2a English Settler Colonies Motivations for Colonization and Early Gentleman's Adventures

0:04 okay welcome back today's lecture is the English settler colonies motivations for colonization and early gentleman's adventures as we saw in the prior lectures North America was not a uninhabited empty continent when Columbus first went there discovered it by accident but really because of the effects of the Columbian Exchange the Indian population would be decimated and the the population today in the United States are mostly descendants of not exclusively but largely descended from the English settler colony so we'll be focusing on those with the obvious obvious relevance for the United States

0:49 covering background and motivations for colonization necessary background in English politics and society and case studies early experience early experiments of colonization okay um delay in English colonization it was not until the late 16th century under Queen Elizabeth that the English finally began taking a serious interest in colonizing the new world as you would remember England's claim to the new world was based on John Cabot John Cabot slouch of 1497 but Cabot's contemporaries that Tudor Kings Henry the seventh and Henry the eighth they were prevented from

1:35 following up on these claims because of pressing domestic problems they could not establish colonies and these were tensions related to the English Reformation which we'll discuss in a later lecture the founding of the Church of England the breaking away from the Catholic Church and lingering tensions between Protestants and Catholics so in short because of these pressing domestic religious problems they could they did not have the resources and energy from establishing colonies in addition another factor preventing Elizabeth from colonizing the new world was her long-standing rival Spain and the tensions between Protestant England and Catholic Spain erupted into full-scale

2:22 war in 1585 so Elizabeth was somewhat hesitant to challenge Spain England was hesitant to challenging the virtual monopoly of Spain in the new world as you would remember Spain controlled Florida Mexico large parts of the Caribbean in South America as well as the French Empire in Canada however attitudes towards colonization begin to change under Elizabeth as the English discovered that the mid-atlantic seaboard region was a region neglected both by the Spanish and French and this region lay open to English colonization and had been effectively claimed by

3:09 Cabot in his voyage back in 1497 so they named this region on the Atlantic the Atlantic seaboard Virginia in honor of the Queen Queen Elizabeth a supposed adverse and the name Virginia applied to the entire Atlantic seaboard the coast between Florida and Acadia what is Nova Scotia these early colonies initially the English colonizers promoted get-rich-quick schemes they followed the extraction society model and these schemes included searches for gold mine gold mines on land and searches for Spanish treasure at see these

3:56 get-rich-quick schemes proved deadly fail failures and later the colonists turn to the slower more laborious development of plantations and cash crops like tobacco but strapped with limited funds the English crown followed this precedent of Spain by basically subtracting colonisation to private individuals and companies they sort of relied on private companies private individuals this was cheaper than financing colonization themselves so for the most part the Queen issued license and monopolies to private individuals mostly aristocratic individuals and companies who assumed the risk for and

4:43 financed colonization in hopes of profits stated otherwise they weren't directly official government ventures but sponsored by the primary form of private company to which Elizabeth granted monopolies and privileges was what we call the joint stock company the joint stop the joint stock company is similar to modern corporations it's a company whose stock is owned jointly and collectively by a large number of investors a joint stock company Merchants sold shares in joint stock companies the shares allowed investors to profit in proportion to their

5:29 investment and also spread the risk of investment widely if a company's venture would fail as a business organization the government usually granted the joint stock company a monopoly of trade with certain distant areas like a colony they enjoyed a monopoly of trade typically joint stock ventures assumed very high risk these expeditions were expensive to finance but the risk was diffused among many investors who could buy as many or as little shares as they wish so it's sort of like a corporation all shareholders would be eligible to attend shareholders meetings elect boards of directors sometimes own land in the colony and

6:14 examples of joint stock companies include the East India Company and the Virginia Company the very earliest promoters of English colonization though were not companies but a group of men aristocrats that we call the West Country men the very earliest promoters of English colonization were dreamers and gamblers visionary aristocrats from the southwestern counties of England will talk about this they were zealous English Patriots they were devout Protestants they were very anti Spanish anti-catholic Spain was England long term enemy and they wished to openly challenge Spain's dominance of

