Founding of Jamestown

Also called: Jamestown Colony, Colony of Virginia

Settlers sent by England’s Virginia Company founded Jamestown in Virginia — the first permanent English settlement in North America and the beginning of the Thirteen Colonies.

England, which had lagged behind Spain, failed to plant a colony at Roanoke under Elizabeth I. In May 1607 about a hundred men sent by the Virginia Company of London built a fort on the James River and named it after King James I. Swamp fevers and hunger killed many; the colony barely survived as John Smith imposed discipline and traded with the Powhatan confederacy, and the winter of 1609–1610 became known as the “starving time”.

Around 1612 John Rolfe succeeded in growing tobacco, and the colony lived on tobacco exports. In 1619 the Virginia General Assembly, the first representative assembly in North America, met, and in the same year the first Africans were brought to the colony — self-government and slave labour began together. At about this time Joseon sent an embassy to Japan in 1607, reopening relations broken by the Imjin War.