Thread by @pptsapper

Heh

So ya know Jamestown? That place in Virginia that's like LOOK AT US SO OL TIMEY, FULL OF HISTORY, BE PROUD, WE SETTLED HERE FIRST

dumbasses only were where they were because the ship captains bringing them over decided Spanish gold was cooler & dumped them

By a swamp

Like. Yeah. All these 17th century English dudes like "shit, we gotta do something about all these poor people from the country clogging up our cities"

Then this one dude, let's call him Otis. Well, Otis is like " WUT IF WE SEND THEM TO AMERICA TO FIND GOLD"

They like "Otissss"

Now, see, it's the early 1600s and no one knows there isn't any gold on the east coast. All everyone knows is that Spain went sailing kff and killed lots of people and got enough gold to buy everything with, and erryone wants gold

It's like. Specie. Or some shit.

So these E glish rich dudes are like "hey. We got overpopulation. We can solve this." So they form a company of interested dudes, a technical market term, and send a buncha untrained and unskilled people off to see what happens in the new wolrd

As one does, in the 1600s

Now, here's the problem.. who's got sailing ships right now? Ya got merchants, and they're not hauling some smelly colonists. There's the Navy but they're not cool yet. Sooooo ya get some privateer/pirate/ship for hire and gotta hope for the best

In the case of the London Compant, the best was, uhhhh, the ships dumping the settlers off in a swamp and chasing off after some gorram Spanish treasure ships like Han Solo on meth

Leaving the settlers to their own devices

TWIST: they have no devices

You'd fuckin think that the London Compant would send over some farmers and artisans and people who knew what they were doing

NOPE

Buncha rich kids or confused city boys landing in a Virginia swamp

Bunch run off to find treasure. Didn't work out so well.

They're basically starving and relying on food from the home colonies because the Virginia Company - they changed the name in honor of that there virgin queen - can't figure out that maybe they should send people that know what they're doing.

One thing they do figure out is that they can grow tobacco which everyone likes because they get tired of smoking shoes or whatever the fuck they smoked before tobacco and soon everyone in Jamestown is growing tobacco but the problem is they're still not growing FOOD

Did I mention they're next to a fucking SWAMP. Yah. So people keep dying which confuses them so the Virginia Company decides the solution is MOAR SETTLERS especially for tobacco because hotdamn there's gold in them that leafs. So they keep sending more people who keep dying

Like, as many as TEN THOUSAND people are gonna die in Jamestown before shit starts to get better but it doesn't really get better because they're like "damn our indentured servants are dying too quickly, maybe slaves would be better"

NOT BETTER

By the late 1620s, after a decade of failure, Jamestown isn't a complete disaster - altho they've pissed off the locals a LOT - and the Virginia Company is like "yasss, we gon make money" but the Crown is all "nope, y'all dipshits couldn't manage shit" and take over control

And uhhhhhhhh that only gets us to 1624 and what I'm getting at is

Virginia is born in mismanagement, starvation, and disease and people planting tobacco in the streets instead of food

So

How the hell does Virginia is for lovers come outta that