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Us history chapter 3 colonial life
Eighth grade us history early explorers
Us history chapter 3 colonial life
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“Four centuries ago, the English didn’t discover a new world--they created one,” asserts Charles Mann in his article, America, Found and Lost. The article describes the arrival of Jamestown settlers from across the Atlantic Ocean in 1607. They arrived in Virginia to acquire land, gold, and silver. But the Europeans were also fixed on finding a path to Asia. At this time time, Powhatan ruled the empire of Tsenacomoco. He had tripled the size of the city over three decades, and the population was at 14,000 people. The English brought with them a whole host of species that dramatically altered the landscape of the Chesapeake Region. Some were intentional, like tobacco. Others, such as honeybees, worms, and disease had an unintended but profound impact on the environment, changing its indigenous people forever.
The English settlers at Jamestown altered the environment of
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Malaria is a mosquito born disease that originated in England. The disease infected the West Coast of the Americas in the 17th century. When the English colonists traveled to the New World, they unintentionally carried with them the Plasmodium parasite. The body reacts to the Plasmodium parasite in an ongoing cycle of fever and fatigue every couple months. The parasite would have rested in the liver among red blood cells for months and suddenly hit the victim with a full blown malarial attack. Malaria does not necessarily kill the victim, but it does drastically weaken him for weeks until his body can fight off the disease. African slaves were previously exposed to malaria. Therefore, many of them were immune to the parasite before being forced into slavery in the New World. Slavery intensified very quickly after the colonists realized that the slaves were not only an almost free work source but were also immune to the disease that tired
“Soil butchery” by excessive tobacco growing drove settlers westward, and the long, lazy rivers invited penetration of the continent-and continuing confrontation with Native
They "developed a common routine of removing their families to Newport, Rhode Island, during that portion of the year" (73). By doing this, they lowered the risk of people getting sick and dying. They made a discovery that malaria and yellow fever were what was causing so many people to get sick. However, the African slaves were unaffected to these diseases and could endure working in the fields without getting sick. This being another reason African slaves were prevalent in South Carolina, and how they became the
Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983. Print.
During the late 16th century and into the 17th century, European nations rapidly colonized the newly discovered Americas. England in particular sent out numerous groups to the eastern coast of North America to two regions. These two regions were known as the Chesapeake and the New England areas. Later, in the late 1700's, these two areas would bond to become one nation. Yet from the very beginnings, both had very separate and unique identities. These differences, though very numerous, spurred from one major factor: the very reason the settlers came to the New World. This affected the colonies in literally every way, including economically, socially, and politically.
The Europeans changed the land of the home of the Indians, which they renamed New England. In Changes in the Land, Cronon explains all the different aspects in how the Europeans changed the land. Changing by the culture and organization of the Indians lives, the land itself, including the region’s plants and animals. Cronon states, “The shift from Indian to European dominance in New England entailed important changes well known to historians in the ways these peoples organized their lives, but it also involved fundamental reorganizations less well known to historians in the region’s plant and animal communities,” (Cronon, xv). New England went through human development, environmental and ecological change from the Europeans.
The harsh conditions of the Chesapeake colonies indiscriminately killed anyone who lived there. According to Taylor, “Despite the importation of fifteen thousand indentured servants between 1625 and 1640, Virginias population increased by only seven thousand…the extremes of the Chesapeake environment shocked English bodies...”
The main focus of Breen's essay the focus is on the fact that colonists in Virginia were driven and motivated to come to the New World, predominantly for monetary reasons. Virginia's soil was found to be unusually well suited for growing tobacco, which is why it drove such a variety of people to migrate there. The colonists, though said to be religious, were extremely individualistic, selfish, as well as primarily drawn in by the economic opportunity in Virginia. These attitudes and ideals are what consequently resulted in numerous military defeats and massacres. They avoided their military obligations, thus naming them the vulnerable “poorly defended white settlements.” These settlements were very easy for the Indians to take advantage of, as Breen writes.
