![]() ![]() Unable to survive solely on their own, they counted on periodic reprovisioning and new infusions of settlers from their sponsors in England, the Virginia Company of London. ![]() So, too, the early colonists of Jamestown encountered daunting challenges. The spread of English settlements along the North Atlantic seaboard in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was far from inevitable. Few colonies lasted more than a year and many hundreds of colonists died, often in terrible conditions. The Spanish lost colonies in Florida, the French at Fort Caroline (Florida) and Port Royal (Nova Scotia) and the English at Baffin Island, Roanoke (North Carolina), and Sagadahoc in Maine. If Jamestown collapsed, the emergence of British America and eventually the creation of the United States may never have happened.īy the time John Smith and his fellow colonists landed in Virginia in 1607, many European colonies had failed already, owing to harsh winters, rampant disease, hostile Indians (or other Europeans), and difficulties with provisioning. Instead of English, we might be speaking French, Spanish, or even Dutch. If Jamestown, England’s first permanent colony in the New World, had failed 400 years ago-and it came within a whisker of being abandoned on any number of occasions-then North America as we know it today would probably not exist. ![]()
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