7:01 the new world so the prime movers of early colonization were politically well-connected gentlemen from the southwestern counties of England they were known collectively as the West countrymen while certainly not poor themselves this part of England like Cornwall and Devon these counties were relatively marginal it was poorer farmland and while these noble families were certainly not poor themselves they were not as wealthy or as influential as the nobility in other more central parts of England and as such their desires for colonization were an attempt to advance their own family fortunes make

7:49 themselves more powerful and increase their influence at court so just to demonstrate what I mean this is the home of Sir Walter Walter Raleigh they're by no means poor but not as grand as some of the other noble families in other parts of England the West Country men some of the names of the most important individuals in this group included Francis Drake Sir Walter Raleigh you see this spelled with and without the eye Sir Richard Grenville and Sir Humphrey Sir Humphrey Gilbert the theoretical spokesman for the movement were two men

8:36 both of the same name both based in London two cousins both was the same name Richard Holika there was Richard Calicut the the elder who was a lawyer and Richard halaqaat the young anger who was a clergyman an anglican priest the rep the west country men wanted to challenge spanish dominance in the new world and they regarded trade and the economic theory of mercantilism as the key to imperial power i'll explain where cantle ism in a second walter raleigh preached quote that he that commands the sea commands the trade that he that is lord of the trade of the

9:23 world is lord of the wealth of the world so there's this clear argument that trade controlling trade is central to being the most powerful world power richard halaqaat the younger the clergyman publicized many of these ideas he was their theoretical spokesman in a well-read pamphlet called a discourse concerning rap western planting it was published in 1584 this is a reprint so this was a very well read and influential pamphlet it was addressed to no less than the queen herself Halla could argued that colonies would allow england to have a favorable favorable balance of trade that england

10:11 could export more than an import not rely on other countries colonies would provide england with ready sources of raw material and agricultural commodities things that they were currently importing from Spanish territories like sugar for instance and likewise the colonies both English settlers and Native Americans the colonies would provide new markets for finished English goods industrial products as the other Halla could summarize the goals of these West's countrymen quote they wanted to plant Christian religion to traffic and by that they meant trade and to conquer to establish an empire the West Country men

10:57 were all strong believers in the economic theory of mercantilism and this is a theory that I need to Blayne now how lets us pamphlet really dealt with it and touched on it already so mercantilism it's not it's quite different than capitalism actually or cantle mercantilism was an economic theory that held that a country's wealth is generated by trade and that the overall measure of a country's wealth can be measured by the amount of gold and silver bullion in its Treasury trade is wealth and you wanted to have a lot of gold and silver in your country's Treasury Treasury how do you how do you

11:43 achieve this well through a favorable balance of trade a favorable balance of trade that is to say a country had to export more that it more than it import and you did not want to be reliant on other countries and it had to procure raw materials from its own territories or colonies you wanted to be economically self-sufficient and export more than you imported mercantilism it's really the opposite in many ways of free market capitalism because it favored government monopolies okay so a country part of mercantilism was that a country was to practice protection protectionism economic protectionism this came in the

12:29 form of granting government monopolies so a certain company would have a monopoly to trade a certain good so the government protectionism took shape in the form of yet granted government monopolies to private companies and issuing protective tariffs to promote domestic industry and goods protective tariffs are import tax import tax which are it's a tax placed on imports which is a tax designed to keep out foreign goods by making them more expensive so this also involved issuing protective tariffs to promote domestic industry and goods by making foreign goods more expensive so like I said it's not free

13:15 market capitalism um related to this here's another big idea of the West Country men but let me set it up this way oftentimes when we think about the American colonies our American history we associate America with a greater sense of freedom democracy opportunity than that available in Europe ironically the very early English colonies and the West Country men were about anything but that West Country promoters pitched a program of overseas colonization by appealing to a conservative fear conservative anxieties that the hierarchal Society of England was eroding from within so one

14:02 of the main things that they preached they wanted to preserve England to get traditional social hierarchy hierarchy is a society in which some people enjoy legal privileges over other it's a society in which inequality is part of the system so they wanted to preserve England's traditional social hierarchy or stated otherwise they wanted to preserve a vision of Old England England as it once was England where feudal noble noble men enjoyed hereditary privileges and rights and the lower orders would know their place I'll explain what all of this meant but that's the basic idea

