In April 1606, King James I of England granted the London Company permission to colonize southern Virginia. On December 20, 1606, the London Company sent 100 settlers to Virginia on the Susan Constant, the Discovery, and the Godspeed. After a brutal journey of five months at sea, the settlers landed near Chesapeake Bay, Virginia. There they founded the Jamestown colony, named after the monarch that authorized the expedition. The voyage, however, was not the only difficult part of settling in the New World.
The settlers’ lack of a good leader caused many difficulties even from the beginning of the colony. Their most obvious error was choosing to settle in a marsh full of disease-bearing mosquitos. When the settlers arrived in Virginia, it was too late in the year to plant anything. It was already early summer and anything they might grow would not be fully ripened by the fall. Another problem was that the majority of the settlers were gentlemen and their servants. They had no experience with agriculture or any other manual …show more content…
The Early Virginians tried to produce many things for trade with England, but tobacco, a small plant with a large profit, quickly gained popularity as the easiest way to make a fortune. Once they discovered the highly profitable plant, the colonists swiftly abandoned their search for gold and devoted themselves to the cultivation of tobacco. While it was despised by England and the London Company at first, the opposition was easily worn down when they noticed the amount of money being poured into the colony from the sale of tobacco. The tobacco market in Virginia boomed after John Rolfe brought the even more valuable tobacco of the West Indies to the colony in 1612. Almost all of the income from the export of tobacco went to the settlers themselves, which allowed them to obtain many things that simply could not be produced in the colony at the
The settlers’ lack of a good leader caused many difficulties even from the beginning of the colony. Their most obvious error was choosing to settle in a marsh full of disease-bearing mosquitos. When the settlers arrived in Virginia, it was too late in the year to plant anything. It was already early summer and anything they might grow would not be fully ripened by the fall. Another problem was that the majority of the settlers were gentlemen and their servants. They had no experience with agriculture or any other manual …show more content…
The Early Virginians tried to produce many things for trade with England, but tobacco, a small plant with a large profit, quickly gained popularity as the easiest way to make a fortune. Once they discovered the highly profitable plant, the colonists swiftly abandoned their search for gold and devoted themselves to the cultivation of tobacco. While it was despised by England and the London Company at first, the opposition was easily worn down when they noticed the amount of money being poured into the colony from the sale of tobacco. The tobacco market in Virginia boomed after John Rolfe brought the even more valuable tobacco of the West Indies to the colony in 1612. Almost all of the income from the export of tobacco went to the settlers themselves, which allowed them to obtain many things that simply could not be produced in the colony at the