Happy 400th Birthday, America!

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Three ships ( the Susan Constant, Godspeed, & Discovery ) left London on the 20th Dec 1606. They reached their first landing-spot in North America on the 26th April 1607; they named the spot, Cape Henry. On the 14th May 1607, colonists from the ships landed at Jamestown Island where they constructed what would turn out to be the first permanent English settlement in North America. -- Initially, the settlers distributed all their outputs equally amongst themselves, with the usual disastrous results. They survived through cultivating a cross-bred type of sweeter tobacco, which they exported to England. But as they cultivated more land, they clashed with the local American tribes…

A number of key strands of US history happen to pass through Jamestown. It had the first colonial legislature, which first met on 30th July 1619. (The Mayflower Compact was signed almost 16 months later.) Jamestown remained the colonial capital to 1698, when the legislature moved to Williamsburg. -- In 1619, too, the first -- coerced -- Africans arrived, brought by a ?Dutch trader. But they were indentured servants, not slaves, & so eventually became free. (Slavery developed only later in the 17th century.) -- There was a fort on the site of Jamestown during the American Revolution & a Confederate fort during the US Civil War.