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VIRGINIA COMPANY OF LONDON

Official Investment Report

As an investor in the Virginia Company of London, please give a critical assessment of each time period in the Jamestown settlement. Based

upon your findings please provide a final assessment of your investment in Jamestown. Do the risks outweigh the benefits or do the

benefits outweigh the risks?

1607 – ARRIVALRisks

Benefits

1609 – STARVING TIMERisks

Benefits

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1612 – ECONOMIC GROWTHRisks

Benefits

1619 – REFORMSRisks

Benefits

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In the first year of settlement, 70 out of 108 settlers died. Mortality rate of ____%

In the next year, 500 settlers arrive. By the winter, 440 settlers died.

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Mortality rate of ____%

Between 1619 and 1622, 3,600 settlers go to

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Jamestown. 3,000 would die. Mortality rate of ___%

The first settlement had a hundred persons, who had one small ladle of barley per meal. When more people arrived, there was even less food. Many of the people lived in cave like holes dug in the ground, and in the winter of 1609-1610, they were:

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Driven through insufferable hunger to eat those things which nature most abhorred, the flesh and excrement of man. [They also ate] an Indian, digged by some out of his grave after he had lain buried three days and wholly devoured him. Others, envying the better state of body of any one which hunger has not yet so much wasted as their own, lay wait and threatened to kill and eat them. One among them slew his wife as she slept in his bosom, cut her in pieces, salted her and fed upon her till all that remained was her head.

Excerpt from A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

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Our men were destroyed with cruel diseases--as swellings, fluxes,

burning fevers--and by wars, and some departed suddenly; but, for

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the most part, they died of mere famine. There were never

Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as we were in this

new-discovered Virginia. We watched every three nights, lying

on the bare, cold ground, what weather so ever came; warded all the next day; which brought our men to be most feeble wretches. Our food was but a small can of

barley, sod in water, to five men a day; our drinke, cold water taken out of the river, which was at a

flood very salt, at a low tide full of slime and filth; which was the

destruction of many of our men…

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Jamestown settler George Percy, 1607

In 1612, a Dutch ship sold 20 African slaves to colonists at Jamestown.

This was the beginning of slavery in the American colonies.

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Jamestown and Virginia had an abundance of land but a

shortage of settlersThe headright system gave

land to Virginians who brought more settlers to Jamestown. A

headright was equal to 50 acres of land, and for each emigrant a colonist brought

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over, they would get two headrights.

The first elected representative body in a

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colony was created, the House of Burgesses

This group could make laws for Jamestown and everybody had a voice in

government

John Rolfe introduced tobacco cultivation into

Jamestown.

Soon, Jamestown tobacco became popular, and since all tobacco sold

had to be sold through

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London, the crop brought great wealth for both

Jamestown and the mother country.

“You see that power now rests wholly with me… you must now obey

this law…He that will not work shall not eat.”

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After the winter of 1607-08, only 30 out of the original 150 remained

alive so Captain John Smith forced the colonists to work, and developed

a relationship with the Powhatan Indians.

Women Arrive in Jamestown – 1612

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Fort built in 1609 in Jamestown

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Upon the arrival in Jamestown, local native engage the European settlers

in bloody fights.

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1607

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1609

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1612

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1619

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FINAL ASSESSMENT – Is it worth investing in the settlement at Jamestown ? Please provide a detailed report back to the Virginia Company of London with your findings. Please be creative in your report and provide at least three reasons for your decision.

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