Land In Virginia example essay topic

1. (A) Reformation- a new complication arose in the early 1500's, when a powerful religious movement, the Reformation, brought bitter divisions to Europe. During the Reformation, a new Christian faith, called Protestantism, developed in protest against what was seen as the corruption and inadequery of Catholic Church. Because the English were Protestant and the Irish were Catholic, the Reformation also heightened the conflict between the English and the Irish. (B) Joint Stock Company-They called the new village Jamestown in honor of their king, James I. The land itself they called Virginia, after their last ruler, Elizabeth, who had never married and bore the title Virgin Queen.

The 104 adventures who started the colony were shareholders in the Virginia Company, a joint stock company established in London in 1606. Investors, or shareholders, who each contributed money to the cots of an enterprise, and expected a share of profit, organized joint stock companies like the Virginia Company. Most of the investors in Virginia Company remained in England. But young men could earn a share by simply paying their way to Virginia. At first the colony was made up exclusively of men; women and children eventually followed. (C) Indentured Servants- To produce tobacco, planters needed people to work the fields.

During the first sixty years after the founding of the colony, they turned primarily to indentured servants from England. These were people who had to work for a master for a period of time, usually seven years, under a contract called an indenture. In return for their work, their master paid the cost of their voyage to Virginia and gave them food and shelter. Some indentures promised a piece of land to the servant at the end of the indentured period. Historians estimate that between 100,000 and 150,000 men and women came as servants to work in the fields of Virginia and Maryland during the 1600's Most of them were eighteen to twenty-two years of age, unmarried, and poor. Few of the indentured servants lived long enough to claim their land at the end of their service.

Exposure to the climate and diseases of the Chesapeake Bay killed them in horrendous numbers. (D) Enclosure Movement- Land owners had found that they could make more money from raising livestock than they could collect rent from tenant farmers. The landowners forced their tenants to leave and turned fields into pasture, or enclosed them. Many people in Europe lost their homes as a result of this enclosure movement.

Thus, England was swarming with young people in search of food and work. Called, master less men and women because they had no master, or employer, they had few other choices besides signing indentures to work for land in Virginia. 2. (A) Powhatan- Most of them recognized the authority of one powerful group, the Pamunkey people.

They particularly honored the Pamunkey leader, Powhatan. Paying him tribute- = a kind of tax-in skins, beads, and food. Within weeks of the first attack on the English, several Englishmen traveled to neighboring Native American villages to offer tribute of their own and to persuade the Native American that their intentions in settling in the area were good. Powhatan had every reason to distrust those intentions. The Spanish had captured Powhatan brother, Opechancanough, in the 1560's. Doubtless Opechancanough and Powhatan understood well that the settlement was a threat to their peoples way of life.

(B) John Smith- The Adventures had migrated to Virginia to become wealthy by living off the work of others. In Europe wealthy landowners did little physical work. When me who were or wanted to be gentlemen came to Virginia, their leader John Smith found it difficult to get them to work at all. Even when they were starving, many men simply refused to compromise their image of themselves as gentlemen by growing corn. In 1608 smith warned them: You must obey this now for a law, that he that will not work shall not eat for the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a hundred and fifty idle loiterers. 3.

The English based their pattern of conquest on their experiences in Ireland, the island nation off their western coast. For centuries, English rulers had been trying to assert control in this neighboring land, and the Irish people and steadily resisted. A new complication arose in the early 1500's, when a powerful religious movement, the Reformation, brought bitter divisions to Europe. During the Reformation, a new Christian faith, called Protestantism, developed in protest against what was seen as the corruption and inadequacy of Catholic Church. The English put down Irish resistance to this invasion with stern measures, repeatedly taking land away from the native Irish. During this colonizing effort, the English developed a harsh attitude toward conquered peoples.

In their experience, it was best to remake completely any cultured conquered. They did not practice the forced blending of European and Native American societies that was taking place across the Atlantic in the colonies of the Spanish. For the English, conquest would be allow nothing. This is one reason why people descended from Native Americans make up only a small part of the population of the United States today. 4.

In its first decade, starvation was common; the settlers even resorted to cannibalism. One particularly difficult period from October 1609 to March 1610 was remembered as the Starving Time. Disease, too struck the English hard. Because they lived near and drew their water from swamps and pools of standing water where disease-carrying mosquitoes bred, the colonists suffered from dysentery, typhus, and malaria. The Adventures had migrated to Virginia to become wealthy by living off the work of others.

5. In 1676 one planter, Nathaniel Bacon, raised an unauthorized force to drive the Native Americans farther west and take their land. He and his followers were frustrated because the best tobacco land had been already taken by the wealthy. The Virginia governor William Berkeley gathered an army to stop Bacon. When this happened, Bacon changed his plans and attacked Jamestown instead. In a manifesto, or statement of newly rich planters a cabal, or secret conspiracy, acting against the best interest of the public. 6.