British Virginia

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject History - America, grade: 1,0, The University of Kansas (History Department), course: History of U.S. through Civil War, language: English, abstract: Although the establishment of the Roanoke colony in Virginia (1585-1590), the first British colony in America, resulted in a total disaster, the British Empire was not discouraged to undertake a new colonization attempt on the North American continent about sixteen years later. In the Chesapeake Bay area, the today's Virginia, a new colony, Jamestown, was established in 1607. Though in the first years after founding Jamestown the settlers were confronted with countless problems, the settlement finally overcame these difficulties and developed to a prosperous colony. For a long time seventeenth-century Virginia was regarded as a society only interested in profit and private gain, exploiting and ignoring the sufferings of servants and slaves. But at the same time it was also a society which developed a social conscience and established the first functioning political institutions of the contemporary United States. The aim of this paper is to examine British Virginia from inception onward, investigating how Virginia's colonial society transplanted its desires and aspirations to the New World, adapted to (or not) and/or altered its new environment, and dealt with the indigenous peoples it encountered.