14:48 colonization would also solve the growing problems in the sixteenth century of poverty crime and vagrancy vagrancy meaning homelessness and begging so in the view of men like Raleigh Sir Francis Drake or the hella Cutts Anglet needed needed to expand outward less it would collapse from within and its traditional societal structure would collapse in order to really understand this vision of Old England that colonization promoters were appealing to its this conservative vision we have to have an overview of English politics census xiety so let's look at the English

15:34 social structure 16th century England concentrated wealth and power at the top of a steep social pyramid in the hands of a monarch and aristocracy the monarch was usually a male but they did allow Queens to rule as an exception so less than 5% of the population the very top of the social pyramid was the monarchy and aristocracy they were less than 5% of the population the nobility displayed their wealth and power in elaborate city palaces in great country estates through fine clothing gilded carriages and armies of servants this is very

16:20 important to understand for the English nobility the aristocracy the basis of their wealth was ownership of land land ownership the income they derive from their land as rent or as agricultural proceeds land this would be very different in the in America where land was not not free but easier to come by cheaper more widely available and just would have a leveling effect so the basis of their wealth was land ownership however the fortunes of the aristocracy varied widely there was the high aristocracy Nobles who possessed high-level titles like Earl or Duke the high aristocracy and owned vast estates

17:06 I'm talking like entire counties 30,000 acres huge amounts of lands huge and no income at the bottom of the nobility the lesser aristocracy with more modest incomes with more modest incomes and smaller estates let's say thousand acres they were known as the gentry and these these Nobles either had no titles or only minor noble titles but they were considered quote unquote gentle or noble by virtue of the fact that they owned land and did not work that was what disdain wish them from the commoners so Gentry were lower level Nobles who own land but were not commoners usually without a

17:52 title it was these classes the aristocracy that traditionally cover in England one practice that motivated colonization for the aristocratic class was called primogeniture primogenitor disadvantage the second and third and fourth or fifth whatever sons of the nobility both high and lower gentry families from a gender means privileges of the firstborn privileges of the first one under the English law of primogenitor the eldest son of a noble family inherited his father's estate inherited his fortune inheritance land inherited his title they did this in

18:40 order to keep the family lands and wealth intact and also you know you could not split up a Duchy you could not split up a noble title you could not make two Earl's out of one they had to keep the estate the title together so simply put following the practice of primogenitor the eldest son inherited all the second sons the third son the fourth sons whatever they were out of luck and they did not inherit land or money and they had to come up with something else they had to go into careers in the army navy or Clergerie clergy f.y.i a few second sons entered trade or business but this was very

19:27 uncommon because it was considered undignified for gentlemen to work to dirty their hands with money or commerce so most entered respectable careers in the Army Navy or clergy becoming a priest so for these younger sons the new world was a place of opportunity rich in land where they could enjoy and exercise their traditional privileges and honors as Nobles right despite their birth order so that's part of what I was talking about restoring this traditional social order giving second son's a chance below the nobility on the social scale it's the whole rest of the period pyramid 95% of the population were the commoners commoners included what we would think of as the

20:12 middle class as well as the lower classes of course they didn't use these terms middle class and lower class this is about 95 percent of the population commoners were very diverse there were wealthy merchants elites in the urban centers wealthy urban merchants some as rich as the nobility there were the middle orders this was this what we would call the middle class so educated professions a mix of doctors lawyers artisans shopkeepers and farmers and finally there were the lower orders the lower orders most commoners lacked property and they belong to the lower

20:59 order so the lower orders lower orders were commoners without property the lower orders were a combination of working poor poor who worked but also vagrants and beggars people without a home who begged the working poor would have included various type of various types of laborers who did not own land like urban late laborers urban laborers who didn't practice a skilled trade skilled tradesmen would have belonged to the middling orders these are people who are working purely from you know their brawn their manpower so the working poor would have included urban laborers or rural peasants like tenant farmers who

21:45 did not own their own land but rented land during these years crime and vagrancy homelessness of the poor and begging became major problems as the lower classes were economically squeezed and we'll look at the details in just a second politically the political structure of England the executive power belonged to the monarch usually a king but sometimes unlike the authoritarian kingdoms of France and Spain Queen Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth was obliged to share power with the aristocracy and Gentry who were represented in a two-house legislature known as Parliament the story of