Viola, Herman J. and Carolyn Martolis., ed. Seeds of Change: Five Hundred Years Since Columbus. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.
Goetz, Rebecca A. "A Briefe And True Report Of The New Found Land Of Virginia." Journal Of Southern History 74.3 (2008): 707-709. America: History and Life with Full Text. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.
The Native Americans of the southeast live in a variety of environments. The environments range from the southern Appalachian Mountains, to the Mississippi River valley, to the Louisiana and Alabama swamps, and the Florida wetlands. These environments were bountiful with various species of plant and animal life, enabling the Native American peoples to flourish. “Most of the Native Americans adopted large-scale agriculture after 900 A.D, and some also developed large towns and highly centralized social and political structures.” In the first half of the 1600s Europeans encountered these native peoples. Both cultures encountered new plants, animals, and diseases. However, the Indians received more diseases compared to the few new diseases to the Europeans. The new diseases resulted in a massive loss of Native Americans, including the Southeast Indians which had never encountered the new diseases. Three of the main tribes in the southeast were the Cherokee and the Creek. They were part of a group of southeast tribes that were removed from their lands. These tribes later became known as “The Five Civilized Tribes because of their progress and achievements.”
When Europeans first came to the New World in the late 16th century they were entering new territory and had no idea what to expect. Their views on everything from geographic, politics, climate, to diet, etc. where about to change, and their need for survival would hopefully outweigh these challenges. Only small parts of this new world had ever been explored over the past century, and what information the new settlers had was lacking. The new settlers had assumed the climate would be like that of Europe in the New World and that the weather would be similar and their crops would grow like they did back home. But that was not the case, as they came to find out the summers were hot and the winters were harsh, and many of there crops did not grow. They also believed the New World to be largely uninhabited, as the Indians did not live like they did back home in permanent villages and towns, but rather off the land traveling, as they needed.
Virginia, the Chesapeake Bay area, was not interested in long-term colonization in America. Most emigrants bound for Virginia were young males, only a handful of women came across the Atlantic to the Chesapeake colonies. At this time, men out numbered women 5 to 1, later this ratio only reached 5 to 2. Because of the shortage of women, 70% of Chesapeake men never married. Thus not producing any children to add to the colony’s population. In 1607 the English were originally looking for gold, and silver, they also wished to find the cure for syphilis and the western passage to India. After additional people had arrived in 1609, nearly 80% of Jamestown’s population had died. John Smith referred to Jamestown as “a misery, a ruin, a death, a hell,” then the colony started producing and exporting tobacco. King James’ comment to this was, “no one can build a colony on smoke,” but Jamestown did. In 1640, Jamestown began to export three million pounds of tobacc...
Microbes from Europe introduced new diseases and produced devastating epidemics that swept through the native populations (Nichols 2008). The result from the diseases brought over, such as smallpox, was a demographic catastrophe that killed millions of people, weakened existing societies, and greatly aided the Spanish and Portuguese in their rapid and devastating conquest of the existing American empires (Brinkley 2014). Interaction took place with the arrival of whites and foreigners. The first and perhaps most profound result of this exchange was the imp...
Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland were settled in the early 17th century. It was a difficult live for the first colonist; they had limited labor and were constantly raided by Native Americans. Colonist tried to use the Native Americans as a source of slavery. Most of the colonist’s farms were by forest areas so Native Americans would just leave in to the woods. Colonists were afraid of pressuring them from the fear of getting ambushed by gangs of Native Americans. Another reason Native Americans men made bad slaves was because the women in the tribes did the agricultural work in the Native American villages.
In addition, Africans had to endure the terrible heat, there was little or no food provided. They were subjected to diseases that quickly spread among slaves, and many died due to unsanitary conditions. Most of the time, the sick were thrown overboard to avoid infecting others. One writer describes the terrible conditions that African slaves had to endure, “In the voyage, one of every three Africans died from dysentery, smallpox, or suffocation and was thrown overboard to the sharks, who reportedly followed the slave ships from the coast of Africa all the way to the New World.”