They were wealthy planters, merchants, ministers, royal officals, successful lawers, and some artisans. How could people move up in the social class? People could move up by owning land and by owning slaves.

The New England colonies had rocky soil, which was not suited to plantation farming, so the New England colonies depended on fishing, lumbering, and subsistence farming. The Middle colonies also featured mixed economies, including farming and merchant shipping.

The Middle Colony was known as the “breadbasket” because its top export is grain.

The most important factor that determined which class a person belonged to in America was wealth. The people that you might mix with, as in Europe, was also initially determined by class, education, family background (power and influence) and social standing.

gentry

New data now allow conjectures on the levels of real and nominal incomes in the thirteen American colonies. New England was the poorest region, and the South was the richest.

The first settlers at the English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia hoped to forge new lives away from England―but life in the early 1600s at Jamestown consisted mainly of danger, hardship, disease and death. The Powhatan’s reception of the settlers was mixed―some welcomed them, while others assaulted them.

b.In the Background Essay you will find that the dates of the first five years of settlement in Jamestown is 1607 to 1612. 2. Look at the years 1580 to 1640. During which period did Jamestown suffer its longest unbroken period of drought?

They also hoped to find a Northwest Passage or sail- ing route to the Orient for trade. Other motives, as expressed by the Virginia Company’s first charter, were to prevent the spread of Spanish colonies, to spread Protestant Christianity (and limit Spanish Catholicism), and to convert the Virginia Indians.

One advantage of Jamestown was that its location was far enough up the James River that it was easily defended from attack from Spanish ships. Spanish attacks had ravaged English settlements before, and Jamestown was intended in part to serve as a strategic barrier to Spanish expansion up the east coast.

100 years

“The starving time” was the winter of 1609-1610, when food shortages, fractured leadership, and a siege by Powhatan Indian warriors killed two of every three colonists at James Fort. From its beginning, the colony struggled to maintaining a food supply.

Jamestown was intended to become the core of a long-term settlement effort, creating new wealth for the London investors and recreating English society in North America. The colonists arrived at Jamestown after a 4-month journey from London.

Those tobacco seeds became the seeds of a huge economic empire. By 1630, over a million and a half pounds of tobacco were being exported from Jamestown every year. The tobacco economy rapidly began to shape the society and development of the colony.

Tobacco formed the basis of the colony’s economy: it was used to purchase the indentured servants and slaves to cultivate it, to pay local taxes and tithes, and to buy manufactured goods from England.

Tobacco farming saved Jamestown, ensuring its economic success by becoming the colony’s cash crop.