The History of Virginia

Three ships' hulls sliced through the salty water of the Atlantic Ocean. On the port side of each, one of these names were painted: The Susan Constant, The Godspeed, and The Discovery. Among the three vessels, more than 100 English settlers made their way across the ocean to the New World.

On the 6^th of April in 1606, the Virginia Company of England, a joint-stock company, was given a Royal Charter that allowed them to create a settlement in North America. A year later, in 1607, three ships made their way to the New World with 104 passengers and landed in modern day Virginia. Captain Christopher Newport and Captain John Smith founded an area of land and named it Jamestown, after the current king of England, James I. Not only was Jamestown the first town in Virginia, but it was also the first permanent English settlement in North America.

The colonists were faced with a difficult life in Jamestown. Instead of the riches they had come searching for, they had trouble finding enough food to survive. With rigid winters, scarce food, and poor shelter, many of the colonists died. The entire colony might not have survived if Captain John Smith had not taken charge. He forced the colonists to farm, and managed to trade items with the Native Americans (such as guns and steel knives) in return for corn. Virginia was founded for wealth gain, but as the colonists struggled to survive in the New World, they were making no money for the people who had invested in the expedition.

The colonists saw that the Native Americans used wild tobacco in their pipes, so in 1612 John Rolfe introduced a mild variety of tobacco to Virginia. Because of the colony's mild climate, extensive rainfall, and rich soil, the tobacco flourished and grew into a large industry for the Virginia colony. There were no banks or money mints in the Virginian Colony, which made it difficult to use coins as currency. While barter was a common way to trade one item for another, tobacco became a type of currency. Debts were settled with tobacco, wages were paid in tobacco, slaves were purchased using tobacco. As the colony grew, so did the production of tobacco, until there was so much tobacco being sold that prices began to drop. A law was passed, in 1730, to control the quality and quantity of tobacco grown in Virginia. Before it was sold, the tobacco had to be inspected, to make sure it was up to standards before it could be shipped to England. This thriving economy became the main profit of the colony.

Growing tobacco was a difficult task. There were many small farms in Virginia that were run only by the family that owned it, but there were also many large-scale farms that were known as plantations. On these plantations, tobacco was planted as early as December. The season lasted about eight months, ending in August or September when the tobacco plants were cut and dried. As there were many jobs to be completed in a day's work on a plantation, reliable and inexpensive labor was needed. Early on, indentured servants, people who had agreed to work a certain amount of time in order to pay for their voyage to the New World, worked the fields. Unfortunately, this type of labor soon became scarce. Around 1640, African slaves were brought to Virginia. At first they were treated as indentured servants, though as time went by, they were treated more and more cruelly. The slaves mostly came from West and Central Africa and by 1776, forty-percent of Virginia's population was made of African Americans, both enslaved and free.

Representative government was an idea that had been accepted by England when King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta in1215. In Virginia they had their own form of representative government called the House of Burgesses. A burgess is another word for representative. The Virginia Company allowed the colonists to elect their own burgesses from the white men who owned land. Women and African Americans, free or enslaved, were not considered part of the government. Modeled after Parliament, The House of Burgesses voted on laws for the colonists of Virginia.

Out of the 8,500 settlers that had been sent to England by the Virginia Company over the course of a few years, only 1218 were left by 1624. Some had gone back to England, but the majority had died of starvation, new diseases, and attacks from the Native Americans. As more settlers were sent to Virginia, the settlers increasingly claimed the land inland, which belonged to the native Americans. This lead to a revolt by the Powhatan Confederation in 1622. The Native Americans attacked the settlers, killing 347 people. In 1624, the Virginia Company lost its charter and was accused of mismanaging the colony, causing Virginia to be turned into the first royal colony of North America. The King of England, James I, made the Anglican Church the official religion of the colony, and appointed a governor and council. He allowed the House of Burgesses to remain in action, but the laws had to receive royal approval before they could be passed.

Today, in 2007, Virginia has grown and changed in many ways. Instead of having a population of 691,737 people (as it did in 1790), it now has an estimated population of 7,642,884. Slavery no longer exists and soy beans have surpassed tobacco as the number one crop. The combination of fertile soil, mild weather, diverse landscape, and historic value has attracted people in the past and still manages be a popular destination in modern time.