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Feb 8, 1492
Disease and Indigenous Population Loss
The European lifestyle included a long history of sharing close quarters with domesticated animals, which had resulted in epidemic diseases unknown in the Americas. Epidemics swept the Americas subsequent to European contact, killing between 10 million and 100 million people, up to 95% of the indigenous population of the Americas : smallpox (1518, 1521, 1525, 1558, 1589,
typhus (1546),
influenza (1558),
diphtheria (1614)
and measles (1618) -
Feb 8, 1537
The Slavery Question
In 1537, the papacy definitively recognized that Native Americans possessed souls, thus prohibiting their enslavement, without putting an end to the debate. Some claimed that a native who had rebelled and then been captured could be enslaved nonetheless. -
Indentured Servants
From the beginning of VA's settlements in 1587 until the 1680s, the main source of labor and a large portion of the immigrants were indentured servants looking for new life in the overseas colonies. During the 17th century, indentured servants constituted 75% of all European immigrants to the Chesapeake region. Most of the indentured servants were teenagers from England with poor economic prospects at home. -
The Search for Riches
Inspired by the Spanish riches from colonies founded upon the conquest of the Aztecs, Incas, and other large Native American populations in the 16th century, the first Englishmen to settle permanently in America hoped for some of the same rich discoveries when they established their first permanent settlement in Jamestown, VA in 1607.
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Virginia Colonies
It took strong leaders, like John Smith, to convince the colonists of Jamestown that searching for gold was not taking care of their immediate needs for food and shelter and the biblical principle that "he who will not work shall not eat.“ The extremely high mortality rate was quite distressing and cause for despair among the colonists. Tobacco later became a cash crop, with the work of John Rolfe and others, for export and the sustaining economic driver of VA and the neighboring colony of MD. -
Religious Immigration
Roman Catholics were the first major religious group to immigrate to the New World Settlers in the colonies of Portugal and Spain (and later, France) were required to belong to that faith. English and Dutch colonies, tended to be more religiously diverse. -
Atlantic Slave Trade
Captured Africans were sold to European slave traders on the West African coast. “Middle Passage” – Millions of Africans were taken in ship, under inhuman conditions, for the voyage across the Atlantic to the New World. Treatment – enslaved Africans were auctioned and forced to work under brutal conditions. -
Forced Immigration & Enslavement
Slavery existed in the Americas prior to the arrival of Europeans, as different American Indian groups often captured and held other tribes' members as slaves. The Spanish continued this with the enslavement of local aborigines in the Caribbean. As the native populations declined from European diseases, forced exploitation, atrocities, they were often replaced by Africans imported through a large commercial slave trade. -
Migration to North America
A strong believer in the notion of rule by divine right, Charles I, King of England and Scotland, persecuted religious dissenters. Waves of repression led to the migration of about 20,000 Puritans to New England between 1629 and 1642, where they founded multiple colonies. -
Scope of the Slave Trade
The total slave trade to islands in the Caribbean, North & South America is estimated to have involved 12 million Africans. About 600,000 African slaves were imported into the U.S., or 5% of the 12 million slaves brought across from Africa.
