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70 PERIOD 2 Colonial America amid Global Change: 1607–1754

to import enough indentured servants to do the work required in Virginia to keep its
cash-crop economy, based on tobacco cultivation, afloat. Too few English workers were
These sample pages are distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
willing to brave the risks to meet the company’s demands for labor. Even landless and
poor English commoners feared the prospects of death from starvation, disease, or con-
flicts with the Powhatan to volunteer.
General Assembly of Faced with unmet demand for more laborers, one Virginia Company solution was
Copyright (c) 2024 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Virginia the purchase and transport of convicts from English prisons to Virginia as indentured
Local governing body in servants. Another was to petition the crown for the right to establish a local govern-
Virginia established by the ing body. The hope was that this would aid recruiting efforts by fostering the idea that
Strictly for use with its products. NOT FOR REDISTRIBUTION.
English crown in 1619. Later, the Company honored the traditional rights of Englishmen in the colony. In 1619, King
the assembly was known as
the House of Burgesses. James granted Virginia permission to create a General Assembly of Virginia, which
was split later, in 1643, into two branches, the second of which was called the House
House of Burgesses of Burgesses. Its members could make laws and levy taxes, although the English gov-
Elected assembly within the ernor or the company council in London held veto power. Lastly, the company set out to
General Assembly of Virginia recruit more female settlers to increase the colony’s population.
formed in 1643 when the
assembly was split into two These tactics worked, and later that year, more young women and men arrived as
houses. The second house indentured servants. Also in 1619, an English ship brought twenty Africans, first taken
in the assembly was called from present-day Angola by the Portuguese, to Jamestown. These Africans were the first
the Council of State and was to be enslaved in colonial Virginia.
appointed by British Crown. Although the English colony still hugged the Atlantic coast, its expansion increased

veto conflict with native inhabitants. In March 1622, after repeated English incursions on
The right to block a decision land cleared and farmed by American Indians, Chief Opechancanough and his allies
made by a governing body. launched a surprise attack that killed nearly a third of the colonists. In retaliation,

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

Map of Virginia (1612) John Smith published a remarkably accurate map of Virginia in 1612.
It included major geographical features and the names of some 200 American Indian towns.
Smith placed a sketch of a Susquehannock warrior in the upper right-hand corner. At his
feet, Smith noted that the Susquehannock were “a Gyant-like people.”
How does this map express the hopes and fears of early English colonists in Virginia?

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