22:30 Parliament this department is a very long one the English Parliament emerged out of the Kings old feudal council and traditionally it was charged with giving advice and petitions to the king on behalf of the quote/unquote nation now it's critical to note that for a very long time in English history the nation was defined as the noble class critically at the time we're talking about now time with Elizabeth the Parliament does not yet have the full power to make laws the power to make laws really only comes at the end of the 17th century after the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution now you don't

23:16 need to know all that you should know that it does not yet have lawmaking powers fully but it did have two crucial powers that you should know it had the power of the purse that is the power to approve taxation the Kings taxes and it also had the power of consent it had the power to approve give consent to the Kings laws and give advice advice as I mentioned there were two houses in the parliament House of Lords House of Commons by birthright the high aristocracy served in the House of Lords membership was errata Terry it was the more prestigious house the lesser no nobility the gentry dominated the House of Commons and the members of the Commons were chosen through election

24:03 however at this time only about 25 percent of the adult male population could vote voting rights were built on the idea of a property franchise okay so in order to vote you had to own a certain amount of property and without being tedious at this time in the time of Elizabeth it was only about 25% of the adult male population now the property franchise the reasoning was that if you owned a certain amount of property this presumed that you had a certain level of education responsibilities etc it would not be until the three voting reforms Acts of the 19th century that Britain would achieve universal male suffrage

24:50 meaning all men could vote and the middle and working classes could vote - at this time basically voting is limited to the gentry and aristocracy so although a narrow system of government by our Democratic standards the English government and English Constitution was remarkably democratic remarkably progressive remarkably libertarian when we compared it to the rest of Europe at the time the rest of Europe was ruled by absolute authoritarian monarchies whether we're talking Spain France Germany Austria and basically in the rest of Europe there was very little chance for political participation so England was not fully democratic but there were much greater opportunities

25:38 for political participation than in the rest of Europe and the nobility and Gentry had some say in government the English Constitution was also an unwritten Constitution largely based on precedent but we don't really have this time for this in any case very important to the future political culture of the United States it's important that England and not authoritarian France or Spain settled the new world with these relatively liberal traditions ok the next topic is the squeezing of the lower orders the lower the lower orders the commoners the lower commoners got poorer during this period colonization

26:24 promoters appealed to the growing problems of crime the vagrancy homelessness unemployment that we're becoming really big during the time of Elizabeth this all related to the squeezing of the lower orders that were increasingly poor increasingly disadvantaged in the 16th century during the 16th century the the English lower orders grew in number but also group poorer there was a huge population surge economic growth failed to keep pace with a huge population surge surge the population of England was 3 million in 1500 by 1600 it was 4 million and by 1650 it was 5 million

27:12 this is a big growth for a very small country at the same time wages decreased an unemployment surged with this population increase there was more competition for jobs one cause of this economic stagnation was in the country's leading manufacturing sector the cloth industry so there was economic stagnation and particularly in the cloth industry which was the country's leading manufacturing sector which caused unemployment now what I'm referring to the cough cloth industry I'm not referring to production in factories with steam power I'm referring to handlooms one really big thing that

28:02 disadvantaged the lower orders the lower classes what's something called in closer so one cause of the squeezing of the lower orders was enclosure and need to explain this so most English people 80% of Englishmen live in country villages and tended livestock and farmed plants at the beginning of the 16th century the large aristocratic estates that had evolved from the old medieval manors large aristocratic estates at the beginning of the sixteenth century were worked by tenant farmers and small holders so tenant farmers were farmers who rented the land from Nobles they

28:48 were tenants and small holders were peasant it's commoners who owned a very small plot themselves they held it themselves um both of these groups had access to common lands for grazing and pastoring livestock and they also had access to certain wood in areas where they could gather wood herbs hunt small game and sometimes fish however in the sixteenth century in an effort to make the estate's more productive more rational more modern aristocratic landlords adopted a program known as enclosure in enclosure large tracts of land were fenced in they were enclosed with fences and divided into a more rational field of

