So Virginia became a microcosm of England: a small class of wealthy landowners sitting atop a mass of servants.
The invasion of the North American continent and its peoples began with the Spanish in 1565 at St. Augustine, Florida, then British in 1587 when the Plymouth Company established a settlement that they dubbed Roanoke in present-day North Carolina.
Massachusetts Bay Colony was a British settlement in Massachusetts in the 17th century. It was the most successful and profitable colony in New England.
In 1606 King James I of England granted a charter to the Virginia Company of London to colonize the American coast anywhere between parallels 34° and 41° north and another charter to the Plymouth Company to settle between 38° and 45° north. In 1607 the Virginia Company crossed the ocean and established Jamestown.
United ColoniesOn September 9, 1776, the Continental Congress formally declares the name of the new nation to be the “United States” of America. This replaced the term “United Colonies,” which had been in general use.
Up until the 1970s, these first Americans had a name: the Clovis peoples. They get their name from an ancient settlement discovered near Clovis, New Mexico, dated to over 11,000 years ago. And DNA suggests they are the direct ancestors of nearly 80 percent of all indigenous people in the Americas.
John Smith saved the colony from starvation. He told colonists that they must work in order to eat. John Rolfe had the colony plant and harvest tobacco, which became a cash crop and was sold to Europe.
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 Lost Colony of RoanokeIn 1587 a small colony was founded on an island off the eastern coast of North America. The settlement would have been the first permanent English colony in the New World, had the settlers not disappeared owing to unknown circumstances.
Five hundred years before Columbus, a daring band of Vikings led by Leif Eriksson set foot in North America and established a settlement.
Explorer Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) is known for his 1492 'discovery' of the New World of the Americas on board his ship Santa Maria.
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Native Americans lived as autonomous nations (also known as tribes) across the continent from present-day Alaska, across Canada, and throughout the lower 48 United States.
Before 1492, modern-day Mexico, most of Central America, and the southwestern United States comprised an area now known as Meso or Middle America.
1 Religious Freedom. Colonies such as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Maryland were settled primarily by people seeking religious freedom. ... 2 Economic Gain. In the Southern colonies, economic incentives often trumped religious intentions. ... 3 Avoiding Debtor's Prison. ... 4 Enslavement.
Explorer Christopher ColumbusExplorer Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) is known for his 1492 'discovery' of the New World of the Americas on board his ship Santa Maria.
Like the other European countries, England was motivated in part by the lure of both riches and the Northwest Passage. In 1606, King James I granted a charter to colonize Virginia to the Virginia Company of London, a joint-stock company of investors who believed there was a profit to be made.
Each episode of Crash Course contains about 10 minutes of content plus a brief time for the credits. Episodes are available for free on YouTube at the following playlist:
Each worksheet focuses on a single episode of Crash Course U.S. History and typically contains between 10 and 20 items for students to complete.
Time stamps are provided for each and every question to help students zero in on the answers.
You can pay a lot less for your Crash Course U.S. History worksheets if you buy them in a single bargain bundle! Just click the link below:
Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller, our script supervisor is Meredith Danko, the associate producer is Danica Johnson, the show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer and myself, and our graphics team is Thought Bubble.
So in the first year, half of the colonists died. Four hundred replacements came, but, by 1610, after a gruesome winter called "The Starving Time", the number of colonists had dwindled to sixty-five. And eventually word got out that the new world’s one-year survival rate was like twenty percent and it became harder to find new colonists. But 1618, a Virginia company hit upon a recruiting strategy called the headright system which offered fifty acres of land for each person that a settler paid to bring over, and this enabled the creation of a number of large estates which were mostly worked on and populated by indentured servants.