What was the economy of Jamestown based on?

Answer 1

Jamestown started out with a charter, meaning that a company in this case The London Company owned them. In the first year they did not establish agriculture or a village because they were too busy looking for gold. John Smith helped to bring settlement to the colony. Tobacco ended up being their choice of agriculture and trade made possible by John Rolfe, who married Pocohontas who later changed her name to Rebeka. In 1624 the colony went bankrupt and the king of England had to take it over as a royal colony.

Answer 2

The early 1600's was a destitute period in England. Not only were they at the mercy of the Danish Armada, they were also inclined to give an unconditional surrender in the battle of Dalmatia in 1603. The Lichtenstein Royal Militia was also on the verge of invading, and a decade long drought considerably reduced the growth of blueberries, the main crop of England at the time. These troubling events led one historian to conclude that England in the early 1600's, "sucked."

Answer 3

Settlers arrived at Jamestown, Virginia on May 14 1607. It soon became apparent why the Virginia Indians did not occupy the site, and the inhospitable conditions severely challenged the settlers.

Jamestown Island is a swampy area, and furthermore, it was isolated from most potential hunting game such as deer and bears which like to forage over much larger areas. The settlers quickly hunted and killed off all the large and smaller game that was to be found on the tiny peninsula. The low, marshy area was infested with mosquitoes and other airborne pests, and the brackish water of the tidal James River was not a good source of water.

The settlers who came over on the initial three ships were not well-equipped for the life they found in Jamestown. In addition to the "gentlemen", who were not accustomed to manual or skilled labor, they consisted mainly of English farmers and "Eight Dutchmen and Poles" hired in Royal Prussia. Many suffered from saltwater poisoning which led to infection, fevers and dysentery. As a result of these conditions, most of the early settlers died of disease and starvation.

Despite the immediate area of Jamestown being uninhabited, the settlers were attacked less than a fortnight after their arrival (on May 14 1607), by Paspahegh Indians who succeeded in killing one of the settlers and wounding eleven more. By June 15, the settlers finished the initial triangle James Fort. A week later, Newport sailed back for London on the Susan Constant with a load of pyrite ("fools' gold") and other supposedly precious minerals, leaving the tiny Discovery behind for the use of the colonists. Newport returned twice from England with additional supplies in the following 18 months, leading what were termed the First and Second Supply missions.

What became known as the "Starving Time" in the Virginia Colony occurred during the winter of 1609-10. Only 60 of 214 English colonists survived.

The colonists, the first group of whom had originally arrived at Jamestown on May 14, 1607, had never planned to grow all of their own food. Instead, their plans also depended upon trade with the local Virginia Indians to supply them with enough food between the arrival of periodic supply ships from England, upon which they also relied.

This period of extreme hardship for the colonists began in 1609 with a drought which caused their already limited farming activities to produce even fewer crops than usual. Then, there were problems with both of their other sources for food.

An unexpected delay occurred during the Virginia Company of London's Third Supply mission from England due to a major hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. A large portion of the food and supplies had been aboard the new flagship of the Virginia Company, the Sea Venture which became shipwrecked at Bermuda and separated from the other ships, seven of which arrived at the colony with even more new colonists to feed, and few supplies, most of which had been aboard the larger flagship.

The impending hardship was further compounded by the loss of their most skillful leader in dealing with the Powhatan Confederacy in trading for food: Captain John Smith. He became injured in August of 1609 in a gunpowder accident, and was forced to return to England for medical attention in October 1609. After Smith left, Chief Powhatan severely curtailed trading with the colonists for food. Neither the missing Sea Venture nor any other supply ship arrived as winter set upon the inhabitants of the young colony in late 1609.

When the survivors of the shipwreck of the Third Supply mission's flagship Sea Venture finally arrived at Jamestown the following May 23 in two makeshift ships they had constructed while stranded on Bermuda for nine months, they found fewer than 100 colonists still alive, and many of those were sick. Worse yet, the Bermuda survivors had brought few supplies and only a small amount of food with them, expecting to find a thriving colony at Jamestown.

By 1611, a majority of the colonists who had arrived at the Jamestown settlement had died and its economic value was negligible with no active exports to England and very little internal economic activity. Only financial incentives including a promise of more land to the west from King James I to investors financing the new colony kept the project afloat.

John Rolfe began successfully exporting tobacco crops in 1612. Soon almost all other colonists followed suit, as windfall profits in tobacco briefly lent Jamestown something like a gold rush atmosphere.

Among others, Rolfe quickly became both a wealthy and prominent man. He married the young Virginia Indian woman Pocahontas on April 24, 1614.

Answer 4

Mainly agricultural, with a few merchants and artisans.

Answer 5

plantation agriculture

Answer 6

mostly tobacco