This video details the disastrous early years of the Jamestown colony, exploring the critical errors in its founding, the composition of its colonists, and its governance structure. It highlights the struggles for survival, the impact of relations with the Powhatan Confederacy, and the extreme measures taken during the "Starving Time." The narrative concludes with the arrival of new settlers and reforms that would influence the development of representative democracy and capitalism in America.
This video details the disastrous early years of the Jamestown colony, exploring the critical errors in its founding, the composition of its colonists, and its governance structure. It highlights the struggles for survival, the impact of relations with the Powhatan Confederacy, and the extreme measures taken during the "Starving Time." The narrative concludes with the arrival of new settlers and reforms that would influence the development of representative democracy and capitalism in America.
Key takeaways:
In December of 1606, the Virginia Company of London sent 105 men and boys on three ships, the Susan Constant, Discovery, and Godspeed, across the Atlantic. After a five-month journey, they landed in America and established a colony they called Jamestown, after the king.
From the very beginning, it was an absolute disaster, with three major reasons contributing to this.
First, the most important rule in real estate: location, location, location. They set up their colony 50 miles up the Chesapeake Bay so that Spanish ships sailing along the coastline wouldn't see them. Where they actually landed is called an estuary, where the sea and freshwater meet. This means the water gets swished back and forth. Estuaries are not clean, and all the disgusting stuff they were doing in the river was just sitting there. It was already a hotbed for diseases, but being an estuary made it even worse. They were also drinking the saltwater, not realizing there was enough salt to taste it, but it still contained salt. As you know, you should not drink saltwater; it is bad for you. Being on the Chesapeake was just a lot of diseases, and they were making it worse.
The other reason the location was so bad is what Europeans always had going for them when they came to America: they would use Native American tribes against each other. Native American tribes were notoriously unorganized and individualistic and tribal, and they didn't have a central government. However, where the colonists landed, they actually had one of the most organized Native American groups in the Northeast: the Powhatan Confederacy. Powhatan's Confederacy was only about 20 miles away from where the colonists were, and it comprised 30 different tribes all organized under a leader named Powhatan. This was bad for the colonists because they couldn't play the tribes against each other.
At first, Powhatan's Confederacy saw the people who came and thought, "Well, it's all men, so they must be a war party." But then they didn't attack, so the Native Americans thought, "Huh, that's weird. They're not a war party. They couldn't be staying long because they don't have any women with them." They tried to trade, and what the colonists wanted was food supplies. What the Native Americans wanted from them was their weapons. It was illegal to sell them weapons, so the colonists could not sell the Native Americans what they wanted. From the very beginning, they did not have good relations.
One of the easiest ways they could have created good relationships was by marrying someone in the tribe. However, they did not believe that was permissible, as they believed they were racially superior. Back then, people were like that; thank goodness we've matured as people. So, they didn't marry into the tribes, and they constantly had a problem with the Native American tribe that was incredibly organized under Powhatan.
The second problem they had was the type of colonist they brought with them. If you're going to start a colony, you want people like blacksmiths, carpenters, people that have skills. That's not who they brought. They brought two types of people, and you have to know what was happening in England to understand this.
First, primogeniture. Primogeniture is a practice in England where everything goes to the firstborn son. All the family's wealth and everything goes to the firstborn child. That means there were a lot of second and thirdborn children from very wealthy families that did not have a lot of money and had to figure it out on their own. A lot of them became clergy or adventurers. So, some of the people they brought were adventurers from very rich families that did not know how to do basic tasks.
The second group of people they brought was because of something called enclosure in England. The big manors started enclosing their land. The land had been publicly used by everyone, and so everyone could have their sheep grazing. But the big wealthy landowners started enclosing their land, which forced a lot of very poor people out of the countryside because they could no longer be farmers. Because of enclosure, they started leaving the countryside and moving into the cities. So, the cities were riddled with poverty and crime, and the prisons were filling up. The other group of people they brought were prisoners.
It would be like if we were going to Mars and on the first spaceship we put Donald Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden, and then we went down to Huntsville and unloaded all the criminals from Huntsville and put them all on a ship. How long do you think they would survive? It would be a low-grade miracle if someone wasn't killed before they even left the ground. Those are the types of people they were bringing.
So, they had the problem of who they had with them.
The third major problem was governance. The way the colony was going to be governed was by a 13-man council in England. The original Virginia Company of London had 50 investors. Of those 50 investors, 13 of them were put on a council chosen by the king. The reason they let the king choose it is because they wanted to make sure everyone knew the king was involved in this process. So, the king picks 13 people from the 50, and they make all decisions for the colony. Now, they have no idea what it's like in Virginia, and also, just to get a message over there, it takes four or five months. In Virginia, it was governed by a 13-man council.
Also, they had the three ships they sent. They had been given a sealed envelope that said who the 13 men would be that would be governing them in Virginia, and that was appointed by the 13-man council in England. So, you have 13 people who are going to make all decisions. Now, if you are trying to survive, you do not want a 13-man council. If you've ever seen, you can't put five men in a room and their egos not get involved, and they just fight over what color the sky is. So, that's a disaster.
