Word: englands
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...anyone's venture is special to him. And the England of James I and his predecessor, Elizabeth I, suffered from overpopulation and poverty. Pushing people into other lands could solve both problems and even have a side benefit. As the Rev. Richard Hakluyt, England's premier geographer, put it, "Valiant youths rusting [from] lack of employment" would flourish in America and produce goods and crops that would enrich their homeland. The notion was so prevalent that it inspired a blowhard character in the 1605 play Eastward Ho! to declare that all Virginia colonists had chamber pots of "pure gold...
...that the Chesapeake was baked by drought during the first seven years of the colony. This meant they were dependent on bartering or seizing supplies from local Indians, whose own stores were depleted. The settlers who died of disease or starvation had to be replaced by new settlers from England, who arrived once or twice a year (their ranks increasingly included women...
...became the "starving time." The colonists ate horses, dogs, cats, vermin, even (it was said) corpses. In June 1610 the survivors staggered onto their ships and sailed into the bay, either looking for help or intending to sail home. Help came with the arrival of three ships from England and new settlers. The shattered colony was put under strict martial law. The penalties for running away included shooting, hanging, burning and being broken on the wheel...
Jamestown also was the first place to find a cash cow and an economic system for exploiting it. The Powhatan smoked a crude indigenous species of tobacco. But in 1612, John Rolfe imported seeds of Nicotiana tabacum, the Spanish-American weed that was already a craze in England. By 1620 the colony had shipped almost 50,000 lbs. home. Fifty years later, Virginia and Maryland would ship 15 million lbs. Tobacco and foodstuffs were grown on privately owned farms. Beginning in 1618, old settlers were offered 100 acres of land, and newcomers who paid their way were given 50 acres...
After 2 1/2 years in Virginia, Smith returned to England, and the settlers told Pocahontas he was dead. About 14 at the time, her reaction speaks for itself: she banished all thought of the settlers, staying clear of Jamestown for the next four years. The English, though, weren't finished with her. In the spring of 1613, when Pocahontas was nearing 18, she was kidnapped by a colonist-sailor. Her father paid most of the ransom--a gaggle of English prisoners, guns and a boatload of corn--but the white men kept the girl just upriver from Jamestown. There...