Chapter 2, Section 2 "The Americans"

An English soldier, explorer, and author.

King James I of England granted a charter to the Virginia Company. The company hoped to found a colony along the eastern shores of North America in territory explored earlier by Sir Walter Raleigh.

About 600 new colonies starting a new life in the colony, but the Powhatan began to kill the colonists’ livestock and destroy their farms. Finally 600 new colonists, only about 60 survived.

The first African laborers arrived in Virginia aboard a Dutch merchant ship in 1619.

In 1612, John Rolfe experimented by cross breeding tobacco from Brazil with a harsh strain of the weed that local Native Americans had grown for years. In 1620, colonists exported more than 1.5 million pounds of “brown gold” to England each year.

In 1624, James I, disgusted by the turmoil in Virginia, revoked the company’s charter and made Virginia a royal colony — one under direct control of the king.