jan 1, 1607 - Jamestown

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Jamestown was the first permanent English colony in the Americas, founded by the Virginia Company. While it initially foundered due to disease and poor harvests, English manpower bolstered population long enough to enable the discovery of a new cash crop: tobacco. Tobacco-farming drew enough Englishmen across the Atlantic to upset the power balance with the local Powhatan Confederacy, which, though initially taking a patronizing role in its relationship with the English, was defeated and pushed inland in a series of wars. Poor, landless Englishmen were drawn to this colony by the Headright System, in which all indentured servants were to be granted some 50 acres upon fulfillment of their contracts. Jamestown quickly developed a deeply stratified plantation society, initially incorporating indentured English labor alongside enslaved Native Americans and Africans. Jamestown is also home to the House of Burgesses, one of the first permanent European representative legislative bodies in the Americas.

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