Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in America
- Date
- 14 May 1607
- Category
- Exploration & colonisation
- Region
- North America (Virginia)
- Era
- Early Modern
- Significance
On 14 May 1607 roughly a hundred settlers sent by the Virginia Company of London established a fort on Jamestown Island in the Chesapeake Bay, founding the first permanent English settlement in North America.
The colony nearly failed amid famine, disease, internal discord and conflict with the powerful Powhatan confederacy, including the 'starving time' of 1609–1610. Its survival was secured by reinforcements and, decisively, by John Rolfe's cultivation of a marketable tobacco from about 1612, which gave Virginia a profitable cash crop and a model of plantation agriculture. Two developments of 1619, the convening of the House of Burgesses, the first representative assembly in English America, and the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the colony, foreshadowed enduring features of the future United States. Jamestown gave England its lasting foothold in the Americas and launched the expansion that would create Britain's North American empire.
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Empires active in 14 May 1607
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE – 1922 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Mughal Empire1526 CE – 1857 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Ming Dynasty1368 CE – 1644 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
Related exploration & colonisation events
- Champlain founds Quebec and New France3 July 1608
- Torres Navigates the Strait Between New Guinea and AustraliaOctober 1606
- The Pilgrims, Plymouth Colony and the Mayflower CompactNovember 1620
- Abel Tasman's Voyage: First European Contact with New Zealand, Tonga and FijiDecember 1642 - February 1643
- Spanish Conquest of the Philippines and Founding of Colonial Manila24 June 1571
- Cook's First Voyage Charts New Zealand and Eastern Australia1769-1770
Further reading
The wider story
The Americas: A Hemispheric History
Brisk single-volume history of the whole hemisphere since European contact.
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