Study sheet: English Colonization of Virginia and Massachusetts

📋 Course Outline

1. England Becomes a Colonial Power
2. Jamestown and Virginia’s Early Development
3. Virginia’s Colonial Society
4. Puritans and the Plymouth Settlement
5. Virginia and Plymouth Compared
6. Settlers and Native American Societies

📅 Key Dates

1. 1588The defeat of the Spanish Armada strengthened England’s position at sea and contributed to its emergence as a colonial power
2. 1607The Virginia Company founded Jamestown in Virginia
3. November 1620The Mayflower reached Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts
4. 1644Native Americans were banned from Jamestown on pain of death after attacks in 1622 and 1644

📖 1. England Becomes a Colonial Power

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Royal charter : a document issued by a sovereign granting rights to a particular person or group of people

📝 Essential Points

• The Virginia Company was a joint-stock company responsible for establishing an English colony in North America.

💡 Memory Hook

The defeat of the Spanish Armada strengthened England at sea, enabling colonial expansion.

📖 2. Jamestown and Virginia’s Early Development

📝 Essential Points

• Jamestown’s early settlers faced disease, hunger, and difficult living conditions, and by 1619, 80% of the original immigrants had died from disease and starvation.

• The Virginia Company abandoned its search for gold and began cultivating tobacco, which became an important source of wealth for the colony.

💡 Memory Hook

Charter → Jamestown → hardship → tobacco

📖 3. Virginia’s Colonial Society

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Indentured servants : poor people who agreed to work for a certain number of years for the person who had paid for their passage to Virginia, allowing them to pay off their debt
• House of Burgesses : an elected assembly that governed the Virginia colony

📝 Essential Points

📌 Under the Headright policy, each person who paid for their passage to Virginia was awarded 50 acres of land.

💡 Memory Hook

Company settlement versus organized society

📖 4. Puritans and the Plymouth Settlement

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Puritans : religious dissenters who believed that the Church of England was corrupt
• Mayflower Compact : an agreement to create and obey just and equal laws enacted by a government chosen by the community

💡 Memory Hook

Puritans → Mayflower → Plymouth → Compact

📖 5. Virginia and Plymouth Compared

📝 Essential Points

• In Plymouth, all male members of the church could vote, whereas in Virginia political participation was more closely connected to property ownership.

• Plymouth distributed land through village elders, whereas Virginia used the Headright system.

• Plymouth’s economy was based mainly on small-scale farming and trade, whereas Virginia developed large plantations.

💡 Memory Hook

Property-based Virginia versus church-based Plymouth participation

📖 6. Settlers and Native American Societies

📝 Essential Points

• European colonization contributed to the depletion of natural resources, particularly forests and hunting game, and made Native American communities increasingly dependent on trade with European settlers.

📌 Relations between English settlers and Native Americans included both trade and cooperation and conflict and warfare.

📌 The Pocahontas story and the Thanksgiving story became symbols of American history, but both are considered partly mythical narratives that simplify violent and complex relations between settlers and Native Americans.

💡 Memory Hook

Trade and cooperation existed alongside conflict and warfare

📊 Synthesis Tables

Virginia and Plymouth

Dimension	Virginia	Plymouth
Political participation	More closely connected to property ownership	All male church members could vote
Land distribution	Headright system	Village elders
Economy	Large plantations	Small-scale farming and trade