29:35 grids bordered by stone walls hedges and fences so fencing in previously open lands this enclosure movement also involved taking over the formerly common lands and the formerly common land so the peasants no longer have access to these Commons to graze pasture their sheep or cattle it also involved consolidating previously scattered fields into rational compact property so to picture the holdings of a landlord sort of being scattered all about in sort of random randomly shaped little fields at fields and patches and they're being consolidated into more rationally shaped blocks what was the new system

30:21 like well more rational enclosed fence enclosed fields but it involved a number of things rather than the large numbers of tenant farmers and small holders in the old system the new and closed system favored flocks of sheep sheep herding which was more profitable and used for the woolen industry and it favored not using small holders or tenant farmers but hired laborers to work the Lord's land not people that lived there and a much smaller number of tenant farmers so the new system favored sheep herding hired laborers and much smaller numbers

31:07 of tenant farmer the result was a very profound thing we have a creation of a new class of people called sturdy beggars I'll explain that in a second but the result was the displacement and unemployment of the small tenant farmers and small holders enclosure forced them off of the land enclosure rendered homeless and miserable thousands of peasants and laborers these people that the tenant farmers and small holders thousands of peasants and laborers who were displaced from the lands probably about half of the rural peasantry lost their lands between 1530 and 1630 as it was said in the time enclosure

31:54 makes enclosure makes fat beasts and lean poor people so it made the poor people poor just to clarify enclosure was not all bad it increased agricultural productivity it made the farms more rational it increased England's national wealth and actually enclosure it made the farms a lot more productive they were producing more food and it actually fuelled this population surge but at the cost of this class it created a new class of people the displace small tenant farmers became known as sturdy beggars a sturdy beggar was someone who was physically able to do do work but they could not find work and were forced to beg so Oh sort of like a respectable beggar someone who

32:42 could work but couldn't find it so let's talk now about the social effects of enclosure and how that was related how all of these things were related to colonization attempts here's a depiction of a sturdy beggar the former 10 farmers now became known as sturdy beggars the name was to distinguish themselves from the less respectable sort of beggar thought to be beggars because of illnesses ailments or like alcoholism so these new class of sturdy beggars displaced farmers from the old Royal rural villages flocked to the cities they joined the swelling ranks of

33:29 unemployed vagrants who roamed the country in search of work or charitable handouts when they came when they became desperate many of these sturdy beggars resorted to theft and theft at the time was a serious capital crime punishable by execution and some even died at the gallows most of these sturdy beggars that the ex tenant farmers gravitated to market towns or big seaport cities particularly London shown here which really became a den of filth and squalor London its population surged during this period its population in 1500 was about 120,000 by

34:16 1650 it was just just short of a half million about four hundred thousand London particularly the poorer slums London became notorious for crime filth plagues alcoholism pollution fires you might know about the Great Fire of London and executions just on a side note some of you might know that Jamestown the English colony of Jamestown was notoriously located on a bad location where the colonists drank brackish saltwater which was polluted it polluted the wells and often the water was polluted with their own excrement in all

35:02 seriousness though I have his herd historians joke that this water at Jamestown was probably better than London's polluted waters let's look at some of the other factors related to this growing numbers of unemployed also reduced the wages that employers paid there was competition for jobs meaning that people were will to work for less and employers could get away with paying them less at the same time the growing population the growing population this population surge going back to this also drove up the cost of food and housing the double squeeze the

35:48 growing population and unemployment cut real wages in half between 1500 and 1650 real wages means like the real cost of living what could your wages actually buy this cut in real wages what your money was actually worth further depress the living conditions of the poor well part of the problem was that during this time the prices of finished goods and products rose at a much higher rate than the prices of agricultural Goods which further depress the buying power of the poor so the overall problems that we see are crime vagrancy homelessness Ness and unemployment so in other words these former tenant farmers became sturdy

36:35 sturdy bed beggars vagrants people who were unemployed and homeless even the people who were well off the property classes the middle and upper classes were also burdened by this new class of poor vagrants why well poor relief what we would call welfare poor relief was provided by taxes that were levied on the property classes and the property classes were burdened and resented these new taxes many people long for stable society the old England and to end all of these the surge of crime and longing for a stable society parliament

