Early Jamestown Colonies

Jamestown, Virginia was the first colony to be founded. All the known British colonies especially those which were located in the South American region were put into two major regions, Chesapeake colonies, which held the famous Maryland as well as Virginia. There were also the southern colonies which included Georgia and the North and South Carolina. Setting up of camp in Maryland was due to the need of seeking a safe haven for the English Catholics who were the subject of unending persecution back home in England.
St. Mary’s which would become the first settlement was planted by Lord Baltimore in 1634 in Chesapeake Bay (Roark 63). This charter gave Lord Baltimore great authority which enabled him to make laws, develop and create his own courts, hold people captive and grant huge feudal manors. In the beginning the estates were owned purely by catho.ics who had protestants as their servants and Baltimore realized that giving the colonialists a say in the government and offering them some small farms would attract settlers. …show more content…
All these plans became highly unsuccessful once the settlers settled and it took about two decades until they found a staple crop which was rice and in the years around 1690s became a prime export for the colony (Roark 68). This was the major reason why the colonists from Carolina started buying slaves from West Africa who had quite an amount of experience in the cultivation of rice. North and South Carolina also produced other products such as tar, resin and lumber for ships due to the presence of the large dense forests. They also produced indigo which is a blue dye obtained from native plants and was us for coloring