestown were good. The people were fed, cared for, and happy. They created their own working government order, but, in a place where everything seems perfect, there is always one man to disagree. In this case, his name was Nathaniel Bacon.

    Read More

  • Jamestown: Why Did So Many Die?

    649 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jamestown was the first successful settlement established by England. It was first built in 1607 and lasted until about 1614. On the first ship, 100 male settlers set off for a new settlement in the New World. Life there at times was hard for various reasons. They did, however, become 7 7 trading partners with the Indians. 80% of Jamestown’s more than 500 settlers that had arrived had been dead by 1611. The reason for this is because of sickness and disease, lack of resources, and where they chose to build their settlement.

    Read More

  • Significan Mercantilism In The Columbian Exchange

    1540 Words  | 4 Pages

    Jamestown: Jamestown was an English settlement in America, located in Virginia and named after King James I. The first group of men to arrive were dispatched to Jamestown by the Virginia Company of London. The men of Jamestown experienced several problems, such as lack of gold, inadequate food and water, disease, and an inability to dominate the native population. This term is significant because Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in America, laying the foundation for the eventual colonization of the rest of

    Read More

  • Plymouth and Jamestown: Government, Power, and Survival

    469 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Jamestown and Plymouth settlements were both settled in the early 1600's. Plymouth and Jamestown were located along the shoreline in Massachusetts and Virginia, respectively. Although both had different forms of government, they both had strong leadership. Jamestown was controlled by the London Company, who wanted to profit from the venture, while the Puritans who settled at Plymouth were self-governed with an early form of democracy and settled in the New World to gain religious freedom. John Smith took charge in efforts to organize Jamestown, and at Plymouth William Bradford helped things run smoothly.

    Read More

  • Early Jamestown Dbq Essay

    417 Words  | 1 Pages

    America, it has always had everything we need, except for when colonists flocked in the early 1600´s. Its 1609, you and a group of people have been on a boat for months. Now you aren't even sure if the America's exist. But once you lost every single drop of hope, you see it. A beautiful swampy land. This place makes you feel like you have a lot of opportunities, there’s a river, a lot of wildlife, and not that many Native’s around. It seems perfect, that’s what people that saw posters of Jamestown thought in England. Jamestown seemed, perfect, appeared perfect…

    Read More

  • Love And Hate In Jamestown by David A. Price

    1630 Words  | 4 Pages

    As a young child many of us are raised to be familiar with the Pocahontas and John Smith story. Whether it was in a Disney movie or at a school play that one first learned of Jamestown, students want to believe that this romantic relationship really did occur. As one ages, one becomes aware of the dichotomy between fact and fiction. This is brilliantly explained in David A. Price's, Love and Hate in Jamestown. Price describes a more robust account of events that really did take place in the poorly run, miserable, yet evolving settlement of Jamestown, Virginia; and engulfs and edifies the story marketed by Disney and others for young audiences. Price reveals countless facts from original documents about the history of Jamestown and other fledgling colonies, John Smith, and Smith's relationship with Pocahontas. He develops a more compelling read than does the typical high school text book and writes intriguingly which propels the reader, to continue on to the successive chapters in the early history of Virginia.

    Read More

  • Jamestown DBQ

    687 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout history, humankind has done just about everything wrong; from slavery to bowl cuts. We are creatures of habit, greed, and want. We all believe in hope that eventually history won’t repeat, but we creatures of habit are doing very little to stop it. Our habitual patterns cause chaos and disrupt in war most of the time, so the fact that the colonies usually failed and died isn’t surprising. Jamestown was the first “successful” colony but all the people in the colony mainly died. We love to look the other way and say that they died because they didn’t know the land or because the natives were evil but the truth is; the Jamestown colonists died because of their stupidity, mistrust, and greed (a.k.a human nature).

    Read More

  • Development of Colonies

    937 Words  | 2 Pages

    Furthermore, according to professor Foner, each colony experienced distinct political development. In Virginia, the crown appointed governor, and local elite was in charge of the colony’s advancement. There was also the county court, or the Justices of Peace. Only the colonial assembly was elected. The House of Burgesses, established in 1639, was the first legislature in Jamestown. Contrary to Virginia, Maryland was a proprietary colony settled in 1632. The charter granted Cecilius Calver...

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Virginia And Massachusetts Colonies

    926 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the early stages of North American colonization by the English, the colony of Jamestown, Virginia was founded in 1607 (Mailer Handout 1 (6)). Soon after the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded in 1629 (Mailer Handout 2 (1)). These two colonies, although close in the time they were founded, have many differences in aspects of their lives and the way they were settled. The colonies have a different religious system, economic system, political system, and they have a different way of doing things; whether that be pertaining to making money, practicing religion, or electing governors. Along with the differences, there are also a sameness between these two colonies. Each colony has been derived from England and has been founded by companies

    Read More

  • Edward S. Morgan's Pocahontas And The Labor Problem At Jamestown

    1002 Words  | 3 Pages

    The 1995 Disney film of Pocahontas is, unsurprisingly, not a good source for citation for colonial research. It is predictably inaccurate in the description of the real life characters, the turn of events and also in the depiction of Jamestown. But it is a movie. In actuality Pocahontas did not have a romantic attachment to Captain Smith (nor a hot tempered hummingbird friend) and Captain Smith was not even a likable person. The farthest stretch in the movie however was about the representation of Jamestown. Jamestown was the first English settlement in the colony of Virginia however it struggled to survive for quite a while and many people died in the process. This was due to a large number of the settlers there simply not working. As a result

    Read More

  • The Chesapeake and New England Colonies: A Comparison

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Chesapeake region of the colonies included Virginia, Maryland, the New Jerseys (both East and West) and Pennsylvania. In 1607, Jamestown, the first English colony in the New World (that is, the first to thrive and prosper), was founded by a group of 104 settlers to a peninsula along the James River. These settlers hoped to find gold, silver, a northwest passage to Asia, a cure for syphilis, or any other valuables they might take back to Europe and make a profit. Lead by Captain John Smith, who "outmaneuvered other members of the colony's ruling and took ruthlessly took charge" (Liberty Equality Power, p. 57), a few lucky members of the original voyage survived. These survivors turned to the local Powhatan Indians, who taught them the process of corn- and tobacco-growing. These staple-crops flourished throughout all five of these colonies.

    Read More

  • Jamestown and Plymouth

    566 Words  | 2 Pages

    The English had two main colonies in the new world, Jamestown and Plymouth. The first colony was Jamestown, established in Virginia in 1607. Jamestown was settled by Captain John Smith, and was named after King James I. Tobacco was the main export of Jamestown, and became the basis of the Jamestown economy, sending more than 50,000 lbs of the plan back to Europe by 1618 (textbook 46). Jamestown had a very rocky start, many colonists dying in the first few years of the settlement, and the settlers had many problems with natives. Shortly after the arrival of English colonists the Natives attacked them, and were finally forced back by a canon from the English. A very uneasy truce was finally settled between the natives, called the Powhatans, and the English (textbook 44-5). Economic growth and expanding their territories were the main priorities of the English in the Jamestown colonies.

    Read More

  • Nightmare In Jamestown Movie Analysis

    621 Words  | 2 Pages

    They arrived on a ship with 108 men led by Bartholomew Goznold, the founding father no one knew, who found Jamestown. They were sent by an English company in

    Read More

More about Essay On The Legacy Of Jamestown

Open Document