37:21 authorized local authorities to whip brand with hot ions even hang vagrants when they proved problematic and troublesome so this was nothing less than a social crisis all of these all of these issues here the increased pavan poverty vagrancy crime and unemployment alarmed the propertied and middle class says the property classes feared a collapse into violence and chaos chaos it was precisely these tensions that West Country men played on with their appeals going back to our old slide to preserving England's traditional social hierarchy we wanted to preserve this traditional social pyramid so what their

38:09 appeals to preserving social hierarchy the Old England the the colonizers promised a quick solution to poverty to poverty poverty and vagrancy colonial promoters like Holika addressing England's middle and upper classes colonial promoters announced that they had an easy solution for England's social crisis these crimes here poverty a crime and vagrancy and this solution would preserve the old England that everyone loves England's idle and criminal poor the sturdy beggars would be exported to a new colony in Virginia there these

38:55 beggars would be put to work raising commodities providing raw materials that would increase England's favorable balance of trade moreover not only with the colonies provide new sources of raw materials the colonies also would provide new markets places to sell thing it finished English goods industrial goods that would help for instance England's that would help revive England's depressed cloth industry for instance at the same time the colonial promoters appealed to the second sons of the nobility eager for adventure and opportunity so I think this is all necessary to know to really understand the early attempts at colonisation if

39:41 you know anything about early attempts at colonization the experiments at Roanoke and Jamestown you would know that the colonists there were a very odd motley crew they were an odd mix of gentlemen gentlemen at criminals beggars social outcasts and there were very odd social dynamics and tensions none of these people were conditioned to work okay um so what was Elizabeth policy well initially and did she answer the call of people like the West Country men initially Queen Elizabeth was hesitant to answer the calls of halaqaat and the West Country men she didn't want to provoke a war

40:27 with Spain no she preferred to challenge Spain not directly but more indirectly unofficially not through actual conversation but actually through piracy or private tearing through piracy which is a way that required minimal government investment so the forerunner of active government support for colonization was its policy of supporting the so called sea dogs sea dogs were government-sponsored English pirates basically the sea dogs were Speight state-sponsored English pirates technically we can call them privateer privateers a privateer is a pirate but a

41:13 pirate authorized by the government so the sea dogs were state-sponsored Ingrid English privateers charged with capturing Spanish treasure the English privateers received state support in the form of government licenses that authorized these captains to attack and capture enemy vessels the great ler for the English Sea Dogs was capturing Spanish treasure capturing the convoy of Spanish galleons Spanish ships carrying gold and silver from the New World to Spain so they tried to capture these treasure ships the most famous of the English Sea Dogs was Sir Francis Drake who did many things from 1577 to 1580

42:01 Drake famously completed a circumnavigation of the globe he navigated the whole way around the globe and he stole in time almost a million pounds in Spanish treasure the voyage at the same time established England claims over parts of California and British Columbia and made the Queen who sponsored the expedition very rich and profits previously in a different pirating exit expedition in 1572 Drake had managed to steal a ploy a portion of the Spanish convoys treasure on land so the practice

42:47 was that silver mined from the Incan Empire of South America was carried to Panama in Panama it was carried by mule trains across the Isthmus of Panama and then to a Caribbean port on ships headed for Spain there drake teamed up with escaped slaves from spanish escape from spanish masters and there in panama attacked the mule train and captured part of the Spanish treasure in 1572 but the overall idea we don't have a lot of time for talking about francis drake is that elizabeth is a bit hesitant to sponsor colonization directly challenged

43:33 spain through official government ventures and she sort of does so through these quasi official quasi sponsored pirate air privateering piracy missions now by far the most significant venture of the West Country man was the attempt to colonize Roanoke that most of you would have heard of and we're going to talk about in a second the famous Lost Colony of Roanoke but I want to mention briefly an earlier attempt at colonization one of the very earliest English attempts at colonization was led by Sir Humphrey Gilbert who was one of the West's countrymen and it actually took place in the 1570s in Newfoundland and it was an absolute failure that's

