British Settlement in Jamestown (1607): Labor Options

British Settlement in Jamestown-1607
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British Settlement in Jamestown-1607
This assignment will explore the British' first permanent settlement in the New World, Jamestown, in 1607, the forms of labor options they tried, the primary forms of labor in the English American colonies by the end of the 17th century why they were used.
After the English, through the Virginia Company of London, had set up the settlement of Jamestown in 1607, in the Mayflower, present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, there arrived a group of English religious dissenters referred to as Pilgrims in 1620. Earlier, in 1617, in the Massachusetts bay also had arrived the first fleet of Puritans from England that sought to set up a religious colony, adding to the English settlers, numbering in their thousands, who had already put-up settlements in Virginia, around the Chesapeake Bay. Over the years leading to 1640, their numbers continued to grow in Chesapeake Bay and Massachusetts.
New Netherland, renamed New York, was captured by the English in 1664. The Chesapeake was desolate, disease-infested, and the environment was harsh. John Smith, one of the English leaders, observed that Jamestown then was 'a miserie, a ruine, a death, a hell.' The dwindling supplies and uncultivated fields added to the challenge that the inhabitants of the place, the Indians, were unwilling to labor for the English. Many English men and boys died from hunger and disease. A few remained and survived up to the spring of 1608 when supplies came in from new settlers who had arrived.
1 The Forms of Labor Options
In the succeeding years after 1608, the Virginia Company sought to instill discipline militarily. The first option of labor that the English tried was dividing servants, both the English and the inhabitants, into work gangs. They tried to ensure this system worked by ruthlessly punishing those who did not toe the line. The punishments differed according to the ranks of the servants. For the wealthy, minor infractions were sanctioned by fines, while the poor were punished by branding, whipping, and even cutting off their body parts. More serious infractions of the rules were disciplined by death and mutilation of the body parts before and after the killing. The servants were also divided as per their gender.
The women were assigned household chores and duties like stitching shirts, whereas their male counterparts labored in the fields. Clark et al. (2008) observe that “…The handful of women, such as Ann Leyden and June Wright, stitched shirts and performed other household tasks” P. 39. Inadequacies in the performance of the work assigned to the women were punished by whipping, leading to pregnant women miscarrying. “…And Ann Leyden being then with child, the same night thereof miscarried” (Clark et al., 2008, P. 39). Settlers who wanted to go back to England were unable to do so without permission. When in 1611, the Virginia Company embarked on growing tobacco for its ready market back in England, it realized that it could do a business out of the servants. Tobacco cultivation was favored by the arable Virginia land and the accessibility of the colon...