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The Idealistic Vision Of The Jamestown Colony

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While the northern colonists sought religious freedom, Virginia’s settlers sought only wealth. They failed miserably in the first decade to even feed themselves, and it eventually survived only by developing a one-dimensional economy that depended upon the ruthless exploitation of servants and eventually thousands of Africa slaves. The founders of Jamestown wanted to create a complex and progressive colony that would integrate the Indians, offer opportunities to England’s poor, and refuse, emphatically, to imitate the Spanish Empire’s brutal use of African slaves. But their idealistic vision of the Jamestown colony proved impossible to implement. Hundreds of early Virginia settlers died during their first harsh winter, and the colony teetered

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