Colonial Jamestown: the problems of ecology, policy and law

Jamestown was not the first among the early ones, but the "first among equals" - a new model of British colonial outposts in North America, born as a result of numerous colonial experiments. The original Jamestown is a dead-end form of British expansion, a colony dying of hunger and cold, malaria, dysentery, conflicts with the Indians. Many were morally broken by the weight of completely unrealizable tasks: instead of precious metals and the shortest path to the riches of Asia, they found terrible suffering, degradation and death. The vaunted English self-government degraded: the aristocrats schemed against each other, opposed John Smith. The situation changed little even then, the colony was transferred to martial law. Although terror became a regular method of management, at first it created only the appearance of a way out of the impasse - the mortality rate of the population remained as high as before, the colony did not bring tangible dividends to its shareholders. The real salvation for the colony was the "tobacco revolution", which is unthinkable without mass labor and potential landowners. It began in the process of transforming the military model into a new quality - an agrarian colony. The belated response of the Indians to this process was the "great massacre" of 1622 - the British colonization had already become massive.