44:21 why we don't talk about it so much but let me tell you a little bit about this early attempt Gilbert was one of the West's countrymen and he had several several goals in mind in colonizing and exploring this area he was still hoping to find a Northwest Passage to Asia he wanted to plan English colonies in the new world to serve as sources of raw materials he also thought that they could serve as a dumping ground for the destitute for the poor and beggars and he also thought that this could perhaps serve as a basis of attack for the Spanish Empire in 1578 he received a charter from the

45:07 Queen to form a colony in North America he set out with seven ships and 400 men in 1578 the same year but storms and Spanish ships forced him to turn back in 1583 he led a new expedition to Newfoundland with with five ships and 250 men however it was a failure he chose Newfoundland because he thought it would be the same climate is England because it was the same latitude but of course the weather was was different the climate was harsher the settlers refused to stay and they were all lost at sea on the voyage home so the attempt at

45:56 colonization by Humphrey Gilbert in the late 1570s early 1580s was a dismal failure it was abandoned end of story far more important was the colony brah Roanoke the most significant venture of the West countrymen these early aristocratic sponsored attempts of colonization was the attempt to colonize ro at Roanoke now of course this became known in history as the Lost Colony it failed miserably and revealed the limits of these aristocratic elite sponsored semi-private expeditions the Colony of Roanoke was and here's a representation of what it might have looked like the colony Roanoke was financed privately by Sir

46:45 Walter Raleigh there's his name again the the colony was financed privately by Sir Walter Raleigh and other aristocrats but had the backing of the crown it was approved and approved and sponsored by the Queen but really financed by raúl Ian and his contemporaries the first attempt to colonize Roanoke was in 1585 and I'll just show you the big map again so you get perspective of where it is so here it is it's all it's in Virginia but of course Virginia at that time was a very big area it's it's off the coast of North Carolina today so the first attempt was in 1585 in 1585

47:30 Walter Raleigh sent 100 colonists all men to settle on Roanoke Roanoke so here you see Roanoke was a small island on the North Carolina coast then it was part of Virginia the expedition was led by Ralph Ling what was led by Ralph Ling who was the leader as a settlement the location you could almost see here was buffered by dangerous shoals and sand banks now these sand banks and shallow waters made the location safe the location promised security from Spanish attack and that's why they chose it however the column is paid a very high

48:17 price for this security first the location was difficult to access it was surrounded by shallow waters and sandbags that made ships prone to shipwreck an accident it was often said that this area was a graveyard ships secondly the soil of the island was sandy and infertile and that it produced only scanty crops but the poor location didn't actually bother the colonists these the islands limited potential for farming didn't bother the current colonists because the colonists expected to trade with and be fed by the local Algonquin England's shown here meanwhile

49:04 just like the Spanish conquistadors they entertained hopes of finding gold in inland mines or perhaps raiding the Spanish treasures so they were still adhering to the get-rich-quick scheme however at first the Indians are very hospitable they trade with the English they trade trade them corn they provide them with food however initially hospitable the Indians ran out of patience as the in English continued to demand food through the winner and native supplies of corn were running low in the early spring of 1586 the chieftain of the chieftain wing Gina

49:51 here's his name the chief when Gina refused to provide the English any more food there was not enough food to go around in a sudden surprise attack Lane led an ambush to kill wing Gina and his deputy chief the ambushed the English ambush of chief Regan it was meant to terrorize the Indians into providing more food to force them that's providing more food to browbeat them into providing food however the attack backfired the ambush put the Indians put the Indians to flight they left the area they abandoned the region which of course lessened the english's prospects for food so later that spring when English ships stopped by to provide

50:38 supplies the starving male colonists were eager to abandon the island and hopped on the first ship back to England so the first attempt fails the colonists go back to England the second attempt was in 1587 trying the inn in 1587 Raleigh set a second set of colonists about 94 people under the command of a new civilian named John white significantly showing their hopes for a more practical settler society and not just an extraction society the colonists included women and family families the college included seventeen women and nine children as a