Also, all the colonists lived on that lived there, they got to share in the company's rations. So, it was a communal system, which is very un-capitalistic, but it was a recipe for disaster, and it was an absolute disaster. Within nine months of the original 105 people that sailed over, there were only 38 left, and it looked like the whole thing was going to collapse.
So, in this kind of situation, what do you need to survive? And this doesn't sit well with many people, but if you're in this kind of a situation where survival is of the utmost importance, you need a dictator. You need someone that's just going to take control and make the rules and decisions in an absolute crisis. That is what is called for. And luckily, they had John Smith.
Smith. Yes, the John Smith of Pocahontas fame. We'll come back to him. Smith was a 27-year-old adventurer. He was a hired gun or a hired sword, a mercenary. So, he would fight with whoever paid him. He fought with the British in the Netherlands, and he also was hired by the Austrians to fight in the Ottoman Empire. And by all accounts, he was a good warrior. When he was fighting the Ottoman Empire, he was captured and made a prisoner and a slave. He actually managed to overthrow the person that had enslaved him in the field, take his horse, and then ride all the way from the Ottoman Empire back to England.
The other thing to know about John Smith is he was a notorious braggart and a liar. But we do know that that was true about him escaping. When he got back to England, he just told everyone, "Hey, guess what I just did? You should have seen me. I was amazing. I just took the horse. I rode all the way back here. I'm pretty cool." He told so many people that some of the people who heard his story were on the 50 members of the Virginia Company of London, the investors in that joint-stock company. They said, "Hey, do you want to go on another adventure to America?" And he's like, "Yeah, sure."
He was such a perennial pain in the ass that on the trip over to America, he was actually imprisoned because he committed mutiny on the Godspeed, one of the three ships. The captain bound him, and they were planning on trying him and probably executing him when they landed. Well, they landed in America, and that third scroll that said who was going to be in charge, they were required to open it when they landed. They opened it, and it turns out John Smith was one of the 13 men that were going to be in charge of the colony. So, they had to unbind him, and I'm sure that was very awkward.
Luckily, Smith took control. Smith took control and said, "All right, I'm running this place the way it's supposed to be ran." And when he did, the colony actually managed to survive. It didn't thrive, but from 1607 to 1609, they managed to survive because he made all sorts of changes. He tried to have good relationships with the Powhatan Confederacy. He also instituted, most importantly, he instituted a very simple rule: "If you don't work, you don't eat." Because of that, they were able to survive for a few years, not thrive, but survive.
And then in 1609, disaster came. First and foremost, there was a drought that year, so they didn't manage to grow enough food to survive. Second, Powhatan's Confederacy. Powhatan decided he didn't want the Native Americans around, or he didn't want the Americans around, he didn't want the British around or white people. So, he told all of his tribes, "Do not trade with the white people." So, they didn't grow food, they weren't getting food from trade.
And the joint-stock company sent over seven ships with 400 new people. Those seven ships with 400 new people, they hit a storm on the way, and the storm made saltwater just take over the ships. So, all the supplies, all the food were ruined. So now you have seven ships with no food, no supplies, but 400 new mouths to feed.
And the final straw: John Smith was injured in a hunting accident. He was very much disliked because, you know, no one likes a dictator. On a hunting outing, his gunpowder exploded. You can't say for sure if it was someone that did it intentionally, but one can only imagine. And so John Smith was gone.
So, coming into the winter of 1609, there were 500 people. By that spring, there were only 60 people left. Some of them died because they tried to steal food. Some of them died because they tried to go live with the Native Americans and the Powhatan Confederacy, and they were killed. Most of them died just of starvation. They killed all the horses, all the cows, then they killed all the cats and the dogs, all the rats, mice. They got to the point of eating leather off of the shoes.
There was one guy who actually had a wife because some women had come over. He had his own little hut, and people started asking, "Hey, where's your wife? We haven't seen her in a while." He's like, "Oh, yeah, don't worry about her. She's not feeling well, so she's not coming out." And they also asked, "What's that smell of cooking meat that's coming from your little house?" It turns out he had killed his wife and cannibalized her. So, they put him to death, and then they cannibalized him because fair is fair. Things were so bad.
By the spring of 1610, those 60 survivors, they built themselves little rafts and were going to sail back to England. We're not talking about boats; we're talking about Tom Hanks Castaway-style rafts. They were so desperate that they were going to sail from America back to England on these little rafts. They would obviously not have survived. They were leaving on their little rafts when all of a sudden new ships came.
The new ships came, and they said, "Hey, where are you guys going?" They said, "We're leaving. We're going back to England." And they said, "No, come stay. We've got some good news." And the people said, "No, we're out of here." And they said, "Oh, we got food." And they said, "Okay, we'll come back." And those new ships with 150 new settlers and new food, they also came with reforms that would fundamentally change Virginia and are incredibly important to know for establishing the beginnings of representative democracy and capitalism in the United States.