51:23 sort of piece of trivia the first English child to be born in the New World was White's granddaughter named Virginia Dare in honor of the new queen and Newland now Virginia Dare is a big mystery in history we know very little about her or her parents but we do know that John White was her grandfather uh this time in 1587 Raleigh and white plan to locate the colony at the more fertile Chesapeake Bay to the north but the Mariners were impatient and dumped the colonists for a second time at Roanoke Island with its in fertile ground before proceeding to the Caribbean where they wanted to loot Spanish ships the second

52:08 step was no the second attempt was no more successful than the first not long after his granddaughter was born white set sail for England to seek supplies and reinforcements however what should have been a short supply trip he should have been back shortly turned into three-year ordeal because of England's war with Spain governor white was prevented from returning for three long years in the meantime the colonists disappeared without a trace what was happening England was involved in a long time war with against Spain from 1585 to 1604 we don't have to have to cover it in detail but English ships were preoccupied in this war with Spain the

52:56 Spanish Armada had been dispatched with the orders to conquer England but the Spanish Armada was soundly defeated in 1588 so this was a turning point in the war for the English witzy 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada finally after that white was able to return to Roanoke with a relief expedition but he found the settlement mysteriously abandoned with no signs of attack either by this Spanish or the Indians this brings us to the mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke ok so because of the war of Spain the white was delayed by three years John white and the English supply

53:41 ships reached the island on August 17th 1590 three years after they left and they returned to the very same spot on the beach from which they had left White's party found fresh footprints on the beach but the colonists were nowhere in sight grass and weeds grew in the fields pumpkin vines covered the walls of ruined houses white found books pages from books torn from the covers map spoiled with rain and he actually found his own suit of armor lying rusted in the corner of his old house mysteriously that what was very mysterious where it was that there were no signs of distress but only the word Croatoan carved into a

54:27 tree nearby a house entrance Croatoan was the name of a nearby island as you can see here however White's party was impatient they were fearful of the dangerous shallow shoal waters that were a graveyard for ships so with white protesting the Mariners sailed away in pursuit of Spanish treasure once again and left the colonists to their fate at this point the colonists could have were probably still alive what happened to the colonists what huh what happened to the colonists were they rated by the Spanish where they read by Indians did they starve while it is often assumed that

55:15 the colonists were killed by local Indians the situation was much more complicated so here is and actually your your textbook tells you that they were killed by Indians is really not doing justice to the truth the the real version of the Lost Colony is more complicated here's the best scholarly interpretation of what happened at the present the college is probably retreated to the nearby island of Croatoan where they tried in vain to contact to flag down passion ships they probably did not after that they found Haven with a local Indian village either somewhere on the Outer Banks or up in

56:02 the Chesapeake we don't actually know it is likely that they took shelter with a local tribe on the Outer Banks and that that this tribe later migrated northward to the Chesapeake region however however we do have this concrete evidence in 1607 when the English reached the Chesapeake Bay there were solid reports Indians reported that white people had recently lived nearby as refugees in a native village so I'll repeat that and 1607 there was solid evidence solid reports that there were numbers of English white people living as refugees in a native village unfortunately however that village ran

56:49 afoul of another native chieftain that village came into war with another native chieftain named Politan who killed all of the refugees so this the settlers took refugees with a local Indian tribe they were given refugee status but they were killed by another Indian tribe probably now there's a lot of mysteries and myths surrounding the Lost Colony this was a this is a rock in the collection of a college in the South that claimed which is claimed to have been the writing of Virginia Dare it is probably a forgery but in any case going

57:34 back to Roanoke the disaster at Roanoke revealed the limits of early aristocratic sponsored attempt at colonization the resources of private individuals were not enough to sustain a colony the English colonial promoters promised that everyone would work together in perfect harmony in the colony and that these colonies would solve all of England's social problems poverty vagrancy etc and that it would provoke preserves England social hierarchy in reality the opposite of truth was true furthermore colonists thought why work together to cultivate porn when an Overland expedition might yield gold or sea rating could capture Spanish ships eager to raid Spanish

58:25 treasure English ships English Merida's repeatedly dumped the colonists abandoned them or bypassed the location altogether remember they're always leader to leave this location because of the dangerous shallow waters so in the next lecture we look at the tobacco colonies Virginia and Maryland and really at the first permanent English colony at Jamestown where a new form of gold would be found in the form of tobacco thank you very much